In a creative writing class I attended, the students were asked to pick an image randomly from a stack full of pictures of strangers. Our task was to imagine a story with that character as the protagonist. I received the portrait of an elderly woman. Something like this picture:

My story:

Violet looked at her reflection in her bathroom mirror. She looked and felt all of her eighty years. Short-cut white hair crowned her small head. Her petite form of four feet had always left her at a vertical disadvantage causing everyone to overlook her shrewd, receptive eyes. She wore her fake set of teeth and sighed. She had always had a sweet tooth, and her only vice had caught up to her. She carried the binocular back out with her to the living room.

Hers was a small cottage in a quaint, little English village consisting of a small, cozy living room with a built-in kitchen and a cupboard-sized washroom. She gave her signature chicken soup on the stove, a gentle stir. It had been brewing for a while, filling her cottage with its heavenly aroma.

Looking forward to her imminent breakfast, she settled into her comfortable rocking chair on the porch. She placed the binocular beside her and began knitting. And as she knitted, she watched….

The teenage girl from the house opposite hers emerged with her school backpack, her eyes puffy. As she trudged off to school, the entire world’s weight seemed to rest on her bony shoulders. Her Schizophrenic single mother peeked out from behind the window curtain. Last night had been rough on both the mother and the daughter.

The young, college boy that boarded with another three students in the small room over the diner was on the phone as he walked by Violet’s house.

“Of course I’ll send you the money, mom. I know Sam’s sick, Stephanie needs school fees, and you need to pay dad’s hospital bills.” He said wearily. “I’ve taken up another part-time job. Don’t worry. I’ll send the money soon.”

The young lady from the house to the right, passed the teenage girl on the road, walking in the opposite direction. She waved brightly at Violet. As usual, she hadn’t even glanced at the young man at the bus-stop at the end of the road, who stood looking after her longingly. Something told Violet that the lady had indeed noticed the man but chose to ignore him. Maybe she didn’t want to add him to the several male friends that visited her for their nocturnal adventures. Perhaps this young man was special to her.

The dentist left his wife and two-year-old son on the porch and drove away to his hospital. The child was throwing a tantrum as usual, and the mother fussed around him, dancing to his every tune. Her child had become her entire world, and she barely had time for her ever-busy husband anymore.

It was unfortunate that the businessman living in the big Victorian house down the road was out of town so much. The businessman’s wife tended to visit the dentist way too frequently, and Violet had always thought that her teeth looked fine.

The happy family of father, mother, and two kids drove by. They always were a raucously cheerful lot. But then the scope of her binocular didn’t reach their windows, which was a bit too far away.

She looked at the deserted house on her left. Rose, close to her own age, had lived there. They used to knit together, sitting on their own respective porches, reveling in companionable silence. Rose’s eyes usually wandered to the street, always expecting her son to appear out of the blue. She had no one but him. He supposedly had a family somewhere far away. He rarely visited her, but Rose was always hoping. She was buried behind the house now.

Violet had never had anyone resembling a family in her entire life. She had had friends, of course. They just tended to change with the different phases of life. One of her friends had once told her that she was unnervingly aloof and detached. Violet suspected that she had been jealous of Violet’s unencumbered life. Violet just chose to observe rather than participate in all the drama. She was a happy spinster. Even if Violet could go back in time, she wouldn’t change a thing. Or maybe change one tiny thing- this time she might tell the police who had killed her neighbor Rose.