Tuesdays with Story

Fifth Tuesday stories
May 30, 2017

Writing challenge: You are cleaning your house (apartment, dwelling space, etc), and you come on a room you have never seen before. What’s in it?

Max length: 500 words

Life on a Shelf

Lisa Jisa

I crouched down on the closet floor to shove the last box out of the way. Although I had moved in eight months earlier, this box hadn’t been touched since. As I placed my hands down for leverage to stand up, I noticed a small door. I pushed the box over a few more inches and twisted the door’s latch. It popped open easily.

I peered into the opening and discovered a small room no bigger than a twin-sized bed. I crawled in and saw a short wooden bookcase along the opposite wall. A white hurricane-style lamp with pink flowers sat on the top shelf, and to my surprise, it turned on when I tried it.

A Moroccan-patterned cushion rested next to the bookshelf. With one hand, I pulled it over to sit on while my other hand reached for a book. The spine of the salmon-colored cover said COURAGE. I crossed my legs and leafed through the pages.

My eyes rested on a page that said 1984. “Spanish teacher let me speak to our class about the meaning and purpose of life. I knew I had to do it after brother of another student took his life over the weekend.” That sounded vaguely familiar. I turned a few more pages. 1990. “First day at Woodland Elementary. 29 students, all in my care for the entire school year.” That was familiar, too. Was this book about me?

Carefully placing the book back, I pulled down a stained-glass jar. The silvery lid was inscribed with the word HEARTACHE. I unscrewed the lid and reached inside. My fingers lifted out a rolled-up slip of paper that said 1986. “After being an inseparable duo for nearly a year, Craig has come to the conclusion that he is gay.” Reading that memory stung almost as much then it had in 1986. I hastily grabbed another paper. 2015. “Moved away from abusive husband, leaving behind older kids, my home of 15 years, and my closest friends.”

I set the jar back and brought a small box of sage-green color onto my lap. The rounded lid bore a gold plate with the word COMPASSION. I lifted it up. A stack of notecards awaited my anxious fingers, and I randomly pulled one out. 2004. “Bought birthday cakes, Coke, and Fanta for kids at Ugandan orphanage after finding out none of them had ever had a birthday party. Teacher said it was happiest day of his life.” I eagerly grabbed another card. 1995-1997. “Never left Molly’s side.” Why was that card in the COMPASSION box and not the HEARTACHE jar?

A sparkly soft-covered notebook that said HOPE on the cover was the final item. I held it for a long time, pondering what the pages might say and deciding what I would write if it were up to me. With a deep breath and a nod of my head, I opened the book. The pages were blank. Out fell a pen.

 

My Own Extra Room

Brandy Larson

I’d made the decision. My second career – body worker – or as some people say masseuse . . . “cowboy masseuse” as an early client said.

For most of my adult life I’d done the housemate thing. There’d been several happy years of domestic bliss, living with honey buns and privacy. But due to economic necessity, “roomies” had generally been my fate. Let me count the ways – Stone Manor Co-op, a tiny green room on the fourth floor, view of Lake Mendota shared with college friend Winnie, 30 tenants and a big community dining room in the basement opening out onto the flagstone terrace, midnight nude swims off the pier.

My first rental house was on East Gotham Street, another group-living arrangement. My room was illegal, in the unfinished basement. We post-teenagers with our dogs banded together to make the rent. After my six-week hitchhiking tour of more than 1,500 miles, with $100, backpack and dog, I snagged an east-side flat, cycling through 3 different landlords, two honey buns and a handful of roomies. One of the last housemates there was a working girl – not that kind – who, after the interview confessed, she was pregnant. After the baby was born, mother and child shortly got their own place. I helped mom move in January when it was -14 degrees.

Next was a second-floor flat with my room in the top floor attic. Over the years, there was an assortment of housemates – guys, gals, students, one honey bun and a former philosophy major 3 credits short of graduation working on the loading docks at Webcrafters. I kicked out another guy due to his head-banger, over-the-top boom box.

It was around this time I started having recurring dreams of an extra room. In the dreams, I’d discover a hidden door, sometimes discovering a whole wing next to my room. I’d just wander around, admiring all that space. In other dreams, I’d be negotiating to move into a place with an extra room or even two. Meanwhile, I did have a whole house near Vilas Park with a sweetheart. I helped him transform it. It had been a party house for him and his West High buddies. I spent my spare time – between two jobs – scrubbing down walls and painting. The things we do for love. Once the paint dried, things went south.

Then I found a double-chambered room in the original farm house of a former vast acreage on Commercial Avenue. Dave, the leaseholder, was a communist, he said, and the son of a captain of industry. He had a color TV and cable in his bedroom. There was a small black and white TV in the living room. I said why not share the TV wealth? Nothing doing, he said.

Some communist.

One day, I told him I’d had a dream that I was moving. Dave said that’s right, take your dog – he never liked Raven – you’re out of here.

A first-floor flat on Jenifer Street provided the next batch of housemates, mostly students. My favorite all-time housemate was Keiko, a Japanese woman working on a bachelor’s degree in nursing. Always sweet, sunny, amazingly considerate, Asian serenity every day. If I’d been a guy, I’d have asked her to marry me!

I had a very stressful sub-teaching job when I decided to get a massage from the famous Cherie. A light bulb went off. Ten years previously, my mom taught me to give full-body Swedish massages after she took a six-week course at the tech school when she retired. On Cherie’s massage table, I just felt it in my bones – and muscles – this is for me!

Soon after this, I had another extra-room dream. I opened what looked like a closet door. I stepped over the threshold. Velvet clothing in glowing gem tones was hanging from a tall door jamb. I moved through the entryway into a series of airy rooms. Shortly after this dream, I met Michelle, a certified masseuse, at a party. I asked if she would be my teacher. She said she’d be happy to instruct me which she did in six lessons for free. After the first lesson, she said I was a natural.

A housemate had moved out on Jennifer Street that summer, and I borrowed Mom’s massage table. I self-apprenticed at half-price for a few months in my first extra room, then I found another flat on East Washington. The day I set up my massage studio there with help from Signe, the new housemate had a friend helping him move in. Thirty minutes after setting up my spiffy new studio, I offered a free massage to the moving helper. Here I was, doing massage on a handsome guy in my own dedicated extra room.

 

Moving On

Amit Trivedi

One of my favorite pastimes is cleaning our house. There is always something new to discover besides finding loose change. Once I found an old trunk full of Egyptian idols, scary and beautiful at the same time. A thing of beauty is scary forever! And, just last month I found some old box containing letters that told  a love story – at least from the writer’s perspective while my imagination filled in the rest.

Our house is not a big house – at least not the part we use on a daily basis – but it is an earth-sheltering house built within a hill, and it seems like it extends within the hill forever. We do not know how we came to own it or who the original owners were, but we have known that for a long time it has been a ‘bed and breakfast’ place, and my father continues with that tradition despite objections from my brother. I do not mind as there is always a vacancy, even though some of our guests are like people staying in refugee camps. They never leave!

Ours is a dull family. Even though we see and meet travelers, we never go anywhere nor do we talk about going anywhere. Once, when we were in Dallas, we decided to go on an excursion but hit a wall – Texas is not as big as it used to be. And now after that experience, my mother is like an ethereal being living in her own world. She sits on the sofa with a glass of wine in her hand and her right foot extended in such a way as if she was driving a car and pushing on the brakes. My father never talks and is always trying to take the glass of wine from her hand but never succeeds . . . as if he were a phantom. My brother is a zombie, groaning most of time, even when left alone. I think I am the only one with any spirit in the family.

Most of our guests are old, solo travelers with lots of baggage. Once in a while, we’ll get a group who never seem to have any luggage. Even though the group arrives together, the members leave separately. It’s a mystery I need to unravel someday I tell myself. Little ones are usually alone and come without any luggage. They are gone even before we get a chance to learn their names. But the most telling thing is that all these travelers leave their stuff behind, and we have a special room for it labeled ‘Moving On.’ And that is the room I looked forward to cleaning.

But today, as I enter the room, it is different. The room has changed, and there is nothing in it except the backseat of a car facing toward the window. I can see a head resting on the back of the seat, and something about it seems very familiar. It spooks me, and I start to shiver.

And then the seat slowly turns, and I see myself slumped in it with the book ‘Life After Death’ on my lap. I look at myself and somehow I know it is time for me to leave, not just the room, but the ‘Bed and Breakfast,’ and to move on.

 

The Secret Doorway

Mike Austin

He couldn’t believe no one had told him about this doorway. Did anyone else know about it? It seemed odd that there were no cobwebs. If there had been, he would have turned back right away. He walked down the corridor, further and further. This is my secret, nobody else’s.

He was chuckling, still lost in his secret when he pushed open another door and walked through, when that door, heavier than the first, swung closed behind him. Too late, he saw the faces, a multitude of faces, worm-white and startled, all shouting in chorus “No! Don’t!” as the door slammed firmly shut, leaving him in darkness.

The bodies rushed past him, beating against the door. They finally stopped. A voice wailed in the darkness, “You let it close! Why did you let it close?” The sigh that followed was huge, like the last breath of a thousand dying souls. “Why did you let it close?”

 

An Attic Door That Couldn’t Be Opened

Millie Mader

My grandpa’s early Victorian house stood high on a hilltop majestically overseeing a lush green valley. The verdant hills and spring-fed creek had once been a Winnebago Indian camp. Indian mounds still bore decaying mementoes of a long-ago era. The weird thing about the homestead was an attic door that could never be opened. It glowered down upon high, steep stairs, with no place to set a ladder and could never have been explored.

On the outside, way above the second story, peered a small window, although there was no third story. That attic was a land of mystery to my sister and me when we spent a week there in the summer. Indian images danced in our minds. Why were the attic door and the eerie window there? What secret did they hold? Our grandparents weren’t intrigued, but our uncle proved to be.

One summer day, when the grandparents had gone to town for groceries, we corralled our uncle who was helping Grandpa for the summer. He agreed to assist us.  He dragged a huge ladder from the garage and agreed to extend it to try to reach the spooky window. He made sure the ladder was secured, then said he would stand behind us and let us climb up to peer into the dusty upper level.

I was the older of the two of us, so I got to go first. My heart jumped into my throat as visions of Indian lore seized my brain. Then my heart stopped as I stared through the cloudy window. First I saw a dead mouse and cobwebs. All at once, in a distant corner of the little loft, I spotted two pairs of glittering, beaded Indian moccasins. I nearly blacked out with excitement. How and why had this little alcove been built? There was no access to the treasures that might lie under the dust and webs. We would never know. Our excitement whetted our imaginations, and the memory is with me and my sister to this day.

A Room Away

Amber Boudreau

A Room Away

Characters:

SANDY – Younger sister

ALEX – Older brother

MOM

DAD

INT – BEDROOM – DAY

SANDY

We need to clean up in here. You can’t even see the floor.

ALEX

I don’t need to see the floor as long as it stays under my feet.

SANDY

Well, unless you want Mom and Dad to clean it for you, you should get to work. They talked about using shovels –- actual snow shovels –- to clean up. And they’re not going to go through your stuff. Whatever comes out of here on the scoop of a shovel is going straight into a dumpster, or maybe a garbage bag, if you’re lucky.

ALEX

That’s not…they wouldn’t…Wait a second, what’s in it for you?

SANDY

Twenty bucks. C’mon. I’ll give you a hand, but I’m not doing it all.

Three hours later.

SANDY

Oh my God. You slob. What the actual Hell? What is this anyway? (Sandy rattles the doorknob to a half-sized door she uncovered while cleaning.)

ALEX

I wouldn’t open that.

SANDY

Why? What is it?

ALEX

Away.

SANDY

What now?

ALEX

Well, you know, it’s a place I put stuff when I needed to get it out of the way.

SANDY

You mean a closet. Yours is over there.

ALEX

It’s not a closet. It’s just…away.

Sandy

Well, what’s in it?

ALEX

I can’t remember.

SANDY

Let’s find out. (Twisting the doorknob, Sandy pulls on it with both hands.)

There’s a knock on the door. MOM enters. SANDY snaps upright, letting go of the doorknob.

MOM

Hey guys, how’s it going? Oh, look, the floor!  (She sits down and runs her hand across the carpeting. To the floor) Its been so long. (To Sandy and Alex) What’s all this?

ALEX

This is garbage. This is laundry. This is stuff to be donated, and this is mold.

MOM

Ew. Throw that out.

SANDY

And this is the door Alex can’t remember what’s behind.

MOM

Hold on. (She stands and yells out the door.)  Honey, I’m gonna need your help in here!

SANDY

I swear to God if there’s a bathroom in here, we are switching rooms.

MOM

Oh, good heavens, there’s no bathroom. Look at the size of the door. And think about it – what’s on the other side of that wall?

SANDY

Stairs?

MOM

Right.

SANDY

So this is like the space under the stairs. Alex has been living under the stairs this whole time?  Does that make him a troll or Harry Potter?

ALEX

Shut it.

DAD arrives.

MOM

Oh, good, you brought the shovels.

DAD

Well, you said you needed help in Alex’s room, so I thought I should come prepared.

MOM

All right. Go ahead and open it.

SANDY grips the doorknob and pulls, but can’t get it to budge. ALEX joins her and the two of them drag the door open. A tower of paper falls into the room covering the floor and releasing a cloud of dust.)

SANDY

(Coughing.) Time to renegotiate my fee.

The Chest

Katy Sullivan

My heart flutters feeling a tingle beneath my shoes. Cautiously I enter, smelling the faint odor of kiwi and the scent my grandfather had after work at the bar.

My thoughts drift to why I have never seen the door, but spot a small chest. Upon opening it, I recognize the scrawl on the notes inside as my late grandfather’s. My eagerness consumes me. I’ve wanted to see something of his since Grandma pitched every sign of him after he died. I open the first note and stare, engaged with how the g’s curl like a jump rope. I read and reread every last note. They are filled with moments that couldn’t be described better unless discussed by the man himself.

He had charm and charisma that everyone loved. He was never full of himself, but made everyone feel loved, even in his last days. He was insightful and had many Sully-isms that were incorporated in a book after his death, to memorialize him. I see some of them there: “It takes two to fight,” or “Two or none.”

Why did Grandma pitch everything but this chest? Grandpa Sully’s rocking chair was always in front of it. I realize she didn’t toss any of his possessions. She donated some things and their seventeen children took what they wanted. He was never a fan of materialism. He always teased about people’s “Hings.”

The majority of his children have some sort of attachment to “Hings,”  collections from key chains to designer dogs to convertibles. Dad, the oldest, loves to sail and cycle while my mother collects and restores old things or piles them up in the garage, the place looking like it could be on Hoarders.

Grandpa always said, “I want to put you where you want to be.” Do they want to keep up with the Joneses or, in my generation, the Kardashians?

How much love he had to give his own children whatever they needed to get to their dreams. Through his notes, all the things Grandma fell in love with are there. She saved these for the memories, knowing this is his essence.

In the chest, I see matchboxes. Grandpa was never a smoker and neither was Grandma. The matchboxes say Sully’s Bar on them with the little logo of an old man hitchhiking in the desert. I smile but can’t resist opening one. It has a rosary in it. Dumping it, I see it says “Catherine.” The rosary is my great aunt’s. It was black but some of the color worn off from use. I open the next matchbox to see “Patrick.” This rosary isn’t discolored, but the string is loose from my great uncle tugging on it. I grab the last matchbox. It says “Sully” on it, but the matchbox is empty. I search the chest, hoping the rosary fell out. Sadly, it’s not there. I put all the matchboxes back except the last.

I carry the chest out of the room and place it on my new dresser I bought for my new home, their old home. Looking around the room, I think about my childhood and how my grandparents lived in this house for years, now mine since Grandma couldn’t keep up with the maintenance anymore.

I look at the chest and the matchbox, knowing the memories they contain will stay as cherished as Grandpa is in my heart.

The Room at Cronkhill

Eva Mays

Once back at Cronkhill Hall, Maria sought out her family to apprise them of the situation. She found them in the drawing room, already quite sensible of the developments and rather foxed on brandy. Even her brother, William, who was not yet thirteen, held a snifter in a trembling hand. Leaving them to their cups, Maria went straight to the stairs. Her father was not a hunter, but many of his ancestors had been, and she was sure that she’d seen a stockpile of old birding pieces in the attic among the detritus of five generations of Welleses. Once there, she set straight to work.

“How can you be cleaning at a time like this?” Mrs. Welles, who had followed Maria upstairs, had gone a bit green.

“I am not cleaning, Mama,” Maria said through gritted teeth. “It is bad enough that there are men from the cosmos running about trying to conquer Shropshire, but they have also absconded with Lieutenant Ashton. I cannot let that stand. So, I am searching for anything that may be of use in defeating the invaders and getting him back.”

“Defeat them? You silly girl. There isn’t a hope of that.”

Ignoring Mrs. Welles, as was her wont, Maria rifled through a crate of earthenware crockery. Each piece was heavy enough to make a decent weapon against a gentleman making untoward advances, but even the whole lot of them would not amount to a good defense against unworldly brigands armed with lightning-emitting blunderbusses. She heaved the crate to the side, knocking over several nauseating landscapes as she did so. This revealed a little door set in the wall under the eaves.

“Isn’t that funny,” Maria said, reaching for the knob, “I’ve never noticed this before.”

Mrs. Welles slapped Maria’s hand away. “Oh, no, my dear, don’t go in there. It must be very…dusty.”

Maria looked at her mother, then down at the charmeuse gown. It was smeared with dirt and charred at hem and cuffs, evidence of her flight from Mawley while it was in the process of burning to a cinder.

“I hardly think it matters at this point.”

Despite her mother’s rather loud protestations, Maria opened the door. On the other side was a little room that was not dusty in the slightest. Rather, it gleamed, with metal and glass and a thousand tiny lights, like stars.

Full of questions regarding the provenance of such an extraordinary chamber, Maria turned, just in time to see the appearance of her mother dissipating like smoke. When it cleared, one of the repugnant green creatures stood in her place. It regarded her with large, black, unblinking eyes. Maria inched towards the crate of crockery and closed her fingers on the edge of a ponderous saucer.

“Erm…I beg your pardon…but how long have you been my mother?”

The Fourth Attic

Larry Sommers

Last winter, on a whim, I checked to see what had accumulated in the three separate attics of our oddly-built Cape Cod house. In the deepest attic, the one over the garage, while rooting in dusty debris amid bedsprings and other effluvia left by the previous owner and neglected for a quarter-century, I heard THUMPS coming from a side wall.

What’s that? Some animal nesting in the space above our sunroom? Must be a raccoon, it sounds so huge. With rare urgency, I sought the intruder. The side wall had a small door I had never noticed before. It yielded stiffly. I crawled through, and beamed my Mini-Maglite into a cold, dark space—a fourth attic!—hitherto unsuspected.

And there, lying on the floor, was a human figure, wiggling and bumping fruitlessly, its hands and feet bound by ropes. What the—how—HOLY SHIT!

I untied the knots around the scruffy ankles, noting that he/she/it wore sandals. Tthe feet were blue with cold. I freed the wrists, clad in a Vietnam-era field jacket, and helped the victim sit up.

“Thank you,” he said. His hair was long and tangled. It, in fact he, reeked of back-alley dumpster.

“Who are you?” I blurted. “How long have you been here?”

“What’s the date?” he asked.

I told him. He did some mental arithmetic.

“About seventy years then, I guess,” he said. “This house was new, I remember that much.”

My chill had nothing to do with the weather in the fourth attic. Our house had been built just after the Second World War. Clearly, he was confused.

“Have you got a drink?” he asked.

I wriggled back out the hole I had come through, dashed downstairs, ran cold water into a glass, and returned. By the time I got back, the man had emerged from the fourth attic, through the third, second, and first attics, and was sitting on a chair in the guest bedroom, in the most hidden and shaded part of the room. I gave him the tumbler.

He sniffed it, looked at me, appeared to ponder a decision, shook his head, and took a sip.

“I didn’t ask for water,” he said simply. “I asked if you had a drink.” His eyes bore in on me. My better judgment contended with me and lost. I went down again and came back with a glass of Wollersheim Carignan 2015. His eyes lit up. He drank thirstily.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Have some of this first.” I had brought a heel of bread for his empty stomach.  He nibbled it with a look of gratitude and finished the wine.

“Thank you,” he said. “I must go now.” He stood and limped toward the stairs. I besieged him as he descended, but he ignored all my questions.

“I’m overdue to meet a friend,” he explained. “Good old Johnny.”

“Who—”

“I won’t trouble you further. Could you just give me directions to the IHOP?”

The Door

John Schneller

The door less travelled has no key.

It has no knob.

It has no latch.

Somewhere in my heritage, my family developed a condition involving doors. My father convinced me we are not unique, but if he is correct, others have hidden it better than the Schnellers. Perhaps it’s a rural thing. Maybe a German thing. Whatever is the beginning or end, it is well beyond my control.

A second exit is not unique for a home.

It’s common.

It’s safe.

What I haven’t seen in other homes is the propensity to install the two side by side. In every home I have owned, the aberration as some have called it, has been part of the design. And at 2280 Survey Road, I discovered it once again. Next to my front door I found a second exit, a locked door only visible from the inside. Magic you ask? No, not really.

But a person can poke around at something like this for only so long before your guests and neighbors label you as strange. So as not to be thought odd by association with odd construction, I covered the door up so folks would quit asking. Drywall and a full-length mirror created a logical look . . . a mirror to check and primp before entering the outside world.

Truth is, until late, I had forgotten the door. Forgotten, until Hathaway died.

It was she who had built this house, and she who knocked the mirror loose. When the mirror fell, it peeled the patchwork construction away.

Just as well. For now I’ve returned to a discipline adopted in my previous homes. Before leaving for work, I pause to stare at myself in the mirror. I pause to check what I hold in my hands; imagine myself carrying these things through the ‘other’ doorway, and ask if that is my true portrait? The best I can carry into this day?

Like I said, it was my neighbor who knocked the veneer off my camouflage, and it is her silent absence that haunts our vacant driveway. But it was Judith that made me return to the door and lean in close once again. I found both their names, Hathaway and Judith, newly scratched into the wood.

My other door will open someday and I will follow. Actually, I look forward to it. But until then, I glance into the mirror to be sure my hands are not too full today. I remind myself that I have one more day to play with my Penelope. I have more words to organize, more wyverns to joust, more curtains to put in their place, and at least one more ride-along with a Manhattan Sheriff. (Kansas, that is).

Yes, the door will open for me someday soon, and, hopefully, I will laugh with Judith again. But if I am reading this aloud tonight, I expect His door will wait at least one more day.

The Hot, Hot Dinner Diner

Jerry Peterson

“Senior, please come in,” he called to me over the blare of a mariachi band, beckoning me inside. The aromas of chilies and refried beans swirled out of the room around me.

He took me by the elbow and guided me to a corner table. There he seated me and gave me a handwritten menu, then leaned on the table, apparently eager to visit. “Is this your first time here in my humble establishment?” he asked.

I stared up at him. I had bought this old Victorian only two weeks ago, and the real estate agent never mentioned anything about there being a restaurant in a room off the basement.

“I take your silence as a yes,” he said. “Well, welcome to Tijuana Juan’s Coal Chute Restaurante.” He swept his hand toward a slide that dumped into the center of the room.

At that moment, a window opened above and a man in a business suit came shooshing down the chute followed by a woman in a pants outfit. The man caught her hand, and together they hurried to a tequila bar at the far side of the room, the band on a small stage at the end of the bar wailing out The Lonely Bull.

“This is my house,” I said, pitching up my voice to make myself heard. “I don’t think it’s zoned for commercial.”

“Zoned, sponed, who cares?” Tijuana Juan straightened up and, at the same time, his chest swelled. “I make the best tacos in town, if I do say so myself. How about starting with our six-pack special and a Corona, on the house . . . in your house.”