Morning all and welcome to the final writing prompt of the week. Are you ready? Excellent. Timers set and off we go.
No clue why she is at the house, but I kind of like this start.
Friday, April 18th: The house was barely visible.
The house was barely visible. She stood on the side of the road, peering through the dense mass of growth. The trees were thick beside the road, only a small concrete path winding from the road to the front door providing a gap. The drive had long since been broken up and swallowed by grass and small plants.
‘At least at the end that hists the road,’ she thought. She thought she could vaguely see a little cgleam of white concrete on the ground further in where the driveway might have been, but it was only in small bits and pieces.
Beyond the trees Ellie could make out a straight horizontal line stretching out to either side of the small path to the doorway. It was set back from the road.
‘Fence,’ she guessed. Admittedly it was only the horizontal line and not the materials that clued her in. Whatever the fence was made up of, it kept it’s more or less straight line but provided a support for growth. She let her eyes trace over it. She picked out what she thought were passion flowers winding through their little flowers looking more feathered than other blossoms. She thought she also saw honeysuckle and maybe some sort of purple trumpet shaped flower.
They were spots of color in the dense green. Of the fence she could see nothing.
‘Must be metal though,’ she thought. She was fairly confident if the fence was wooden, it would have been eaten away years ago and the straight line would be less straight and possibly have gaps.
‘Maybe plastic,’ she thought. She had seen some plastic fences that were designed to look like metal ones. Some even came painted to look slightly rusted at a distance, as though the wrought iron weathered. She had seen nothing like that on her way over and given the pristine state of some of the front gardens, she suspected the thought of a plastic fence painted to look like partially rusted iron would not go over well.
‘But the gardens are rather spruced up at the moment,’ Ellie thought. She saw the signs when she parked. There was some sort of garden competition going on. She wasn’t entirely sure of the details as she didn’t get too close to the posters. They were everywhere through town though. The paper was yellow and the writing black as though whoever printed them up wanted them to look like angry bees. The bold heading said Best Garden Competition, but not certain she wanted to interact with anyone until she caught her first look at the house, she hadn’t gone close enough to read the smaller print.
‘But it has to be why everything is so spiffy,’ she thought.
Ellie frowned. Technically she still hadn’t see the house. Beyond the straight line her brain told her was a fence, there were overgrown bushes, many of them flowering. Ellie couldn’t tell if they were flowering on their own or if flowering vines used the bushes for support in the same way they used the fence. The house beyond was a house in the same way the fence was a fence. Vaguely house shaped but carpeted over in green.
She thought she could see a door, but wasn’t sure. It was located near where the short concrete path would lead and roughly in the middle of the house. There was a small gleam of metal she thought might be the door knob but that was it.
‘And it might not open,’ she thought. The heavy keys were in her back pocket, pressing in. She would need to take them out before she sat down or risk having key imprints on her backside.
“They aren’t part of the competition,” a voice said. Ellie blinked and turned. A man stood on the sidewalk. He was bald, his head shiny in the mid morning sun. He had a pair of wire rimmed glasses perched on a rather beaky nose and was frowning at the house underneath it’s covering of greenery.
“The house,” he repeated. “They aren’t part of the competition or the garden tours.” He sniffed disdainfully and she nodded to show her understanding.
“I see.”
Ten til Midnight 