Morning all. Are you ready for the last prompt of the week? I’ve had some pretty good prompts this week so I am hoping to go out with a bang. So timers set and lets see what happens.
I think there are elements here that I want to play with. They feel like they might be in two different stories or that it is in the middle of a story rather than the beginning. I kind of want to sit down and tease apart the different ideas jumbled up in this.
Friday, October 11th: It was covered in wax.
It was covered in wax. There was a layer of dust on top of the wax, slightly embedded in it. The wax felt greasy and the dust slightly fuzzy. Handling the box made me feel almost as though it was something alive.
‘Or that once was alive,’ I thought. I didn’t care for the feeling. Still the box might contain something valuable. ‘Even f it was used as a substitute candle holder’
As far as I could tell nearly every surface was at one point used as a substitute candle holder. There were wax rings on the tops of furniture and on the bathroom counter. I even found the stub of a candle tucked into a silk fern in the sun room. How it was lit without actually melting or setting the fake plant on fire I couldn’t tell you.
In truth I couldn’t tell you much of anything about the house. I had purchased it from my cousin who called me in a panic. He purchased it at an auction, sight unseen and then realized it would take far more work than he wanted to do in order to fix it up to make a profit.
It wasn’t a big surprise actually. Jeremy was very good at seeing potential in things. He was however lazy. He expected that the potential he found would somehow materialize into profit without him having to do much. H wanted to pay for the item, or property or whatever it was once, and then have it suddenly turn a profit. When it didn’t he panicked and realized that as he took money out of the trust fund he lived off of to make the purchase, he would have less to live on if he continued down the path.
That was usually when I got the call.
I could usually see the reason Jeremy saw the potential and I didn’t mind the work. Sometimes I helped out, other times I passed. I was getting rather annoyed with Jeremy at this point though. One of the first properties he saw potential in had been a dairy. After all a dairy made huge wheels of cheese and the small wedges sold at cheese counters were expensive. The property he bought had the buildings, and out dated equipment and hadn’t seen a cow in nearly forty years.
At the time a dairy suited me and when h panicked I bought it from him. I then spent six years working like a dog to get it up and running putting almost as much money into it as I paid for the property in the first place. This year we were not only operating in the black, but had several awards to show off.
Unfortunately Jeremy liked to take credit for the endeavor and claimed I owed him because he set me up for success. Usually I could ignore him. However lately he had begun complaining to his mother, My Aunt Trudy and Trudy had begun complaining to my mother. Somehow Jeremy was always the golden child and when I didn’t help him out, I was picking on him and ungrateful for all he had done for me. This house, or the land rather, it in with a project of mine so I was able to keep the peace and buy it from him, but I was reaching the end of my tolerance for Jeremy and the family drama.
Ten til Midnight 