Rings

Beneath the earth a warmness spreads through her body. Replacing the cold numbness that once resided there. Her dead fingers twitch and broken ribs snap back into place as a crushed heart starts to beat once more.

Twelve miles away, in a drawer. Jen Elder notices  a strange blue pulsing lights up the crack between the drawers. She opened the drawer, perplexity gripping her brain as she rifles through the junk in the drawer.

“Impossible.” she cried out loud, terror and panic seizing  her heart. as she picks up the source of the light, the ring her sister, Sara, gave her on her sixteenth birthday, five years ago.

“See the rings work like this...” Sara had said on that day,  taking her own ring from the little black velvet jewelry box and slipping it on her finger. Orange, her sister favorite color,  pulsed from the ring through a tinny gauge on the side. Jen’s own ring flashed blue.

“The rings measure each others heart beats.” Sara said as she looked at Jen with her blue eyes that Jen used to  love.

“Remember, Sisters Forever” Sara said grinning.

The ring had remained dark and dead in the drawer for at least a year now, and the memory of what happened that night still played  in her nightmares.

“The breaks had refused to work,” she had told the cops.

“It was dark out and the cars headlights aren't that bright,” her mom cried standing up for Jen.

If only they knew the truth. It wasn't a car malfunction. When she saw her sister crossing the road she didn't stop or even try the breaks. Sara died on impact; her chest caved in, laying on the side of the road as the blue as red police  lights bathed her. lighting up the darkness with blue lightning and flashing blood.

She hit her sister in rage and jealousy. All those night spent with him, the new boy, Joe, with the cute blue eyes that she used to like. Jen gave him a letter only to find it crumpled on the sidewalk outside the school and him, walking arm in arm with Sara. Anger and jealousy had cascaded down on her brain until she couldn't think.

Jen tossed the ring back into the junk drawer, dismissing its warning as a malfunction. She yawned tired from work, a twelve hour shift serving as a waitress at Diamond Dinner, and collapsed on the bed.

The doorbell sounded, as  loud as thunder in the quiet house, waking Jen up from a deep sleep. Heavy eyed, she climbed out of bed. Her feet, leaden with sleep, scuffed the bair floor as she sauntered  to the kitchen.

Yawning and stretching, she threw open the front door and froze. Her jaw dropped and a scream escaped piercing the darkness and silence of the house. An orange light pulsed, lighting up her sister’s pale face. In one of Sara’s dirty hands held a knife.  
“Remember” Sara said, her words overcoming Jens Screams,  “Sisters forever”. Sara said as a grin crossed her face.
Police lights wash the scene in red and blue flashes of color and sirens wail into the fading night sky. Yellow tape flutters in the breeze, yelling at people to back off. An ambulance was at Jen's house, though the paramedics were not needed. Jens mother stood on the sidewalk looking up at the blood spattered wood of the porch, tears streaming down her face. The chief of police had called the coroner to have jens body shut up in a body bag and sent off.
They buried Jen  in the Aberforth graveyard  three day later, next to her sister. The crowd, first drawn in like a beacon of sorrow and love, now trickled away from the Aberforth graveyard. The memory of the two ill fated sisters, though fresh today, would fade for some people, but a mother's memory never fades. As she walked away from the secrets that were  buried under the earth, she fingered the two rings . The police chief had found the rings near Jen and he had given them to her. She thought of what she had to do. There was a pawn shop on Northeast, she would have sell the rings to pay for Jens funeral. She didn't want to but it was the only way. She turned away from Jens head stone and walked to her car.  as she opened the car door she thought she heard voices talking in unison on the wind. Softly spoken and so familiar, Jen’s mother stopped, hand on the door handle, looking, but no one was there and, yet, still the voice spoke.

“Never apart, always together, sisters forever.” All become silent as Jen’s mother pulled away from the Aberforth graveyard, whispering a prayer, hoping all this craziness and sadness was over.