14-7-1 Contest

Chapter One

They weren’t quite sure they understood, but they allowed their daughter to displace the grimy jade urn from the ornamental cabinet downstairs, where the grandmother’s remains mingled with the omnipresent dust of the basement. It was late in November, and the dust that coated the urn had a way of feeling burdensome, as if it contained secrets. The daughter carefully cleaned the urn's surface with a wet piece of toilet paper before presenting the evidence to her bewildered parents.

They sat around the kitchen table as the daughter laid out the diary pages and the mystical drawings and the oriental herb chart. She brought out a map and starred Geungangsok, the third highest peak in South Korea. She read from the diary in halting, broken Korean. The mother kept opening and closing her mouth, like a fish.

The father rubbed tired eyes and blinked once, twice, three times. He said something like, Yes, we knew she wanted her ashes scattered on that mountain of hers.

The mother scratched her head and said, But we never understood why she wanted to be cremated.

The daughter was not sure, either. But there it was: ten one hundred dollar bills pressed neatly within the folds of her grandmother’s diary and the words that chilled the daughter: SET ME FREE.

Her parents were lukewarmly supportive. The father called a remaining nephew-and-niece pair for residing arrangements in Seoul; her mother bought a colorful volume entitled Travel Guide to the Land of the Morning Calm and left it on her bed. The daughter, however, was less concerned with travel plans and more concerned with the curse detailed in the diary pages, a perfunctory and grandmotherly gesture that more or less said:

Dear granddaughter,

Here is a thousand bucks. Take my ashes and scatter them on Geumgangsok. Or else.

Love,

Grandmother

P.S. If you don't, I will lay a curse on you. My unsettled bones still have a spark of the mudang spirit. Premature death, my beloved. Leave an eye open for premature death.

Her father had let out a low whistle when she showed him the threatening note. Her mother had sighed and said it was typical. Yes, very typical. Typical for deceased grandmothers to write voodoo notes to their granddaughters. What happened to hand-knitted sweaters and one-eyed teddy bears? The daughter didn’t know. Yet it was as if the words had somehow etched themselves into the corners of her eyes, and she saw the words everywhere: PREMATURE DEATH. MUDANG SPIRIT. UNSETTLED BONES. OR ELSE.

It was the birth of a quiet, shivery obsession, the kind wrapped in velvet and topped with a whispery kiss. Yet the daughter was careful, and she bought the books on the practice of Shamanism, and she carried the lucky sliver of jade around her neck. It was an “or else” gesture, and it was the kind of thing she always thought about, even when she wasn’t thinking at all.



Word Count: 490
Total Word Count: 490