Morning all. I do love the possibilities that a short generic sentence produces. Let’s see what this one leans towards. So deep breath and writing instrument of choice at the ready. Timers set for fifteen minutes and off we go.
I like the set up of the house and the possibilities it presents. I also kind of like Mike. I also think he is about to uncover something dastardly. Not sure what, but dastardly nonetheless.
Wednesday, July 16th: The phone rang.
The phone rang. Mike could hear it. The tinny little song playing though the small speakers. It wasn’t a song he knew. It also sounded muffled.
‘Well it isn’t my phone,’ he thought looking around. His phone had gone missing sometime in the last twenty four hours and he still had no idea where it could be. ‘But maybe I can help someone else out.’
Hoping that finding someone else’s missing phone might bring him good karma points thus leading to the recovery of his own phone, Mike listened to the sound.
“Living room I think.” He moved to the living room. The fact that someone might lose their phone there was not a surprise. In fact it made the most sense out of any place in the house. The house was a sprawling Victorian that previous owners seemed to keep expanding past the original floor plan. It grew large and larger, for whatever purposes they needed it until finally it was too big for a single family to maintain.
So the rooms were carved into rentals with the main living spaces used as shared spaces. The University wasn’t too far away, but as the owners wanted to minimize the damage, they rented to grad students, doctoral candidates and the odd visiting professor. Mike was finishing up his dissertation. As a result is brain was spending more time in the Ottoman Empire at it’s height than it was in the present. This was in fact the third time this month he managed to misplace his phone. It was almost always relatively easy to find. This time it was being elusive.
‘Probably the opposite of third times the charm,’ Mike decided looking around the living room. While it was the general gathering spot for anyone in the house who felt like being social, it was also where study groups met and meetings were held. People were coming and going all the time from the room. The kitchen might be for residents only, but the living room was nearly an open forum.
The tinny music ended, the phone call or attempted phone call over. Still Mike thought it came from behind one of the couches. There were several placed randomly throughout the room, the need for seating more important than aesthetics. In an attempt to unify the space someone put the same dark blue slipcovers over the couches. Throw pillows were added on top and they varied greatly in description and style.
One was a brocade with old gold tassels, another pictured a blown out floral that reminded him of a Georgia O’Keefe painting and one was covered in sequins that if stroked one way spelled out the word nice and if stroked in the other direction spelled out the word Nasty. No one was quite sure where it came from and no one owned up to adding it to the living room.
A glance at the couch showed that today the sequins were set to nasty.
‘At least with the slip covers it can’t be under the couch cushions,’ Mike thought. He lifted up the sequined pillow looking underneath it. Nothing. He continued down the first couch, picking up pillows and looking beneath them.
The phone started to ring again and he realized it was coming from behind the couch. It was the couch placed against the wall, or at least close to the wall. They pulled it out a little so the couch would not rub up against the wall and scar the paint. He moved to the slip covered arm of the couch and pulled it even further away from the wall.
Ten til Midnight 