THE JAR

Hello there, if you're reading this it means you have happened upon a story I just wrote here in the dark, listening to Hairway to Steven and 26 Songs. I like the idea of short fiction, and the websites that cater to that style of writin. I'm just gonna put the story here, and you read it if you like. Working title: the jar

I feel the need to tell you outright that I have, in my possession, a jar that I believe contains the disincarnate spirit of a young woman who died much too young. I could show you the simple Mason jar, its lid sealed shut with candlewax drippings of a rainbow of colors, melted with no apparent pattern. Inside the glass, there is a little pool of liquid, almost invisible unless you pick it up and disturb the jar.

I could tell you that She doesn't like that at all, that it really pisses her off, but you scoff and pick up the jar from my bookshelf altar, and you peer through the rough glass at the puddle, and I would feel her energy gathering in the room like a thundercloud until you set down the jar and look at me and smile that stupid grin, the one that means, you're a complete dipshit. However, I could tell you that I am certainly no dipshit. I feel that I could tell you quite a few things, more things than you could ever imagine. But first off the bat, you should know about the jar. The one you just unsettled. That's a weird story.

I used to be the kind of man who would hop the fences of graveyards after dark, and explore terrains that look so much different than they do in the daylight. In the light of the moon, everything takes on a certain twinkle, catching the reflection of the faintest star. I don't trespass anymore. I haven't done it in twenty years, and I am not an old man. I'm young, still young enough to remember the follies of my youth. I have had time to reflect on my actions, and my transgressions prevent me from breaking any more laws.

But I did it. I climbed over the rusted fence, in the dark and still, no cars in the parking lot, no headlights down the street. I threw over my bag and followed its transjectory. I explored the unfamiliar sprawl of the cemetery until I happened upon the jar, placed at the center of the upturned earth. I saw moonlight reflected in the glass, and I saw her face for the first time, reflected as if she was staring into a mirror. Her eyes were filled with fear and surprise. She was helpless, trapped in the glass by some strange magic, some horrid curse that imprisoned her soul inside the jar.

Do you want to know her name? Lily Abgel. I read the headstone, freshly engraved. I made a rubbing of the writing, with my charcoal and roll of paper I always carried on these trips. The earth beneath my feet sunk as I crouched and made the transfer. She was only twenty years old when she died. Just like that, she was gone.

I could tell you I heard people coming, cutting through the stones, approaching so swiftly that I felt I had no choice but to take the jar and run. That fact is somewhat irrefutable, since I still have the jar here in my possession. I wish I could tell you more, but I know practically nothing else about her. I searched the local newspapers for her obituary, for a story that should have been there. But it wasn't. There was no Lily anywhere I looked, not even in the library archives. She only seemed to exist in the graveyard, but when I went back the stone was gone. The grass was just beginning to grow again and the name became Leonard Sentence. Leonard was 93 when he died. I don't understand that part, but I have my suspicions.

You don't have to believe any of this if you don't want to. I completely understand. But I have no intention of deceiving you with any of this. I just want to tell you about the jar. I should have told you this part right at the beginning, so I am very sorry for that. Lily, she spends most days staring out of the glass, her face gets distorted by the bends so you see slivers of reflections of a sullen impatient girl. She never aged, forever preserved. But forever can get pretty tiresome, or so I have been told. Sometimes, it can get unbearable in here, when she gets into one of her fits. She goes batshit when I drape the black cloth over her, because she hates the dark. And that's when drawers start opening by themselves, and the channel gets changed on the tv, and all of the radios will turn on at once. My neighbors get pissed when this happens late at night and they've complained to the super. So, I really try to keep on her good side. Try not to ruffle her feathers. She likes it when I have visitors. She tells me she gets tired of looking at me all of the time, so that's why I invited you over, and that's why I'm telling you all of this.

I know this is weird, so forgive me in advance, but she likes to play a game whenever I have company. She sits on the shelf, and she knows I'm going to lead you over and tell you just a little bit about her and how she ended up in the jar. And she will correct me if the story leads astray even a little, oddly enough. I hear her in my head, feeding me lines whenever I trip up. But her game involves whether or not you pick up the jar or if you leave it alone. That's the hinge this whole relationship swings on. She gets the ones who shake her and upset her eternal relative tranquility, because for reasons she won't explain, she's going to end up taking your soul.

I'm really sorry. She won't let me tell anyone not to pick her up before you do it or not. Those are the rules that I have to play by. Please don't take it personally. You don't have to believe any of this if you don't want to. Just don't believe anything will happen.

She makes me, just know that. She makes me bring people over. I know we work together but it's nothing personal. I never know who will disturb the jar and who will just think I'm a nut. And the people who think I'm a little funny in the head, I usually end up becoming pretty good friends with them. We stay in touch. People who shake the jar, they just end up going, I hate to say. They just die, no apparent rhyme or reason, they fall to the ground or swerve the car into the oncoming lane or they go to bed and just never wake up.

But the night they die, I see them inside the jar with Lily. They're scared shitless, and she, well, I am not really sure what she does to them, but they're always gone by the next morning, and then she's back to staring out on my little room. She says she'll help me if she can, so I help her. But, maybe none of this will happen to you.

I hope it doesn't, because you seem cool. I really wish you didn't pick up the jar.