'Urned'

Chapter II

"Do you want to buy that ma'am?", he asks me.

I reply, "as long as you are willing to part with it."

With a shaky voice he tells me "listen dear, you can just have it. It's very old and I don't want it around here any longer." He waves me away before I get the chance to say anything else.

Julia rushes over to me and announces that she can't find anything worth buying and that she is ready to drive me back home. I quickly tuck the bottle in my purse, then I accept her offer and we hop back into the truck.

Julia doesn't really talk most of the way home, so I spend the time thinking about why the old man was so willing to just give me the bottle. Something about it seemed oddly suspicious and for that reason, I didn't tell Julia about the treasure that I found.

I get out of the truck and say a quick thank you to Julia and am making my way up the front steps when an interesting idea hits me. What if this bottle is an antique? I should take it down the road to my friend Burnie's house and get his opinion. Burnie used to own a pawn shop and so he knows quite a bit about antique things and hopefully something useful.

I hop in my Jeep Cherokee and make my way down to Burnie's. I only walk through the front door when Burnie walks up to me giving me a very strange look.

I return the look when he opens his mouth and asks, "Chantal, why are you holding an urn? More importantly, why did you bring it to my house?"

I think about his question for a second before it sinks in and I realize that this is a little weird-looking to just be a bottle. I screw the cover off and scream in horror! Sure enough, the inside is the urn is full of somebody's ashes; a strangers ashes!

I don't say another word. I just leave Burnie standing there with his mouth open. My hands are trembling when I attempt to drive myself back home. What am I supposed to do now??

By the time that I get home, the sun is already starting to set. It has been a long day and I am still a little bit shaken, so I decide that I might as well crawl in bed and try to get a goodnight sleep. I can deal with the urn tomorrow. The thought of having a stranger's ashes in my house freaks me out a little bit, so before starting my nightly routine, I take the urn down to the basement and lock it in my safe. For some reason, it calms me knowing that the urn is away and cannot be disturbed.