Morning all. I hope you are having a fantastic week. Mine isn’t going all that bad. Had a fight with technology yesterday. I wouldn’t say I won but when I registered a complaint the problem mysteriously disappeared. Either someone else fixed it or the electronic ether moved on to a new target. But today is a new day and a new prompt. We’ll just hope the issues don’t return. So timers at the ready and off we go.
I like this. Not sure where it is going, but I like the thought of someone taking such care replacing photos. Thee is something slightly sinister about it.
Thursday, December 5th: The changes were subtle but substantial.
The changes were subtle but substantial. She could see them almost as though they were highlighted. The small swan figurine that always lived at the end of the book case was gone. The albums of family photos no longer resided on the bottom shelf of the book case. The photos were swapped out.
Ellie found herself somewhat amused by the photos. If she hadn’t known the faces in those photos it would look as though very little changed. The frames were the sam, sure, but the interior photos were carefully arranged. The photo that once showed a grouping of her three great uncles now showed a grouping of three men she had never seen before. They were in the same pose, the lighting only slightly different. It was almost an identical photo.
‘Only the faces changed.’
It was the same with the other photos. Most of the people in the pictures she didn’t know. The wedding photo she recognized. The same heavy silver frame, the similarly posed bride and groom. The groom was the same even it he was older than in the original. The bride was changed completely though. Her step mother now stood beside her father. Surprisingly the dress seemed almost the same.
‘I guess they had similar tastes in dresses too,’ Ellie thought as she proceeded into the living room. The school photos were swapped as well. The photos of her at varying ages were replaced with those of her step sisters and brother. There were no group shots and she wondered it it was because she was an only child or if the steps didn’t believe in group photos. There certainly weren’t any of them around.
‘But they couldn’t make the school shots identical.’
She went to a different school from the others, the uniform colors quite different. As she passed by the familiar frames with different faces she wondered if there was someone irked by that. So much attention had gone into similarity that her school uniform with its green and gold details not matching the red and yellow of the school the others attended had to seem intensely jarring to someone.
It was an imperfect moment.
Ellie found herself glad of it. Usually she paid the family little attention. She was away in boarding school when the courtship and marriage occurred. As it was a small ceremony she hadn’t attended. Hadn’t, in fact known a marriage was taking place until after the fact. She found out via a notice in the paper. The school therapist asked her how she was enjoying her new family. She had to look up the announcement mentioned to find out the details.
When she asked, everyone was certain they told her and that she just forgot.
She had apparently been forgetting a lot ever since it seemed.
‘I’ve apparently now got a memory like a sieve,’ Ellie thought. While she walked into the living room to wait after the housekeeper retreated into the interior, Ellie found she wasn’t comfortable moving further into the house or settling on any of the furniture. This was an alien place.
Ten til Midnight 