Day 225

What I remember best about Christmas was my grandmother's box of decorations.
She'd had them since she was a child and they were beautiful.
They may have smelt strange, the paint may have been a bit runny but they were Christmas to me.

I stopped thinking of them like that when the accident happened.
Really it wasn't entirely my fault - I didn't hit the hornet nest, I just pointed it out.
Nobody could have guessed, she hid it so well.

The tree ornaments were always heavy, they were the heaviest thing I was allowed to lift back then.
Grandma always insisted on spraying the baubles with a mix of perfume and formaldehyde.
She said it kept them fresh, an old family thing apparently.
We never questioned it.
Never had reason to.

Part of me wishes I'd never dropped one of those damned decorations.
Maybe then grandma would still be here, though I'm not sure if that would be a good thing.

See, what we'd never realised is that those little glass balls weren't filled with water like she'd said.
It was obvious really; the formaldehyde, the wet sloshing noises they made, the faint smell.

Maybe we'd known all along and didn't want to be right.

I blamed myself for years, you know.
That bauble just shattered and this thick clump of bloody hair fell to the floor.

The police couldn't find a DNA match.
Grandma wouldn't admit to anything.

Nobody knows who was in those decorations, all cut up and preserved.