Claypot

Mrs. Brindsley enjoyed fine things. She was much accustomed to collecting nicks and knacks that she would find about. And on one day such as any she stumbled across the newest addition to her ever expanding collection. At the annual Felpsborough market, she ascertained the most “fetching” clay pot. Despite the drastic expense for the clay piece she bought it, for she felt that no amount of money was too much for such a humble and cute creation. It was truly the finest antiquity she had acquired to date. So, to her house the master craft went, up on the mantle and out of reach of her inquisitive young son Arthur Gordon Brindsley. The clay pot sat amid a plethora of ceramics, sculptures and other collectibles. It seemed the only item not on display in the parlor was her sons art project, one poorly made, yellow clay dragon she promptly hid in her closet, and insisted she lost. Now her son, a clod in her mind, would break the pot whether inadvertently or intentionally, so she found it best not to tell him about its existence to prevent the second of the two possibilities. Now as irrational as the notion of Arthur destroying the pot on purpose may have seemed, her fear of that potential outcome wasn’t entirely unfounded. She recollected with a great deal of displeasure an occasion on which he lifted a newly acquired vase she had gone to great lengths to procure, up over his head, then without warning flung against the wall. This for her was the first and final straw, making her collectibles from that day on, forbidden from Arthur’s hands. Although he had grown several notches in height and maturity since that most scandalous of affairs, she still would not allow him near her possessions. Clearly her love for her memorabilia far greater outweighed her trust for her son. With the shattering of that vase fell all the pieces of respect she once held for him, and no amount of glue could repair the damage of one young boy’s miscalculation of a fine piece of porcelain for an idle play thing.

Arthur inevitably found the pot, but it wasn’t upon the mantle when he did. Noticing the slightest spot of dirt, his mother had taken it into the kitchen for a thoroughly intensive dusting. For reasons as insignificant as a quick run to the market to fetch that evening’s bread, she had left the pot unattended. Alone upon the counter it sat, a beacon of mystery to his curious eyes. There wasn’t much sense in Mrs. Brindsley running off to the market for bread after all, for when she came back she found Arthur sans appetite. His face was a mess, and he sat on the kitchen floor, the pot at his feet. Unlike the aforementioned vase however, it remained intact, say for the lid which had been wrenched off. He sat there looking ill, with the insistence that the preserved goods were no good at all. Where the lid to the pot once rested was a mound of powder heaped at the mouth of the overturned clay vessel. With a look of rage Mrs. Brindsley spat about how he wasn’t to fill her quaint little clay pot with his sweets, to which his reply was an accusation that she had been the one to have purchased it.

She seized the pot from him, and raised it to her eyes now aware of its lack of weight compared to before, when she had initially bought it for that hefty sum. She deduced that it had been filled prior to her incrementing it. She realized that she’d been swindled, and what was thought to be a rare collectors artifact was nothing more than a clay jar of powdered candy. With a repulsive look of utter illness oh his face, Arthur attested to the putrid nature of the confectionary. For the first time, Mrs. Brindsley turned the pot upside down, spilling the rest of its contents in the process, revealing a passage on the base. In small letters on the bottom of the pot was engraved “Arnold Bandis in loving memoriam, cremated July 1st 1802”