Category: writing

Re: Current Display

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From:         Head Office
To:              All
Date:          13 July 2021, 9:37
Subject:      Current Display

Good morning,

It has come to our attention that attendance for our current display has been poor.

It is a condition of our tenancy that we display the furniture and artworks of the former occupiers once per year. While the family does not require the number of attendees, it will reflect badly on us if they see how few people come to see this display.

We know that having the same display one month per year might not draw in any crowds, but we ask that you do all you can to boost attendance.

Kind regards,
Jessica S.

From:         Marsha C.
To:              Head Office
Date:          13 July 2021, 13:21
Subject:      Re: Current Display

Good morning,

In regards to attendance, it might help if we rearrange the displays: having the paintings in one room, statues in another, etc. The building has been heavily renovated since it was furnished and many of the pieces no longer suit their original positions.

Are we required to keep everything in the original places?

Thank you,
Marsha

From:         Head Office
To:              All
Date:          13 July 2021, 13:54
Subject:      Re: Re: Current Display

You are welcome to rearrange the pieces as you see fit, provided that they are not damaged.

Kind regards,
Jessica S.

From:         Marsha
To:              Head Office
Date:          14 July 2021, 9:09
Subject:      Incident Report & Reimbursement Request

I attach an incident report regarding an injury I got yesterday.

Also, when I entered my office this morning, everything was shifted around. My shelves, cabinets and desks are all now facing towards the walls and I don’t have enough room to move everything back. Can I please be reimbursed if I need to hire a mover?

Marsha

From:         Head Office
To:              All
Date:          15 July 2021, 10:27
Subject:      Re: Incident Report & Reimbursement Request

Thank you for providing the incident report. We have amended it to read “My hand was cut on the tooth of the statue”. We have also removed your reference to the mouth of the statue being closed.

Please put the display back in order and let us know if this resolves your issue. If not sorted by the end of the week we will approve the expense.

Regards,
Catherine S.

From:         Marsha
To:              Head Office
Date:          16 July 2021, 2:03
Subject:      IMMEDIATE ATTENTION NEEDED

Good evening.

I write “evening”, as it is currently 2am.

The doors are gone. The original masonry of the house is now filling in the exits.

I was the only employee here from 1pm, and there have been no guests in that time. As far as I am aware, the doors were sealed immediately following business hours.

Kindly and immediately provide me with an exit.

Marsha.

From:         Marsha
To:              Head Office
Date:          16 July 2021, 3:49
Subject:      Re: IMMEDIATE ATTENTION NEEDED

Please ignore my previous email. I will call you during office hours to discuss this matter further.

From:         Head Office
To:              All
Date:          16 July 2021, 9:08
Subject:      Current Display

Good morning,

Please be aware that a new procedure is now in place regarding our trust display.

All employees working until close on a day with no attendees must, prior to 5pm, take a complete tour of the display. During this tour, they must give positive compliments to each of the displays, or they may give longer positive feedback to the overall rooms.

Overtime will not be authorised if this continues past 5pm.

Kind regards,
Catherine S.

Exhausted

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Our son had never been good at sleeping alone.

Night after night we found him in our doorway, begging to be allowed to sleep in our bed. My husband became increasingly frustrated as his sleep was disturbed. He swore he couldn’t sleep with that many people in one bed. He tried locking the door, but couldn’t ignore the crying in the hallway for long.

I decided to take things into my own hands. After reading my son his usual bedtime stories, I looked into his wide-awake eyes and decided to tell him about something new.

“There’s someone else in this house that you’re old enough to meet now. He’s hard to describe. You can only see him in the corner of your eye if you try really hard. That’s why you wake up with sleep in your eyes in the morning: it’s because he was here and your eyes tried to hide him. But if he catches you out of bed after lights off, it doesn’t matter if you close your eyes and hide. He’ll skit-skit-skitter across the ceiling and snatch you. He’ll drag you under the carpet or into the crack in the wall. And he’ll keep you in his castle where you get tired but never ever sleep, so that you can’t break the rules again”

My son looked terrified, his eyes wide and teary. More importantly, I was certain that he wouldn’t come to our room for a while. My husband stood in the door, smiling and nodding.

We had one week of peaceful sleep. Our son looked tired in the morning, but I didn’t care. For the first time in years, we could sleep the night through.

Perhaps that’s why the sound of my husband shuffling out of bed was enough to wake me. As I tried to fall back asleep, I assumed he was going to the bathroom but realised that his footsteps stopped too early to reach that far.

My husband’s scream was interrupted. First, I heard something skittering on the ceiling. Then, I heard the carpet tear up off the floor. Finally, I listened for hours to the sounds of wet tearing and snapping.

Once it was dawn and I was brave enough, I found blood dripping from a crack in the wall.

My son never has to sleep alone any more.

An Anniversary

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Our loved ones come to visit
For one raucous night each year
With creaking limbs to dance with us
And familiar smiles from ear to ear

They never do look quite right
Not quite what we remember
But we greet and embrace them all
Our long-lost, well-loved family members

Anne’s grandpa walked with a cane
But tonight he seems quite spry
Unfurling his crooked spine
She laughs as he lifts her to the sky

Roy’s wife had beautiful eyes
Shining, like a new penny
And as he meets her smiling gaze
He can’t recall her having so many

The barman was a large man
Muscled and barrel-chested
Now from his torso spouted beer
Twas superb, the drinkers attested

Mother sang sweet as a bird
Her voice now comes like a wave
Singing about next year’s crops
As I help her step out of her grave

For only one night each year
Never more but rarely less
We celebrate with the dead
Before we put them all back to rest

It is known by all who live
That death comes with morning light
So reunite with weapons close
They only recall us that first night

Solipsism

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It’s been weeks since I saw a human face.

I can still feel them, sometimes. When I walk through streets that should be busy, I feel figures knocking into my shoulders. I tripped over a warm space on the ground and landed on a towel and backpack that looked well-used.

I heard my roommate in the windowless bathroom yesterday, but when I broke through the locked door, no one was there. I tried to feel around for her, but then I heard the front door slam. Her towel was gone, and there were wet footprints on the carpet.

I’ve been using the self-checkout at the store, but I don’t have much money left. It’s not like there’s any point showing up for my retail job.

I tried to walk out of the empty store without paying once, but felt hands on my shoulders. I had to shake them off and hurried home.

I don’t know where everyone went. If I look out of my window for long enough, I swear I can still see shadows moving along the empty streets. Sections of darkness that cross the roads when the empty cars stop.

There was a pounding on the front door this morning. I answered it in blind hope, but there was no one there. Then I was grabbed and led roughly to an empty car outside.

I am in an empty room now. Meals appear through a door that opens by itself. The sheets change themselves whenever I go outside for a walk.

There is a TV high up on the wall. There is no one at the newscaster’s desk, but the scrolling headlines still appear. Something about a disease “manifesting as solipsism”.

It’s a shame there’s no one to explain to me what that means.

Last Call

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It was dark outside. It had been sunset when he had entered the bar, but this darkness was more than midnight.

There were no signs of the dingy street outside. No streetlights, no headlights passing by, bathroom windows lighting up regretfully. It was a pure and relentless void.

He had drunk until he fell asleep in the corner booth. He was there often enough that the owners wouldn’t kick him out unless someone raised a fuss. Walking unsteadily around the bar, he couldn’t see or hear anyone else inside.

He moved towards the front, peering through the large glass panel in the door, between the bars.

Pure darkness. He put his hand against the glass to steady himself, pulling away when he realised how cold it felt. Then he finally saw something in the window: a crack, steadily spreading as the darkness pressed itself towards him.

Two Sentence Stories (Part 16)

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As the MRI machine started up, he hoped they would finally put their finger on the cause of his digestive issues, so that his spouse would stop bothering him to get tested. Hours later, the workers cleaning the viscera from the machine scraped together dozens of tiny ball-bearings.

She had bragged to everyone about her well-stocked bunker, so it was no surprise that when the sirens rang the entire neighbourhood piled in. After the sirens shut off, they realised one-by-one that their benefactor was not among them and that the door was locked from the outside.

He ran through his list once again: doors locked, windows shut, alarm on, family in bed. This house would be a challenge, but he’d crack it.

A Dark Path

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There were the sounds of panic
In the moment she had slipped
But the child searched in the dark
Until he felt his mother’s grip

This forest is much too dark
She had very often warned
And too dangerous to walk
Between the sunset and the dawn

But they had stayed late in town
And needed to travel home
And though the path was obscured
The gently-led child was not alone.

They walked in complete silence
Hand in hand, footsteps in sync
He pictured monsters watching
Staring from shadows dark as ink

He questioned when they turned left
Down a path unfamiliar
But mother lay dead miles back
And the silent guide did not answer.

Alone

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She should have been the one to move out.

It was his house, after all. He had convinced her to buy it with him, but it was all his idea. He wanted to buy that dilapidated shell and then renovate it all himself. They would save money for their future that way. The big white wedding she didn’t want, children he convinced her she would love.

It was quiet with him gone, but she kept expecting to hear his voice, his stomping feet, his anger. She dropped a glass a week after he had left and she found herself instinctively hunching over shattered glass, waiting for a fury that didn’t come.

It hadn’t been that bad at the beginning. He had never hit her, after all. But the holes in the walls and broken personal items had demonstrated enough to keep her quiet.

The worst parts were the accusations of infidelity. As he spent more time working on the house, he became paranoid about what she was doing alone. Or not alone. Phone calls turned to video calls, turned to surprise visits. After he stormed in during a video conference, she almost left. But then they sat and talked, and she found herself agreeing that it would be better if she moved in sooner rather than later.

Which is how she found herself moving into a half-renovated house. Some of the rooms were locked away from her initially. For the first few weeks she only had the toilet and the sink in the laundry to use. He had insisted on finishing the bathroom before letting her use it.

Over time, painstakingly, the house became finished. Without his energy spent elsewhere, the anger started rising again. There had been no Internet in the house, so she was a leech for having quit her job. She tried to help with the renovations, but asking for instruction made her a hindrance. The kitchen was the last room to be finished, but she was lazy for not finding a way to cook for him after a long day’s work.

Finally, the moment she waited for. He said they should just break up. Rather than begging him to stay, as she had a hundred times before. She stayed silent. He said it again, louder, prompting her for the correct response.

“OK.”

It was not the correct response.

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