For the Caesar's Palace Six-Word Stories Contest. Prompt: Ma'am, we have no smaller casket. Credit for six word story: octocelot
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. - Benjamin Franklin
Helga Yallansen shuffled down the damp, cracked asphalt streets. Thin and winding like unspooled string, the disjointed streets sloped and curved throughout the maze of the inner city, especially crazed in the slums. The spiderweb of alleys and roads were stamped in the memories of all who resided on them for their too-short lives. Helga Yallansen was not one of those people. Her dark eyes flickered around in fear as she clicked across the broken mess of roads, underneath the dripping, lurching eaves of the lopsided buildings. Her nice faded burgundy skirt and blouse complimented her cream colored heels nicely, and her plump figure betrayed her years of pampering and overindulgence. The only thing that was not pretty and stately about her was her face, specifically her eyes. Her face was sunken and sallow, and her eyes were too wide and perpetually red, stinging with lurking tears. She wept more than she spoke, and her nose leaked clear, runny fluid more often than not. She shifted the black velvet bag in her hands to dab at her snotty nose with a rag. The objects inside clinked together, sending a violent shiver throughout her body. She dropped her hankie, and the sodden scrap of cotton landed where a pool of oily water had collected in a depression in the road. She clenched her jaw and abandoned her rag, reluctantly wiping her nose a moment later with the back of her sickly pale hand. Soon she spotted her destination up ahead, tucked in between a sagging apartment complex and an abandoned spice shop. Her grip on the black velvet drawstring bag of sorts tightened, and she stiffly marched herself onto the skinny sidewalk and up to the establishment's sullen door.
The word Cooper was carved unceremoniously on the wide ingress, flaking white paint streaked over the chiseled letters to make them more apparent. A cooper's shop. In the cloudy windows, baskets hung from rusty ceiling hooks, and barrels and buckets were crowded on small platforms, barely rising above the bottom edge of the window. The bleak view was enough to send a firmer frown on Helga Yallansen's face, but the unfitting tinkle of chimes when she opened the shop's door made the skin around her mouth crease even more. The sound still triggered too fresh memories in the forty-something year old woman's troubled mind.
"Hello, ma'am," the shopkeeper crooned from behind the long, cluttered counter. The man, stocky and on the shorter side, had dozens of papers splayed across the counter top. He sat in the murky half-darkness of Eight's afternoon, but he flicked on a small lamp once Helga entered the store. A warm, buttery orange glow emanated from the dusty lantern once it was on. Half of the store was awash with golden tones, while the other half remained in shadow.
The man hobbled out from around the counter. He was old, older than the Games by a good two decades. His shop was secluded and rarely got many visitors. It was so hidden that once he'd gone bankrupt three years prior, the Peacekeepers had forgotten to evict him. He'd managed to stay on the property, and now he had barely enough to keep himself fed and the windows full of his merchandise. He walked with a heavy limp due to the injury he'd sustained during the Dark Days when he was just a young man. The Peacekeepers were firing their mortars down the same crowded streets, just with more upright buildings back then. Something had fallen and his leg had twisted painfully, and he hadn't walked right since. The day of his crippling was also the day that his father and two older brothers perished fighting to protect their District from the Capitol. It was also the day that he inherited the family coopering business, and the day that District Eight fell back into Capitolite clutches.
"The name's Felter McClellan," the man commented hoarsely, extending his hand towards Helga. She gingerly accepted the proffering of welcome. "So, what's a pretty woman like you doing round here without someone else to protect you?"
"You mean what's a rich merchant girl doing scouring the old merchant streets and now slums without someone to fend off the robbers and rapists?" Helga replied back easily, not a hint of joking in her gravelly voice. "I'm not rich anymore, Mr. McClellan."
"I'm sorry to hear that, deary," Felter murmured, not exactly sure how to reply to that. "Say, darling, what's your name?"
Helga stepped more into the light so the cooper could see her gaunt looking face and watery eyes. Recognition tickled at his stomach, but his aging brain couldn't quite fit together the pieces until Helga impatiently muttered, "Helga Yallansen...well, Sørensen now," before turning to inspect a row of wicker baskets lined up on the floor in front of the counter.
It took quite a while for Felter to respond. He instantly understood the sorrow in her face and the tears brimming in her eyes. No one would forget the surname Yallansen for quite some time. Just seven months ago, in the Forty Fifth Hunger Games, eighteen year old Booker Yallansen had been Reaped. He'd entered the Games and made it far, farther than anyone from Eight had gone since the infamous Kihgi Agora. But he'd died days short of the finale, insane and alone and broken a hundred times over. The events following his death rippled through the District like wildfire. His girlfriend's mental breakdown which sent her to the asylum, his parents' depression, violent fighting, and nasty divorce following the Games, and then the husband's suicide only a month and a half ago. He was the moneymaker, and he'd left all of his money to orphanages, writing his ex wife out of his will after the divorce. Helga had been through hell and back the past months with nothing to show for it besides debt and a pretty face turned sour.
"I'm so sorry," Felter McClellan whimpered back quietly.
"Oh, we all go through hell in ours lives," Helga snapped. "Dozens of other families have suffered tragedy because of the Games. It's how this world works. I don't need your sorrow or your pity, Mr. McClellan. Now please, I'd like to buy some of your product and finally go bury my son."
"So you're here to buy a casket for Booker, not your husband?" Felter whispered unsteadily, feeling as if he were walking on thin ice.
Helga chuckled, low and hollow. "As if his family would let me help bury him. They believe I'm the reason he shot himself. They won't even let me come to the funeral or take more than a suitcase's worth of things from my own goddamn home." Helga took a deep breath and then cleared her throat before continuing. "I'm here to buy a casket for my son. Or what's left of him."
"Booker was a big boy," Felter mused. "How big of a container are you going to need?"
"Enough to house this," Helga growled. She pulled out the black velvet drawstring. As she opened it, Felter noticed the name Booker was embroidered on the bag with white thread. Little white roses were also stitched in on that part of the bag.
Helga poured out three smooth ribs, a fractured piece of a skull, six teeth, a shard of a jawbone, and a hunk of a kneecap onto the wooden counter.
"That's it?" Felter murmured quietly, his large hazel eyes open wide in shock.
"That's it," Helga hissed. "Cyndala's assistant's assistant said in her personal letter that the alligator mutts digested everything else before it could be recovered."
"Let me go find something," Felter replied, almost crestfallen in a way as he shuffled into the back room. He sifted through the various caskets and coffins in the backroom, looking for the only infant one he kept on stock. He carried the little casket he found out to Helga. It was made of dark cherry wood, and when Felter wiped away the dust, it shone under the radiant glow of the small, beaded lamp Felter had lit.
"You can put the ribs along here, the fractured piece here-" the cooper began, carefully and slowly showing the piece of the battered woman.
"It's too big," Helga said quietly.
"Hmm?" Felter questioned, looking up into the woman's tearing eyes.
"He always liked to be close and snug. He got uncomfortable in open spaces. I always thought he had mild agoraphobia," Helga replied steadily, keeping the waver out of her voice and blinking back the swelling tears. "It's too big," she repeated.
"Well, I can build something else. I don't have anything in the store that is-" Felter began, fishing in a drawer for a pencil.
"No, Mr. McClellan, it's alright," Helga coughed, sweeping the scant remains of her only child back into the velveteen drawstring. They settled at the bottom with a few muffled clacks. "It's alright, it's alright. I shouldn't have come here anyway, it's not like I can afford a burial plot or that I'm even going to use the whole thing. I should go." She cleared her throat, curtly saying, "Goodnight, sir. I hope you have good luck with your shop."
Helga strode away from the counter without another word, her cream heels clacking quietly against the creaky floorboards of the shop.
"Mrs. Yallansen-"
Felter was cut off by the tingle of the chimes above the door cascading across one another. The brass hinges of the door groaned as the door eased itself shut. The cooper wanted to leap over the desk and sprint out into the street. He wanted to grab Helga by the elbow and give her half the baskets and coffins and barrels in his store and tell her to sell them to get herself back on her feet. He wanted to help her, to do anything to save her.
It began to drizzle outside as Felter McClellan stared out the warped, homemade glass of his windows, wondering where Helga was headed, and what she planned to do.
Helga strode down the street, one hand gripping the plush bag holding the bones of her deceased son, the other clutching her aching breast.
"It's too big," she murmured once more, tracing a lopsided circle over her chest as she skidded along through the rain.
"Good morning, pops," Paisley McClellan grinned as she entered the shop. The chimes tinkled jovially, and the sunlight streamed through the distorted windowpanes. The factories were shut down today like they were on every Sunday for maintenance, and the smog and gloom that clung to Eight had cleared somewhat, bathing the District in a refreshing light. In her hands, Felter's daughter carried a brown paper bag full of yesterday's breakfast from a brunch at her rich husband's family home. She'd married well, and her loving husband had a big heart and even bigger pockets. She also held the newspaper that got issued to her front doorsteps every other day. Another perk of being wealthy; she was up to date on everything that was anything in the District and the nation.
"My little button," Felter chuckled, lurching out of his seat to embrace her after she'd set down the things she'd brought with her. He had awoken earlier than usual from a violent, incoherent dream of the pounding rain that turned to boiling blood, scorching his skin until he was on fire. As he'd run around like a maniac, suddenly he tripped over the corpse of his dead wife Evangeline, six years dead from a vicious case of pancreatic cancer. He awoke then, and had been mulling over the troubling vision for the past half hour while he waited for the cheery presence of his daughter. She lived on the other side of the District with her husband and their two sons, in the richest neighborhood with full bellies and big grins. It was all he could ask for. She came and visited him every Sunday morning to share breakfast and the events of the week.
They sat down at the counter, opening the doggy bag and splitting the sausage, scrambled eggs, and pancakes inside, all kept warm in a special container that Paisley had gotten from her husband on her birthday just for this purpose. As they dug in, they both decided what to share first.
"Percale made the middle school's honor roll this semester. He was so happy, you know how he struggles with school, and we were all so proud of him. His little 'friend' Taffeta Richardson even sent him a little card in congratulations," Paisley said with pride after sucking down an entire flapjack drenched in syrup. "I told them no monkey business, but I have a feeling they kissed last-"
"Helga Yallansen came to my shop four days ago," Felter blurted suddenly. The shop fell silent, as it usually was, and Paisley stared at Felter open mouthed. The scrambled eggs she'd scooped onto her fork plopped back onto her plate, and she fumbled for words.
"N-n-no...no way, Dad," Paisley stumbled.
"What's wrong? It's just been weighing on me, the poor woman, she looked so sad. She came here for a coffin for Booker, but there wasn't a small enough one since all she has is a little sack of his bones. I wish I could've done something more to help her."
"She committed suicide four nights ago," Paisley murmured, shell shocked. "Threw herself into the River with rocks tied to her ankles. The only thing they recovered were the scraps of a black velveteen bag and a few fractured bones along with one of her heels. I didn't know you knew her."
"I...I didn't," Felter whimpered, staring at his daughter with fear in his eyes. "Oh Paisley." The two embraced tightly. "Their whole family, just gone like that..."
"I hope to the heavens above that neither Percale nor Serge ever get Reaped," Paisley sighed into her father's shoulder.
Felter couldn't respond, keeping his mouth shut as he held his beloved daughter as snugly as he could. If only he'd had a smaller casket. If only Booker had survived, and the whole Yallansen family would still be together. Well, they were still together. Together in death.
"I have to go," Paisley said all of the sudden, glancing down at her watch right after they broke their hug. She should have left three minutes earlier; Serge had a basketball game within the hour.
"We need to get together more," Felter pleaded. "I need to see the kids more."
"I know," Paisley murmured quietly, kissing her father on the forehead. "I'll see you soon, pops."
"I love you, my little button, no matter what."
"I know, pops. I love you too."
It hurt to watch her go, and Felter just couldn't stop thinking that the District was too goddamn big as his only remaining family hurried out of the shop and down the cracked street to rush to her son's game on the other side of the city. Once she was out of sight, Felter stood, his joints creaking. He shuffled to the back of the building, where his whittling tools, wood, and other things were ordered nicely. He began at once to craft a minuscule baby coffin, one too small for most infants even. And he didn't know why he cried as he worked, but he did, and it felt nice to release for one. Soon enough the tears stopped, and the only sound in the cooper's shop was the rhythmic grind of Felter McClellan's tools against the hunk of wood he was working into a masterpiece. One can always find salvation in the simple things. Most people, like Helga and her husband, even Booker, just choose to overlook them.