Crystal

She hadn’t seen her best friend since her husband took off.

They went back a long way. It was a sad day for her when her friend and her husband moved out of the area. They kept in touch of course; emails flew back and forth regularly, so her friend knew all about her failing marriage and the constant fighting. Her friend also knew he was out of the picture now, but she didn’t know the details. This visit would be her chance to find out how it happened. Either way, it was a good thing. The marriage had been going downhill for some time and it was becoming physical. Her visit would bring her up to date. When she arrived, they hugged at the front door, but quickly settled down in the lounge.

“What can I get you?” she asked her friend.

“Nothing,” she replied, “I had a drink at the shops. Besides, I want to hear all your latest goss. I mean, it’s wonderful isn’t it, that he is finally out of your life?”

“It is. He didn’t want to be here anymore and I just wanted him gone.”

Her friend nodded. “Your last email didn’t say much, how long’s he been gone?”

“It’s been well over a month now.”

“Did he go quietly?

The woman took on a strange smile. “You could say that.”

“Do tell.”

“If I tell you what happened, you’ll be the only person to know the real truth, other than myself.”

“Hey! You know you can trust me to keep anything you tell me to myself. After all, when you think of all those naughty little secrets that go back to our childhood days.” She giggled.

“I know. I know I can trust you, but if I tell you what happened you may not believe me.” She puffed out a long breath. “Not only that, if you did tell anybody about it you’d probably be labelled a looney!”

“Oh! Come on. Out with it.”

“OK. To start at the beginning… it all happened one evening. He was acting really strange when he came home from the pub. He was drunk. Which wasn’t unusual, and this usually meant he was going to get violent, but that didn’t happen. He was excited about something, but wouldn’t tell me what it was. He rushed off and booted up his laptop. He spent a couple of hours on it.”

She paused and sat thinking for a bit, while her friend waited patiently. She took a deep breath and went on. “When he’d finished messing about with the computer, he told me about the crystal. He showed it to me. It was only a small thing, yellow, about the size of a sugar cube. He said he’d bought it from a guy in the pub. Told me it had magical powers. He was raving about it. Said it could take you to wherever you wanted to be. Well, I just figured he’d finally snapped. He said he was going to use it to get away. Of course, I thought the whole thing was ridiculous, but I went along with it anyway. I mean, if it works, good riddance, right?”

“Absolutely!”

“Anyway, he had the thing in his hand, clutched to his chest. He walked down the hall and opened the door to the linen cupboard. I just stood there. I watched him walk into it and close the door behind him. After a few seconds I heard him call out goodbye, and that was it. When I opened the cupboard he was gone!” She let out a long breath. “Of course, I never told the police any of that, only reported him as missing.”

“Wow!”

“I mean, people just disappear sometimes, don’t they? I guess a lot of the time it’s a case of them simply not wanting to be found. They want to take off and start afresh somewhere. But this was different. This was instant!”

Her friend raised her eyebrows and said, “Right!”

“Naturally, once I’d got over the shock of it, and at the same time come to terms with what a blessing the whole thing was, I jumped on his laptop to find out more about what had happened. He only said that he needed to hold the crystal, enter a dark place, close his eyes, and think of where he would rather be.”

“And?”

Her face fell. “You can imagine, I couldn’t make head nor tail of it. Plus, a lot of it was password protected. It’s left me feeling so curious, you know?”

“I bet it has. Couldn’t you get some computer person to have a look at it? They can get stuff back somehow, I’m pretty sure they can.”

“Not really”. She looked across at the table where the laptop had been.

“The next day, while I was at work, the cheeky sod came back for it!”