Chapter 1: A Story to Forget

The old women creaked in her chair, staring out the window. She did this often, it wasn't like she could visit her friends. They were dead, most from old age. She couldn't talk for hours with her husband, nope, dead too. She just sat there, looking out the window. She was waiting for something, but what? The teenagers didn't know. Their great-grandma just sat there and waited. They had always wondered but they were to scared to ask. Their great-grandma never liked to talk about her life. Even discussing it in the slightest seemed to pain her. She hated her unspoken past, like it was the reason that pain existed in the world. Even though they knew that it would pain the elderly women they, wanted to know. They had questions that had no answers.

Before they even tapped on her shoulder, she turned to face them. Her eyes, eternally bright with excitement, stared at the teens. Her thin line of a mouth didn't need to move to portray what she wanted to know. One thick, silver eyebrow stuck up in a questioning glance. Her square face full of canyon-like wrinkles portrayed the want for the disturbance of her loneliness. The young man with his great-grandfather blue-hazel eyes, decided to speak first.

"Grandmeré, we want to know about you when you were our age."

She stared blankly, her pain molded her face into the same grimace that she wore after her husband's death. She turned to face her Great-grandchildren.

"No, there are things I want to forget." The women calmly replied.

"Why can't you tell anyone? We want to know about your childhood. No one else will tell us and you're only getting older. So keeping it in won't really make a difference. You could die tomorrow for all we know." The young women, with a black streak in her white blond hair, snapped at the old women.

Her face didn't flinch, even at the obvious insult to her old age. The old women looked at each of her Great-grandchildren, she would not let their teenage stubbornness outweigh her elderly pains, after all she didn't live to nearly one hundred years with pure health.

"Grandmeré," the young women, nearly women, with an emerald-green eye and a chocolate-brown eye, spoke softly,"I know it hurts you, but sometimes pain needs to be expressed in order to actually heal."

The old women looked at her blinking slowly, then responding, "You got that from one of your older cousins. Do you know who told them that?"

The teens looked at one another, then the old woman. All then decided to shake their heads. The old women laughed a little, shaking her head in disbelief. "Sorry children. You don't know him. It was unfair of me to ask a question that you had no answer to."

This only made the children look at each other. Their looks gave away their thoughts "She's really starting to lose it." 

The old women caught the looks. "Any of you care to share what the looks are for?"

The boy sheepishly answered, "We just think your reaction and question are odd. That's all." His eye darting straight to the floor.

The old women smiled, knowing that these kids are as ready as she can ever hope to make them. She began to stand up and gather up blankets and pillows, confusing the teens. They attempted to help her but she just simply snipped, "Just because I'm older then dirt doesn't mean I'm useless."

The old woman set up a place for each teen to sit. Making sure they were nice and comfy. She then sat down in her chair. When the teens just looked at her confused she simply moved her wrinkled hand to the comfy seats she made. The teens sat down, looking up at the old woman in confusion and wonder.

"Get comfy, it is a long story. It begins when a rare disease came back, so rare it didn't have a name and the last case of it was in the early 20th century,..."