Sunday 20 May 2007

Pic of the day: "The moon was brighter than I could ever remember..."

Fiction: The House

I met Bob at the usual place, but Bob wasn't his usual self. He looked shaken, not stirred. I knew at once that something had happened. So I said, "Bob, what's happened?"
"You are not going to believe this" he said.
"What, have you found True Love?" It was a joke, but clearly a bad joke. He did not exacly glare, but he bestowed upon me the kind of look you reserve for toddlers who fill their diapers five minutes after they spent an hour on the potty for nothing.
"I told you you were not going to believe it."
"Bob, I'm your friend. No matter what you say, I know you don't lie."
"Yeah, that's what you say now. But what if I don't know myself? You see, on Friday I went with this lady to her house."
"Woo! Wait, you don't look woo! What happened, did she try to kill you? Did she tie you to her bed and then her husband came out of the closet? Worse??"
"Just shut up and let me tell it exactly like it was, why won't you?"
"OK."

"I was hanging out at the bar and there was this woman. She looked around my age or just a hair older. Looked rather plain, but you know I believe that everyone has something, something where they shine. So I chatted her up. Her name was Sophia, I don't remember if she told me her last name. She sounded very interested in science and the stuff, so I talked a lot about that. She was an architect, she told me, but sadly not a very popular one. She clearly wished more people would buy her houses. Well, duh, I thought. Eventually she asked if I wanted to see her house, which she had made herself. Well, you don't say no when a woman asks you to see her house, so off we went.

"It wasn't all that far outside town, but there weren't much in the way of neighbors right there, they were all a bit to this side or that. Probably because of the terrain. The house was built on a slope that sloped away from the road. So the top floor, which was the only one you could see from the road, was pretty small and dull, to be honest. But once you came off the road, you could see that there was a slope and so there had to be a ground floor further down, though I could not see it from the entrance.

"She was eager to show me around the house, and of course I followed. The top floor wasn't really all that impressive. It looked very ordinary, and both the walls and the furniture were kinda lower class, if you know. It seemed fairly new, but cheap. So she told me to come downstairs with her, my expectations weren't all that high, not for the house. I did have other expectations of course. But I was surprised. Downstairs, the house was quite a bit prettier. There was paneling, and the furniture was kinda classy. There were windows but I didn't look too closely as they were a bit high on the wall. I assumed that part of the rooms were underground. Anyway it was night, so there wouldn't be much to see. Remember this, it is important.

"It definitely seemed to me that this lower floor was larger than the one above, perhaps not by a lot, but both wider and longer. But then again she was an architect, so it made sense that she had an original design for her house. I praised it, not just to get her in the mood but it was really classy too. She smiled at me and showed me a door close to the stairs where we came down. She opened it and there was another flight of stairs going down. Did she have some kinda wine cellar? I thought. I followed her down, and this is where it gets really weird. There was another full floor down there.

"It was not a cellar at all. It was more like one of those manors you see in movies, a couple hundred years old but really well kept. There was no way she could have designed this, because she would have to be crazy old. Anyway, it was even much larger than the floor above, and the walls were paneled with those tropical woods you don't get anymore, and there were gold and silver hanging lights and all the classy stuff you only see in movies. The place had to be worth a fortune! And it was a lot larger, did I say that? Larger than the both of the floors above together, no doubt about that. The strangest part was that there were windows, though it was still too dark to see anything outside. How steep was this slope, I thought.

"By now I was really impressed, and I realized that this wasn't a cheap lonely girl. She could have gone anywhere, to some finer place, and picked up someone more classy than me. I told her as much. She just smiled and said, wait and see. And then she opened another door in the middle of the house, and there were stairs down, and I thought I was going crazy.

"We came out in this thing that was like a castle made of marble, lit by crystal chandeliers encrusted in jewels – that's the word, isn't it, encrusted? They sure looked encrusted to me. There were great marble halls and there were paintings so grand, they looked greater than life, not just larger but more colorful, more alive if you know what I mean. Paintings of battles, paintings of farmers with their animals, of children at play, of the most beautiful lands and meadows full of flowers and orchards ripe with fruit. We came to a dining hall with tables decked with the finest china and silverware and crystal glasses, and there was set out food just out of the oven, although I saw no one there, all kinds of mouthwatering stuff. And I looked at the windows, large arches, and through the clear glass I saw the moon come out from the clouds. Everything is ready, she said, and I looked out and the moon was brighter than I could ever remember and it shone on a land far below us, as if we were on a mountain top, and it was not a place I had seen, certainly nowhere near town.

"I turned and ran, that's what I did then. I found the stairs we had come down, and beside them was a door, and I knew it was to stairs further down, but I did not want to go there, did not want to see. I ran up the stairs two steps at a time, and up the next steps, up, up, the taste of blood in my mouth, pulse pounding in my ears. I ran from the house, as far as I could until I could run no more, and only later found my way back to town and home.

"Now I've told you everything, and I can see you think I'm crazy. But I saw it all with my own eyes. I'm not going to come here anymore, let me tell you. I'll be moving right across the country as far as I can come, and never set foot here again."

"Bob" I said, "you should relax. Take a few days off. See a doctor." Bub Bob wasn't listening. He was already getting up. And when he left, I didn't know what else I could say. And then in the corner of my eye I saw someone step out of the shadows and look as Bob disappeared out of the door, out of our lives. It was a woman, I saw as I turned my head; around my own age but probably slightly older. She looked rather bland, but there was something about her...

(You know I don't write fiction in my journal, but this really is fiction. Especially Bob and me.)