Prompt: someone cleans out their closet only to find something extremely unusual

“Davey, go pull everything out of the closet in your room. I want to wash the walls down before we put your stuff in there.”

Davey groaned. “But Mom!” She just gave him That Look and pointed upstairs. Davey stomped toward the stairs. When he hit the first step, his mother said, “Thanks, Davey. I really appreciate your help. Get the closet cleared out, and you can take a break and go look around the block for other kids, okay?” Davey refused to look at her, but he nodded and then continued upstairs.

He didn’t remember the house, but Cassie said they had come to visit their grandparents when Davey was two, before Daddy went to Afghanistan. She remembered a Christmas tree in the living room, and the pass-through window from the kitchen to the dining room. That was eight years ago. Daddy was gone, and now his parents, too. He didn’t understand why they had to come live in this stupid big old house.

There were four bedrooms on the second floor. Davey and Cassie were in the back two. She shared a bathroom with Mom, which meant Davey got the second bathroom all to himself. That was pretty cool, he guessed. He had a big walk-in closet, too. But it was filled with his grandparents’ junk, like the rest of the house. They were trying to go through everything. Mom called it organizing. It felt more like moving stuff from one room to another. But Davey knew better than to argue when she was slinging That Look.

They’d already gone through all the clothes, so Davey turned on the closet light and started pulling things off the shelves that lined the wall opposite the door. None of it was very interesting to him, as he carried armload after armload out into his room and spread it on the floor. When he got to the top two shelves, he pulled in his desk chair to climb up.

Reaching up to the top shelf, his hand knocked against something hard that scooted away – he followed it and clasped his fingers around a small box. Tugging it off the shelf, he carried it down and sat on his bed to open it. An old style cigar box, with pictures criss-crossed in a collage. Davey lifted the lid and peered inside. A handful of baseball cards, a few letters, a fishing lure, and a man’s ring with a tiger eye stone. Davey slid the ring on his finger and picked up the cards.

Cassie burst through his bedroom door. “Davey—”

She looked around in confusion. “Davey? Oh, Mom is going to kill you for sneaking out, you brat!” She backed out of the room and disappeared down the hall.

Davey pulled off the ring and stared at it. “Wow. What was that?”

Dogs in House	Houdini, Brindle
Music	Santana on youtube.com
Time writing	40 minutes, distracted
May word count	1,047