Morning all. I had one of those dreams last night where you have the dream and then wake up and then fall right back into it and then in the morning you can only remember a little bit. The only thing I remember is waking up thinking, ‘But why would he steal the ketchup?’ No clue what it relates to but it will haunt me the rest of the day. Let’s see if we can use the writing prompt to push the thought away. Timers set and off we go.
Still thinking about ketchup, but I do like this prompt and will be returning to it.
Thursday, January 4th: The smell of furniture polish stained the air.
The smell of furniture polish stained the air. It was lemon scented and overly astringent. It mixed interestingly with the pine scented floor cleaner that Maggie used earlier. Stacy looked around. Everything gleamed. Everything shone.
The mirrors were polished, the windows had panes so clean they looked like empty frames. She took a careful walk through the house making sure her feet remained on the newly cleaned floorboards and didn’t stray into the carpeted areas. She dusted, polished and checked the carpeted rooms before turning Maggie loose with the vacuum cleaner and now all of the carpets had need track marks that she didn’t want to disturb.
She knew the owners of this particular house really liked seeing the vacuum marks and had complained when they were found to be in disarray. Stacy was certain they liked to feel as though they were entering a brand new house when they returned and that seeing the disarrangement of the lines made them realize that there were people in the space.
While she found this a little strange, as clearly someone had been in while they were gone to clean the house, her boss explained that this was their preference. She had been new on the job then and Dennis assured her that many of their clients seemed to want to believe that some sort of magic elves came in to clean up after them and that signs of a human presence seemed to ruin their fantasy.
She remembered looking at him oddly but in the past five years she came to see that he was right. The people she and the other employees of Spotless for You didn’t really like to think of other people doing the cleaning.
‘And the Wallaces certainly don’t like to do their own cleaning,’ she thought. Confident that all was as it should be, Stacy moved to the door and left. She and the others had to leave via the back door to avoid the living room carpets. She slipped out of the back and made certain it was locked. She then followed the path around the side of the house and towards the front where the van was parked. She avoided stepping on the grass in much the same way as she avoided the carpet. Out here it was the lawn mower cutting in the precise lines rather than the vacuum, but she let them be.
From the outside the house looked neat as a pin. While the insides now matched, no one would have guessed at what a horrid state it was in when they arrived. The company came once a month and she and Maggie always dreaded it. Between visits, no one picked up or cleaned so much as a fork. Many jobs required only a single person. The Wallace house always required a team of two and left them both exhausted at the end of it.
‘At least Dennis realizes and we get extra pay because of it,’ she thought. Early in their contract Dennis did a ride along and knew just how bad it was. At the moment the extra pay was scant consolation to her tired body.
Stacy climbed into the van. Maggie was already half asleep in the passenger’s seat. Today had been especially bad, even for the Wallace family. As Stacy put the key in the ignition and fastened her seatbelt, she wondered just what had gone on there to make it so bad this time.
Ten til Midnight 