Mystery Short Story – Beverley
© Anand Vishnu Prakash, YourStoryClub.com
She wore a white ruffled dress stained by time, weathered by frequent use. Danced in white glittery strap-sandals and sometimes nothing at all. Moved her silky, wavy blond hair to the song of the birds in Spring. Atop her mane rested a couple of pink roses made to look like a crown. Roamed the streets of Beverley, flashing a small mysterious smile to everyone who looked her way.
A resident said she was twelve years of age but how this resident found out, the rest would never know for they never heard the girl speak a single word let alone a muffled moan and her smile was the only thing they ever got from her.
It was not known where she lived; as far as people could tell this girl was simply “from Beverley”. It was not known where she spent the rest of the day as she was typically not seen around the town after dawn. On a few occasions, though, she had been caught leaning against a brick wall or any part of the exterior of a shop, obviously cold and hungry. It was believed that the town bakery fell into bankruptcy after its owner saw a cold, hungry girl leaning against the glass of his store and shooed her away instead of offering her food. The owner said he was just switching homes.
The girl’s first appearance in the town was as abrupt as her last. In the autumn, she ceased being “the girl of Beverley”. People wondered where she had fled but nobody knew, and nobody would ever know. Shortly they forgot about the girl, her existence, and the bizarre way she made her folks smile.
Little did the people of Beverley know that the town’s girl had died sixty years ago even before her first appearance, in a fire.
She rests in a beautiful field of grass with patches of pink roses just like her flower crown serenely lain atop her head.
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