Morning all I had a strange dream last night about growing mushrooms. I had one of those shipping containers in the back yard and was growing mushrooms to dell. A thief stole them and I chased him. It looked oddly like the Hamburgular. He shouted, “Now all I need is Swiss Cheese,” before disappearing into the night. It was quite strange. And I just had to share. Shall we go on with the morning prompt? Good. Hopefully it will be less disturbing.
Oh I like this one. I have no time to break it out more today but I really want to. I may have to set it aside and work on it tonight before bed. I’ve jotted a couple of notes down so i think i know where it is going, which i love. Why do I always get story ideas I like when i don’t have time for them? One of life’s great mysteries.
Thursday, July 20th: She inhaled deeply.
She inhaled deeply. “I’m getting hints of cardamom and dark fruit, currents maybe,” she said. As she lowered the glass. She then lifted it high and swirled it around in the light, noting its color and clarity. She took the glass out of the light and took a sip. She swirled it around her mouth, tasting it and then drawing in air to change the taste slightly before spitting it out.
She spit it out more to keep from becoming intoxicated than she did because it was expected. With no one here but herself and what seemed like an endless cellar of wine, there was no one to impress. She had intended to try just one. But she found that each variety of wine had several hundred bottles of the type. She pullet one of each and put extra tags on them holding her notes. She intended to take a sample from each of the bottles but as she finished her fifth tasting she had to declare herself done.
After tasting she put corks in each of the bottles she opened. She would take them upstairs and put them to use. She would have glasses with meals and cook with a few, even though it seemed like a waste with such fine wines.
‘But five is certainly more than enough to try,’ she decided. The ones she didn’t get to she would just have to try another time. She put her current wine down and stood. Slowly she moved the bottles she hadn’t tried to a low shelf. She then moved the opened and corked bottles to a basket. She took a stack of cloth napkins she found in one of the cupboards and placed one between each bottle to prevent clinking. She then wrapped the glasses she used to taste in cloth and put them on top of the bottles.
She then hooked the heavy basket over her arm and picked up the extra glass she had been using to spit out the wine. Emma left the wine cellar. She climbed the cool limestone steps to the main door and used her shoulder to help her push the heavy door open. Once on the other side, she placed her items down and used her weight to close the door again. Once in place she placed the heavy bar across the door and fitted the giant, ancient looking lock into place. If she hadn’t known the door was at least four inches thick, the lock would have seemed monstrous.
‘And a bit of overkill with the heavy bar,’ she thought. She thought about the wines within. ‘but maybe not,’ she conceded.
She picked up her basket and glass and climbed the rest of the stairs out of the cellar and through a lighter door which she left open. Outside now, she emptied her glass into the grass and added it to the basket. This outer door she could close with one hand and the lock fitted into it was less substantial, less ancient and easy to close with one hand as well.
Once everything was locked up again, she stared at the door for a moment. It was an innocuous looking door. It looked like it led to the basement of a large, old, but mostly unremarkable house. The house was built solidly and cleanly, but there were no embellishments. It seemed to be a simple place to house a large family, nothing more. The cellar had been a complete surprise. It ran not only under the house, but the caves that housed them stretched under most of the ground and all of them had been fitted up for the enormous wine cellar. Emma didn’t know quite what to make of it.
‘I don’t know what to make of any of the rest of it either,’ she decided.
Ten til Midnight 