Writing Prompt 20: Empty House
She Left This For You
Houses have faces created by the windows, the framing, the walls, the roof and the doors. Explore how this house might feel inside; the surfaces, textures, the way the light falls and any shadows. For fun, try to include what it smells like too. Happy writing.
Standing in the middle of the front room the house heaved and sighed around her.
Outside a gale picked up speed across the lake until it hit the house shaking the thin elderly glass in the window frames.
"So...who left this for you again?"
Sharon ran her fingers along a shallow windowsill lifting the dry paint flakes with her nails letting them peel and drop to the floor.
"Apparently I had an aunt. Shut herself away from the rest of the family. Shut herself away in this." Sharon waved her hand around the empty space.
Avi walked over to the window.
"Why would she do that? So weird. And why you? Why leave it to you?" he said.
"Who knows? My mum says she hasn't seen her sister in thirty years. Thirty! Can you imagine? Too late now."
"There's a weird smell in here." Avi held his nose high in the air.
The house creaked and moaned.
"It smells bad like something burned in here." Avi walked around the room sniffing. "So strange," he said, muttering to himself.
"I don't think this mould in the sink is helping." Sharon peered at an indescribable mass of blooming fluffy spores in the bottom of the cracked porcelain.
"Why would there be something mouldy? When did she die? Your aunt? Did she live here?" Avi looked around the room.
"Two weeks ago. She'd been in a care home, the one just up the road. She had money. Not much but enough." Sharon turned away from the sink. "I'd like to leave now," she said.
"Someone must've been living here," said Avi prodding the moulding heap with a wooden spoon left on the side. "This is food."
Story first posted November 2020 / Photo: Tanya Clarke - Spallumcheen, Canada 2020
