Red Foxes, Part Two

The final revision for my portfolio of my short story, Red Foxes. It was written as fiction, but I'm quite tempted to make it fantasy.

The bus was overcrowded, filled with people like her, all headed somewhere, even if some of them didn’t quite know where that somewhere was. She had squeezed herself into a seat in the back, her bags clutched tightly to her as she pressed herself against the window, keeping as far away from the elderly woman who sat on her right. The woman smelled of sweat and cheap perfume, wrinkled hands and fingers decorated with ostentatious jewelry that matched the oversized necklace and earrings she wore. She had on a navy blue dress suit and matching hat, legs encased in flesh-colored stockings and dark flats. Quinn didn’t want to talk to her, but the woman was insistent on chatting.

                “Where are you headed? You’re such a thin, pretty little thing, what are you doing around here? My if I looked like you the things I would wear…”

                Her voice carried an accent Quinn couldn’t place, a buzzing rasping scratch of an accent.

                “Nowhere. Just traveling around.”

                “I was young once, I know the feeling. That’s a lovely scarf you have there, where did you get that? My granddaughter loves scarves and hats and pearls, she’s at the age where she’s driving her mother crazy by going through her closet and dressing up in all of her clothes. She makes such a mess that girl.”

                Quinn instinctively clutched the scarf, the gauzy forest green loosely wrapped around the base of her neck, despite it being late spring, almost summer. Shades of paler green formed leaves and brown for branches, small embroidered leaves at the corner.

                Quinn remembered the days when she would sneak into her mother’s closet, and stare at the rows of scarves on hangars, color coded and fabric coded. She would giddily run her hands across them, wondering when she too could wear such beautiful things. The childhood innocence had faded quickly. Her mother had wrapped this scarf like a shawl around her shoulders that one afternoon, laying on the couch all day and refusing to move. She had cried so much, it wa s a wonder the scarf hadn’t been touched by the tears.

                “It was my mothers,” she said quietly.

                Quinn remembered going through her own mothers closet, amazed at all the scarves that hung about, scarves of every color, scarves for every occasion. As a child, she had been amazed, running her hands over the silk and cashmere, the cotton and light forms, all in awe. So different than when she had gone through those scarves just a year ago.  Her touch had been just as delicate, but she hadn’t been in awe. She remembered digging the pit outside in the massive backyard, then scrubbing her hands raw. Her mother had been permanently institutionalized, father long gone from divorce to live with some other family. The house, the belongings, everything was now under Quinn’s control, and at the age of twenty, she found herself unable to live in the house filled with her mother, and at the same time she couldn’t get rid of it. Thus, the sorting began. Seven scarves only, one for each day of the week that was all she allowed herself. The others were tossed in the pit and burned, the grave hidden. No one had seen the act, one neighbor was gone for vacation, the other was too old to notice.

                “Your mother? Why, I still have the pearls my mother gave me. See this strand here? She had them for the forty-three years of her marriage, wore them on her wedding day. I plan on giving them to my granddaughter….”

                She squished herself more against the window, the chatter suffocating her. Her eyes roamed around, seeking some excuse to escape as she nodded sporadically to not appear rude. Two golden eyes met her own, from underneath the bus seats across from her. The small red fox stared at her, crouched as he was, watching. She stood up, making a hurried excuse to the woman as she made her way to the front of the bus, getting off at the next red light after convincing the driver that this was her stop and it was rather important. The woman waved to her through the window as she hurried off, seeing the red fox slipping into the shadows as it followed from the corner of her eye.

                “I’m not her, I’m not her, I’m not her…”

Author's Note

Any/all critique/help is loved.