Friday 11 September 2009

Wardrobes are Weird

Despite her best efforts, Sophia realised she'd never manage to fit the new wardrobe through the bedroom door in one piece.

"Sorry, mum," she muttered as she grabbed hold of the screwdriver in her pocket - she'd fully expected to need it. Pausing a moment to tie her dark hair back in a ponytail, she got down on her knees and started on the first screw.

"How's it going?" Martin's voice. Sophia couldn't see him - as well as trapping her upstairs, the wardrobe blocked her view of the landing.

"I'm taking it apart," said Sophia, unable to completely disguise her glee.

"Your mother won't like that," said Marting softly.

"She can go hang." To be fair, it is the opinion of this narrator that Sophia's mother did indeed deserve hanging.

"Need any help?" asked Martin.

"Not if you're avoiding sorting out the electricity."

"I'm not!" said Martin, fooling no-one but himself. "Anyway, I can't sort it out until one of us gets paid."

"At least two more weeks of candles, then?" Sophia wasn't too upset about this. Candles were fun. But it was a pain having to store their food with Charlie next door. Thank goodness for gas cookers.

"On the plus side," said Martin, "I've got a quote for fixing the bathroom windows. Cheaper than I thought."

"Within our budget?"

"Just about ... but we'd have to choose between the windows or the wedding photos."

"Photos. Definitely. We'll do the windows next month."

Sophia and Martin had only been married for three weeks - it was the excitement of the thing that kept them upbeat in their horror of a house (bought in an auction after the previous tennant was evicted for his home heroin business). And they'd both been looking forward to seeing the photographs.

"I agree," said Martin. "But for now, I'll just get copies for your family, mum, dad and Caitlin. The rest of my family can wait."

"I should think so too!" Martin's family was staggeringly vast. Their very presence in the wedding had pushed the cost of the photographer through the roof, but it was well worth hiring a professional.

Sophia dropped the screwdriver and wiped the sweat from her brow. "This isn't coming loose."

"Probably cursed, knowing your mother," said Martin. "Food doesn't rot in it, you know."

"Yes it does," sighed Sophia.

"No! It doesn't! It contained fifty-year-old jam, Soph. Fifty-year-old jam."

"You add a decade each time you tell that story," said Sophia. "She must've just reused the pot. Made us some jam as an extra wedding present."

"Unlikely," said Martin. "That jam was nice. She wouldn't have wasted it on us if she'd known it was there."

***

Angela was Thinking. I've had to use a capital T there, to distinguish from ordinary thinking, which Angela did all the time. However, Thinking happened every once in a while, and it was a dangerous time.

Most of the time, Angela was the happiest woman alive (need I point out that this is hyperbole?). Ebullient to the point of hysteria at times, the problems came when she crashed. She'd suddenly start feeling like she was too ugly (not really true), too fat (certainly untrue), too old (she was twenty-five), and that everyone hated her (no-one did, save perhaps Quiet Steve, but I'll come to him later).

She'd been great in the build-up to Martin and Sophia's wedding, and delighted in decorating the house as best she could while they were away, but now, in the darkness of her bedroom, she felt terribly lonely.

When she'd been Thinking for a few hours, something a bit weird happened. I'm not sure how well I can explain it, really - I wasn't there (I'm not quite an omnipresent narrator), but I heard her describe it years later.

Anyway, she suddenly had to close her eyes as though a bright light had come on, despite the room still being pitch black. She could hardly open her eyes at all, but when she did open them a crack, she saw a skinny young man in a scruffy pale green shirt, with hair like a Beatle's.

Angela felt self-conscious, as though the man was a celebrity, and when he spoke, it broke her heart.

"Angela?" he said. "Did I wake you?"

"Who are you?" she asked.

"Oh, dash. Sorry." The man grinned, and the world felt like a better place. "I'm early. See you later."

Again, Angela had to close her eyes against the brightness in the dark, but she didn't open them again until she awoke the following morning.

Sorry about this bit, by the way - it's a bit rubbish really, and maybe I shouldn't have mentioned it until the young man turned up again (he won't be back for a while), but I thought it'd be nice to tell the story chronologically.

***

The wardrobe was now standing against a wall in the living room.

"I like it there," said Martin, but Sophia gave him a look. "It matches the floorboards!" he insisted.

"And that'll be a great comfort when I have to get changed in the Death Room."

"Superstitious all of a sudden?"

Sophia laughed. Despite the warnings of their friends and family, it hadn't bothered either of them that someone had been murdered in the living room the previous year. It didn't register, really - not part of their world. It just happened to share some geography.

Sophia ran a hand through Martin's short, red hair. "Carpet, do you reckon?" she asked.

"Wonder how cheap it'd be to grow a carpet of watercress?" he wondered.

At that moment, the doorbell rang, and Sophia got up to answer it.

It was Caitlin, Martin's sister.

"Hi, Soph!" she said, giving her sister-in-law a hug. "I brought your car back." Caitlin had borrowed Sophia's car that day to - Wait, you won't care.

"Come in, come in," said Sophia. There was something cosy and domestic about Caitlin that made her want to say everything twice.

She led her into the living room, where she sat on a beanbag.

"I'd offer you tea, but ..." Sophia nodded towards the electric meter.

"No problem!" said Caitlin. "And you're welcome round my place if you ever need a break from the relentless darkness."

"It's been quite fun, actually," said Martin. "You end up going to bed and getting up according to the sun."

"Yes, but you'll be missing Casualty!" said Caitlin, horrified. "They're getting their new head of ER next week!" She spotted the wardrobe in the corner. "Dear me, that's huge!"

"It is, it is," said Sophia. "My mother's wedding gift. I hated it as a child, but we do need a wardrobe."

"It preserves jam!" said Martin.

"I wish," said Sophie. "Then we wouldn't need the fridge. Anyway, I couldn't take it apart, so we've had to leave it down here."

Caitlin was already on her feet. She lived her life trying to solve every problem and complete every task the second they arose.

"It looks old."

"Just the novelty, I think," said Sophia. "It's held together with screws."

Caitlin was down on the floor, examining the screws.

"They look brand-new!"

"They're not, they're not," Sophia assured her. "Looked like that ever since we got it."

"Got a screwdriver?"

***

Charlie's mobile phone rang.

"'M gonna kill you," came the raspy voice from the other end.

"So you keep telling me," replied Charlie, hanging up.

***

"This is odd," said Caitlin. "They're not impossible to move - just very, very stiff. And they're backwards."

"Really?" Sophia examined them closer and saw that, indeed, they were moving as Caitlin rotated the screwdriver clockwise.

"Hey," said Martin. "What's that?"

He came closer, putting his arm around Sophia, examining the area Caitlin was undoing. What they'd all assumed to be a simple base to the wardrobe was, in fact, a drawer with no handle, screwed shut. Caitlin opened it slowly. Inside was a stack of paper, and most intriguing of all was an envelope, a name marked on the front.

The name was ... Sebastian Moore!

***

Damn, damn, damn! I knew I'd forgotten something. Good lord, I'd forget my own head if I had one. Right. Yes, you should have recognised Sebastian Moore's name. That was a brilliant plot twist I was building up to. But then I forgot to mention him even once.

Okay, rewind. I don't actually know much about Sebastian Moore's life at this point. Not because it's a mystery, but because it was so bland. I can comfortably imagining him having a drink with his colleagues, or watching a rented DVD, or more likely, playing board games with his daughter.

He was twenty-eight, nothing special, but lovely. He'd not met any of the others at this point, though he'd once shared a bus with Charlie. Why did I mention that? Useless information.

Okay, I know I've messed up this ending. Try to be excited. Because this stranger's name appeared on an envelope in a wardrobe bought by someone else entirely when he himself was only six years old. It's a shame not to end with an exciting reveal, but there you go.

Oh, wait! There is one more thing. Sebastian was skinny. And had hair like a Beatle's.

2 comments:

Blossom said...

Ha! Well, I am enjoying the narrative voice! I liked the bit about someone mentioning it years later, as if the narrator is a friend they all like very much but haven't met at the point the story takes place.

Cool timey wimey stuff too - my favourite kind, I think - got me very excited! :-)

Quoth the Raven said...

Ah, interesting! Not your usual style, this, but certainly a good experiment. The narrative voice has the bones of something really very good brewing, although it needs a bit more practice to help it flow more. Each time you dropped into first person it felt a bit disjointed from the rest - not because it doesn't work, but I think you might need to lighten up/humourise the other bits. There are parts where the narrative actually feels quite straight-laced though, so it can clash slightly. But as I say, a bit of practice and that'll be fine, I should think. I can certainly see what you're aiming for, which is half the job done, and it is a lovely tone.

The characters are intriguingly started. I instinctively like Sophia, which is nice, although not Martin. I'm not sure why. If I'm meant to it'll probably change with more screen-time for him. Angela seems distressingly haunted, love her, and already quite layered; Charlie seems to have a nicely dark storyline bubbling away (unless that was just a jokey mate? Tricky to tell from only three lines) and I quite like Caitlin. There's a nice set-up to everyone, anyway, and I do actually want to see more, and that's a good sign in a story.

If you weren't intending to imply timey-wimey, by the by, you failed I'm afraid. The combination of letter and him ghosting into a bedroom and so on distinctly implies a sci-fi/fantasy twist, especially to an audience of sci-fi/fantasy fans. For shame, Iceduck. Now you've raised Blossom's little hopes. They'll be cruelly dashed.

Promising start overall! Although a few spelling mistakes, unless Martin is genuinely called Marting sometimes. Write the next bit!