Clutter

Sorry for the long delay guys, expect more soon! For now, here is a story taken from life experiences  just some of the facts were altered, I'll leave it for you guys too work out what...

She used to sit in that chair for most of the day, and her time there increased in her later years. The embroidered upholstery of the thing was a murky brown, with reddish-brown and greenish-brown plants carefully stitched long ago. The faint scent of the straw stuffing combined with what was left of the scent of the lady that occupied it; a mix of soap, lavender and incontinence.

I had not been to the house in years, and it was usually my father or aunty that used to check in on her, but now she was gone, I felt more at ease in the place. So I for some reason decided to give up my weekend to start sorting this place out. It was my father who wanted too. but he was too busy sorting out all the legal stuff and the funeral right now

It was odd. I remember so much of it, but everything was different. In the ten years since I had seen her last, she had declined from the state of slightly-forgetful- old-lady, to what in my mind must have been a demonic Miss. Haversham. I did not like being around the mentally unwell, they unease me. Even as a teenager I could not cope with here deficiency, so, when given the choice, I chose not to be part of her life.

This house was a mess. Stacks of newspapers everywhere, one near the front door that looked ready to ambush any explorer intrepid enough to try and look in the cupboard under the stairs. There were piles of other things, further back, that I dared not examin. My Grandmother was of the war eira, and of the opinion that nothing was to be wasted.

There is no central heating in this place, so I clear the fireplace in the living room out and lay some scrunched up newspaper under a few lumps of coal that were still in an old brass bucket with a tiny shovel in it. After about half an hour of swearing at myself, the dead woman and any inanimate object in vision, I had a little fire going.

Being late January it was getting dark already, and so I decided that I’d start work on the house in the morning. Also the electric had been cut off, so no lights, but the fire was enough to go by, and I found some yellowing candles under the sink, that splutterd to life when struck with a match, so I had my little circle of light in th middle of the countryside. I dared not go to the bedroom, and anyway, I don’t think I had the energy to start another fire. I find some ichy woolen blankets in a basket behind the sofa, choosing a few that were not too damp, I make myself a nest, and bed down on he grimy carpet of the livingroom.

The fire soon sends me off to sleep. My dreams are fluid but hazy. Not coherent, just abstracts. I wake up several times in the night. I realise on one of these occasions that the fire needed more coal to prevent me freezing. I replenish the fire, and noticed the familiar old lady sitting quietly on her seat. She looks at me and smiles. I smile back, thinking nothing of it.