Well here we are folks, we’ve reached the middle of the week. How is yours going? Mine is a little topsy-turvy but I can’t complain. So shall we see what story is lurking behind today’s prompt? Fabulous. I’ll set my timer, you set yours and we’ll meet back at the clubhouse in fifteen.
Something tells me something really bad is going to happen to Mike.
Wednesday, February 28th: There was a trapdoor in the floor.
There was a trapdoor in the floor. Sarah and Mike stared at it, wondering where it could lead.
“Down,” was Mike’s answer when Sarah asked. Sarah frowned.
“Really?” she replied frowning at his wide grin. “The trapdoor in the floor leads down?”
He shrugged and started looking for a handle or something to help lift the trap door. If there had ever been a handle it was long gone. Sarah didn’t like the thought of there being no handle. To her it meant that it could close and not be able to be opened. She could be trapped below the floor.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mike said rolling his eyes when she mentioned her fear. “The trap door pushes upwards. If you were stuck on the other side all you would have to do is push and it would lift. We’re only having a problem because we don’t have a handle to lift it.”
It was not the first time Mike made her feel stupid. It was rather a specialty of his. This time though, she decided she was done. “Let me know what you find,” she told him. “I need to run to the post office before it closes and I have a few other things to do before I head home.”
“You don’t want to see where it leads?”
“My guess is that it leads to a place filled with dust and cobwebs,” Sarah told him. “I’ll let your sinuses deal with that. It should be safe since you can’t accidentally lock yourself in.”
Sarah turned away and began walking out of the back room.
“I’ll need a crowbar,” she heard Mike tell himself. Sarah tried not to deflate as he didn’t seem to mind that she was leaving, his attention already focused on the mystery below the trapdoor.
‘I didn’t want to go into a dirty crawl space anyway,’ she told herself as she gathered her purse and car keys to head out. The letters she needed to mail were already in her purse. She went out to the car.
‘It’s just his way,’ Saah told herself, once again starting to justify Mike’s comments. She told him that they bothered her. She told him several times in fact. Sometimes he rolled his eyes and sighed. Sometimes he told her it was just a joke. Other times he told her to get a thicker skin. Each time, her dislike of his insulting comments was her fault and not his. Each time, she was the one who needed to change.
‘I’m not stupid,’ she told herself. Yet somehow Mike always made her feel as though she was. ‘I’m smart about a lot of things.’ Most of the things she knew weren’t things Mike valued. Somehow, she didn’t think that was going to change.
‘I don’t have to go back,’ she told herself. The house was Mikes, he made that very clear. He was the one who purchased it and he would be the one renovating it just as he would be the one selling it. She was just helping him out.
‘Which I don’t need to do,’ Sarah decided. She had her own chores, her own errands to do. ‘Mike can just take care of himself.’
As she drove to the post office, Sarah thought of all the items on her own to do list. ‘I’ll need groceries for the week at least,’ she told herself as she pulled into the post office parking lot.
Ten til Midnight 