dycefic:deepwaterwritingprompts:Text: Sometimes in the dead of night on the way to the kitchen for a
dycefic:deepwaterwritingprompts:Text: Sometimes in the dead of night on the way to the kitchen for a glass of water, I see an extra door in the hallway, black and imposing. It’s not a bad boarding house, as these thingsgo.We’re not allowed up to the fourth floor, forany reason – but I don’t blame the landlady for wanting her privacy. Nobody but the landlady answers the strangewillow-patterned telephone on the third floor landing. We all lock our windows on full moon nights.No couples are allowed, ever. Only single womenand girls.And sometimes, if you go down the hall to thekitchen late at night, there’s a strange black door that’s never there bydaylight. For some reason, it’s hard to get new lodgersto stay. I don’t know why. It’s a little strange, maybe, but the meals are good,Mrs Hallow the landlady is kind, and the rent is ridiculously cheap. I’ll takethe strange black door and the phone that rings even when there’s no wire goingto it over rats in the walls and cigarette ash in the food any day. My lastboarding house was like that. I like it here.I’d been living here for nearly two years whenI lost my job working at the telephone exchange. It wasn’t my fault – they cutthe night shift back, and one of the girls cut was me. Mrs Hallow told me notto worry – as I was an old lodger, she’d let me work for room and board while Ilooked for another job. She’s so nice, I don’t know why people say she’screepy. It’s not her fault she’s so tall and thin, and her bones show throughher fragile old skin. I worked hard, wanting her to be glad she’dkept me. One of the jobs she gave me, since I was used to working nights, waspacking lunches after supper. For the Night Gentlemen, she told me, but didn’tsay more. Every night, I packed twenty lunches in twenty tin pails and filled twentythermoses with strong coffee. I made sandwiches, and boiled eggs, slicedpickles and cheese, and packed a paper napkin into each pail. I was to haveeverything done by eleven, Mrs Hallow told me, for the Night Gentlemen came atmidnight to collect their meals, and I should be in bed by then. By morning,the pails were all gone. By evening, they were all stacked neatly in thekitchen again, clean and ready to be filled. I never saw them come, but Isupposed it must be while I was sleeping. Then I started to worry that my lunches weredull. I baked cookies for the lunch pails, and pies and pasties. I put indifferent kinds of fruit and vegetables each day. The Night Gentlemen workedlate hours, if they came for their lunches in the middle of the night. Theyneeded to eat good food. I looked through Mrs Hallow’s old recipe books and triednew dishes, like german apple pancake and potato dumplings. Mrs Hallow waspleased, and said she would pay me a little wage in addition to my room andboard, if I didn’t mind continuing. She was getting too old, she said, to makeall those meals every night.I had been working at the boarding house fornearly six months when I really messed up. I’d burned a whole batch of cookiesto a crisp, so I had to start all over, and I didn’t have time to decorate thembefore evening. It was Valentine’s Day, and I felt so bad that I decided tostay up late to finish them. The Night Gentlemen didn’t come until midnight, soI had time… I thought. Keep reading -- source link
#stories