Morning all and happy Monday. I pent the weekend hunting out all of the sweaters and sweatshirts I stashed away because it seems their season has finally come. Actually I dug them out because I found myself chilled Friday and Saturday and realized I very much needed them. Kind of happy with the seasonal change, just wish I had gotten at least one sweatshirt out earlier. But this happens every year so I am sure it is my fault. Shall wee get on with the morning prompt? Timers set and off we go,
Not sure where this is going. I do think the house will play a bigger role though.
Monday, October 21st: Three of the stairs rotted away.
Three of the stairs rotted away. It left a gap. I studied it. While I could step over the gap, I had questions about the stability of the rest of the staircase.
“Jumping might cause the tread I land on to collapse.”
I looked down through the gap. The floor below was rotted and I could see straight down to the concrete floor of the basement.
“Nope,” I decided. I was not going to chance it. Whatever was on the upper floor could stay there. I doubted it would be much of an issue. I looked around trying to picture things as they were when the house was functioning as a house. I tried to imagine away the rot and decay, mentally repairing the space and filling it with the furnishings.
‘Would they have watched television here or upstairs,’ I wondered as I studied the living room. I tried picturing it and realized I wa trying to put today’s furnishings in a picture of the past. “They wouldn’t have had a flat screen and streaming services,” I tied reminding myself. I tried shifting the image, but flashes of furnishings from my family home appeared in my mind’s eye. While the age was closer I found myself unwilling to put anything from the world of my childhood here. It seemed somehow sacrilegious.
I shook the thought and the images away. Did it matter if they lounged on a couch with an afghan blanket reminiscent of my Aunt Susan’s? Probably not.
‘And it isn’t why I a was sent.’
I shook my head as I slowly maneuvered around the first floor. I moved carefully tapping my foot on boards before shifting my weight and looking for holes and soft spots. Personally I thought my being here was pointless. He left as soon as he could and at no pint in his rather notable life had he ever returned. Now, when anyone he would have known was gone and the shell of a house no longer in a usable state, I doubted he would return.
‘Hapern has been watching too many crime dramas,’ I thought. I knew he favored ones where fugitives went on the run. In many of them the criminal went to a familiar place, a place they felt comfortable.
Reading the file I knew he had never been comfortable here and given the changes in the town since his departure, would probably be even less comfortable now. This was no haven for him to retreat. This was a waste of time.
I did my due diligence. I searched what I could of the house. Knowing he was far heavier than I was, I doubted he would have been able to get up the second story any more than I could. When I looked at the basement stairs, they were gone completely. Since I could see most of the basement from the large holes in the main floor, I knew no one was down there. The place was empty. I was happy to leave it behind.
Ten til Midnight 