The Helga Bird
“It’s a Helga bird,” the woman announced. She pointed to the figurine on the coffee table.
“She’s beautiful,” one guest said and reached out to touch it.
“No, please don’t!” the hostess said. “It’s a rare heirloom. It once belonged to my daughter. That’s why I call it the Helga bird. After her.” The guests nodded in sympathy. Such a tragic loss. A girl who wandered off and was never found again.
But the Helga bird knew the truth. One day while gazing at herself in the bird bath’s water, her mother cast a spell on her. Her limbs stiffened like porcelain, her surprised mouth froze as if singing. Now Helga perched obediently, constantly on display for her self-professed suffering mother.
But one day, one day. Helga would break loose. She’d fly at her mother’s throat. Her mother was not the only one with special, hidden skills.
Night and Day
Berniece put sunflowers in every room. A van Gogh print in the powder room. A Rosenthal vase with artificial blooms from Michael’s between the kitchen and family room. A copper vase full of crepe sunflowers in her bedroom. She imagined real sunflowers. How they turned their faces to the sun, closed their eyes, and smiled as they basked in sunlight. How they withstood the harshest conditions. But more importantly, how they put a smile on Berniece’s face when she was more likely to gaze at the moon, tug at her long, dark hair when it got caught around a doorknob or through the keyhole, only go out in Salem at night when sunlight didn’t make her eyes hurt.
She entered the flower shop and searched through the sunflowers until she found one with the sturdiest stem and most perfect round face and vibrant petals. That night as she carried it on her nightly stroll around the neighborhood, it seemed to croak almost, a ticking sound like a clock. Then no sound at all. Its petals withered. She returned to the store the next day and bought two more sunflowers. Again she carried them on her nightly stroll. Again they seemed to croak and lose their lemony color. She returned once more to the shop. She asked the florist, “Shouldn’t a sunflower last more than one day?”
“Salem is a topsy-turvy town. Sunflowers need the sun. Salem worships the night.”
Berniece never bought another fresh sunflower. Until she bobbed her now blonde hair, moved to Providence, Rhode Island, closed her eyes beneath her UV protection sunglasses, and turned her face to the sun.
Barbara Krasner is a New Jersey-based writer. Her work has appeared in more than seventy literary journals, earning her Best of the Net, Best Microfictions, and Pushcart Prize nominations.