These Were Your Grandmother's

We usually didn’t get anybody coming to the house after nine o’clock on an evening so I was a little paranoid as I pulled my dressing gown tight to ward off the cold I knew was out there.  I shivered pre-emptively as I walked down the hall to the door.

Peering through the spy hole, I was glad to see it was a woman on the other side.  She looked a little distracted but I figured the sooner I got rid of her the sooner I could curl up in front of the fire again.

“You don’t know me.” She started speaking the second I opened the door but wouldn’t look me in the eye.  “But I was wondering about those slippers you’re wearing.”  She gestured towards the pink, fluffy pompoms on my feet.

I took a half a step back, changed my grip on the door and closed it ever-so slightly.

“Er,” I said, not really sure what the correct response to this was.  The slippers were new.  Well, new to me, I had bought them in a charity shop a few weeks ago.

“It’s just that,” she glanced up at me, flashing her blue eyes for a second before returning them to the slippers.  “They’re my grandmother.”

“P-pardon?” I said, safe in the absolute knowledge that I didn’t have a clue how to respond.

“It was a mistake,” her eyes widened as she flashed them at me again.  There were tears forming in the corners.  “You should never have got them.  They belong to me.  She belongs to me.”

“I’m sorry,” I tried to round on her, treat her like a door to door salesman.  “I bought them in good faith, a real bargain and I don’t want to part with them.  I feel the cold terribly, in fact I must get back inside.”

I stepped back and began to shut the door but it was too late, she moved her foot forward, her slip-on slipping in at the last second and stopping me.

“No!” she pushed the door back towards me but there was no way I was letting her in.  “My grandmother – her spirit.  It’s in those slippers.”

“Listen, I don’t know what you’re talking about.  These slippers are just – just get out of my house.  Take your foot out of the door this second!”

In one rehearsed movement she dropped to her knees and grabbed my heel sending me toppling onto my bum.  She clawed the slipper from my foot clearly hadn’t been expect the kick in the shoulder I gave her and fell backwards out of the house.  I kicked the door closed with my other foot and leaned on it, making sure it had locked behind her.  

I sat for a second, panting and staring at the pattern in the carpet.  It was silent outside so I carefully stood up, put the chain on the door and chanced a look through the spy hole.  There she was, standing with my slipper in her hand, half way down the garden path.

“Give me back the rest of my grandmother,” she screamed, her voice cracking as she did.  The volume of her words seemed unaffected by the thick door between us.

I turned around, away from the madness and there stood something that should not have been there.  In front of me was an apparition of an old woman, perhaps seventy or eighty years old and she was wearing a single pink, fluffy, pom pom slipper.

“She right, dear,” the spirit said.  “Now give her the other one and we’ll leave you alone.”