caught me half-aflame.”
“Not at all, and truth be told I don’t know that I want you anywhere near the fusebox when I poke around in it.”
“Can’t work under pressure, hey?” She said as she turned from the doorway and left the young man at the stove.
Copper-tasting, muddy foulness.
Quite pleased with herself, Skye picked up her overnight case from where she had dropped it next to the couch the night before, and headed upstairs. She was just about to climb the first stair when she realised she had met this guy, who was now in her house, and they were yet to exchange names, so she called out to the kitchen.
“Hey, handyman, you got a name?”
“They call me Tanner. And you are Skye. Nice to meet you.”
Skye stopped mid-stair.
“I thought you said you weren’t a clairvoyant?”
“You paid with your credit card, this morning.”
This guy was far too smart to be in a place like this she thought as she made her way up.
“I’ll show him.” She said to herself as she peered around doors, searching for the bathroom.
The bathroom, which was the first door to the left, was directly across the way from a door that seemed to be made only for children, as it rudely stopped halfway up Skye’s chest. She had found the bathroom first but couldn’t help but notice the pint-sized door, in what could only be a pint-sized room, because what good was a large room when only a small person could enter comfortably? Skye was about to reach for the handle when she remembered her guest and made a mental note that she would investigate the semi-sized door fully later on.
The interior of the bathroom had been made with fully-grown people in mind, albeit fully-grown people from a century ago. The well-worn handles were all where a hand could handle them, and the shower head, which appeared to be more rust than head, would be well situated for the angle of a raised elbow to reveal a stinky armpit. It would do, Skye thought, as she placed her overnight bag on top of the black lid to the white loo. It was sitting directly next to the shower, which, in the old fashion, also served as a bath, so a person could soak their feet as they relieved themselves, of oats perhaps. Skye planned on using both, but not simultaneously.
She unzipped her overnight bag and breathed in the meticulous way the items were still arranged. Skye enjoyed arranging, managing and ordering things, which is why large, filing-cabinet buildings, filled with alphabetised, systematised and franchised people, was entirely normal to her. How else could a society progress if people weren’t ordered, in both alignment and regimentation? Freedom was a liberal farce, only the strong-willed, strong-minded, strong-acting succeeded. Everyone else was just someone to move, use or forget on the way to another signpost that you were headed in the right direction. These were often Skye’s thoughts as she methodically positioned makeup around basins, this one being quite a few rungs down in class compared to the one she had at home, which was entirely her own as Andrew’s matching one was several feet along the wall-to-wall mirror.
Once her cosmetic sermon had concluded, she hung two suitable outfits, casual but smart, from the hooks on the unadorned wall and undressed herself. Whilst leaning over to turn on the shower, Skye did what most people do when they are presented with a mirror and their naked form; she starred, scanned and surmised. As she turned the silvery handle marked ‘Hot’, the old pipes groaned under the pressure of several generations of use. Skye paid it no mind as she had just noticed a minute parcel of cellulite on the low-third of her right thigh. She was already considering the type of yoga she would need to perform to remove the unsightly blight on an otherwise toned and sculpted muscle when the sound from the pipes simultaneously lowered and elevated an octave, rumbling as though in a fight with itself for which way it was going to bend. Skye’s eyes narrowed and although she was still looking in the mirror, she was no longer looking at herself but picturing what could possibly be happening behind the ancient cottage wall. She didn’t have long to wait to see what actually happened as the sound ceased within an instant. Skye turned, and as if to greet her, the middle section connecting the shower head to the wall burst off and flew past her. And flowing right behind it came a not-insignificant amount of water.
Skye’s scream brought Tanner bounding up the stairs, two at a time. He bashed the side of his fist against the door and then pressed his ear to it.
“Skye? Are you okay? What happened?”
Physically Skye was absolutely fine, albeit covered from head to toe in the brownist water she had ever seen. Mentally though, she couldn’t be further from fine for as she cleared her vision, and her throat, of copper-tasting, muddy foulness. She had to stop herself from completely losing it altogether.
“I’m. Fine.” Was all she could manage in reply through pursed lips and gritted teeth.
Tanner, passing for the concerned father he would no doubt become, held the door knob firmly.
“You sure?”
Skye surveyed her situation. Most of her rather expensive, boutique makeup was ruined, her open overnight bag and the two well-chosen outfits looked like hand towels at a barbecue enthusiast convention, and from what she could make out in the small places the mirror that didn’t have opaque liquid running down it, she would actually need a shower to clean off what this shower had done.
“Yes. I am sure.” Which of course was an utter lie.
“Okay. I will be downstairs.” And Skye heard his footfalls leave the door and make their way back down the stairs.
All I need now is pigtails.
Slowly the door to the bathroom opened and out tip-toed the naked form of the Business Management Developer for one of the world’s leading financial institutions. Directly in front of her, and again piquing her curiosity, was the half-sized door she had promised to inspect later, and she resigned herself that clothing was an unassailable priority at the moment and she ventured further down the hallway.
What greeted Skye were three more doors. One on either side of the hallway, and one directly at the end. The first she came across must have been the place her grandmother had passed away in her sleep in because even before Skye could enter the room she could smell the distinct odour of decaying mothballs and freshly culled lavender. Or perhaps it was the other way around, she wasn’t sure. The door itself was painted a faded light pink, where the fading was a distinct choice and not a sign of age. It was inviting but calming, the way the aroma from a cup of tea someone else is drinking is. Skye reached for the handle, which looked more like a something an elderly bingo player might pin to their chest in order to look their Sunday best, and less like something used to vacate a room. The door swung back and inside Skye stepped.
The interior made Skye feel as though she had been miniaturized and bought by a small child for their vintage doll house collection. The ornaments were a careful mixture of hauntingly precious and passively-aggressively cute, but with a subtle unease, like the sudden realisation that you either are getting a chill up the back of your untucked shirt, or a cold, slimy lime jelly has materialised on your lower part of your spine and is heading south towards your bottom. The bed, a conflated queen-sized throw-pillow of a beast, was more feather than furniture. It was trimmed in lace, which would have given it an innocent appearance except for the fact that the middle looked as though it was suffering from gas and didn’t have the appropriate apparatus in order to relieve itself. Skye battled with her discomfort at being watched by several photos of forcedly-photogenic kittens and the confusion that she had no memory of her grandmother being like this room at all. Remembering she was still quite exposed, Skye shrugged the room off like a heavy cloak and made her way over to the wardrobe.
It was shaped like a heavy-set Polish aunty, but trimmed as though she was going to the christening of someone rather important and had broken out her finest shiniest items in order to show she had put in the effort. Skye opened the door to reveal that the clothes inside were made for the same aunty of barndoor proportions. Skye could’
ve gone camping inside of some of these frocks, and so dismissed them, and happily, with the rest of the room.
The door across the way from the pink room would’ve been more suited to a hunter’s cabin halfway up a secluded mountain. The bark hadn’t even been removed from the tree before it had been cut into the shape of a door. The handle, an unflattering brass number, was obviously not meant to be remarkable. Skye turned it and peered inside. In the middle of the room was the hardest looking bed Skye had even seen. The mattress, if it could be called that, was merely some foam on top of large piece of solid hardwood. Skye crossed the room and pushed into it with the tip of her index finger. Barely a few indifferent centimetres stood between the body of the person who laid down and the wood underneath. Who would sleep on such a thing? She said to herself out aloud. There was little else in the room, and no clothes to speak off besides a pair of trousers and a waistcoat hanging over the back of a lone chair in a corner, but they again were of a size that would take two of her to even begin to wear. Skye pulled the door shut as she exited the room.
The last room, at the end of the hallway, had a door that was entirely unassuming. It could be bought at any hardware store for as little as thirty dollars, and was