Afternoon Coffee

It was still raining and it would carry on no matter what I did. Signing, I turned back to the jigsaw puzzle in front of me on the dinning room table. I had been wrestling with the 2,000 pieces of the solar system for days now. The boarder was there and some of the middle was starting to stretch out but I had a long way to go.

I got up, abandoning things for the fourth time that day and went into the kitchen. There was nothing amusing in here. I made a coffee but not just any, it was a nutty latte with a thick layer of foaming milk on top and a sprinkle of coco and nutmeg on top. The smell was amazing and like being in a fancy coffee shop during a break from the Christmas shopping rush.

Gripping some soft biscuits with creamy buttercream in between them that I made this morning. I took my hot mug into the living room and curled up on the sofa with a huge book about all the known myths and legends around the world.

 

 

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Noise

Debbie paused from typing up her report and looked around the office. Everyone was busy working. There was the low mutter of voices and the beat of music coming from the turned down radio.

There was also something else; a high pitched whining sound. It reminded her of the sound of the cleaning drill at the dentist.

She turned to a neighbouring colleague, ‘do you hear that whining sound?’ Debbie asked.

‘What sound? I don’t hear anything.’

The phone ring and the colleague answered it.

Debbie shook her head but she carried on hearing the sound.

She checked her PC and those of her neighbours, she turned the radio on and off, asked around the office and tried hard to find the source of the noise but couldn’t located it.

Leaving the office, the sound was still whining in her ears. Debbie crossed the car park and looked over the road, there were builders digging.

Debbie turned and walked over to them till she could see clearer that one of the builders had a scanning device.

‘It runs right here!’ that builder called, ‘mark it up!’

Debbie sighed, the noise was solved. She wasn’t going insane after all.

Mags

The shelves were lined with colorful glossy front covers that boosted screaming titles. Ivy stood before them, trying to pick out any that would interested her from the photos and words. Ignoring the ones aimed heavily at men, she looked at the women’s ones.

Celebrity names, Ivy knew or half knew called out to her followed by scandalous slurs. Questions about her body and mind shouted across to her, demanding she grab the mags and find the answers. Shaking her head, she picked up a magazine containing short stories that looked bland compared with the others.

With a quick glance at the front page, she dropped into the wire shopping basket. Further down, she found two aimed at writers. Ivy selected the one she normally read and noticed the free gift was a small book of inspirational poetry. Putting that in the basket, she moved on to a section which seemed to grow every time she looked.

The blank front pages of the adult coloring magazines looked out of place. Ivy browsed through them and finally selected two; one that declared it could calm her mind and other that stated she could win a valuable set of coloring pencils by filling in the front cover. She put them both in the basket then moved on.

At the end of the shelves, were the crossword, word searches, Sudoku and puzzle books. Ivy hovered in front of them. She had never been a fan of such things, but having one might be useful right now. Debating, she spent a few minutes looking at them all, then selected one that seemed a good mixture of things.

Adding that to the collection, she did the rest of the shopping she needed to do then headed to the hospital ward that was to become her home for a few weeks whilst she recovered from the major operation she needed.

 

Was there something there?

You arrive home from a hard, troubled night at the hospital ward. Tried, fingers numb, you misjudge getting your key into the front door. You wrestle with it, trying to slot the small key into the Yale lock. You get it on the third try and unlock the door.

Going in, the house is silent. You live alone, but that’s how you like it now. Once you had a family – a lazy husband or wife and five demanding children. You were happy and have so many memories to look back upon. The children are grown, have their own lives and families. Your husband or wife is dead and you have long accepted that.

Had you really had that life?

You can’t remember. You are too tried.

Closing and locking the door, you put your rucksack on the floor. Kick off your shoes and tug off your jacket. You drop that on top of your bag and reach for the light switch. As your fingers reach up, you feel a blast of cold air. Your fingers touch the switch panel and something else.

You stop and look in the direction of the switch. It’s too dark to see anything and not enough light from the street can filter through the frosted glass door windows. Shrugging it off, you slide your fingers up to the switch.

There!

The touch of something!

What is it?

You frown, pull a confused face and try for a few seconds to figure out what that is.

It is cold like a drift from the fridge. It felt soft, but strangely not fully solid. That fact further puzzles you and leads to your fingers feeling more.

A hand!

Oh my God!

You go to recoil, think better and hit the switch. Light blinds you and the hallway. You feel your breath and heart racing. You look at the wall. There’s nothing there. You inspect the wallpaper, feeling it carefully. Touching the switch again, you sense nothing.

Just your mind playing with you because of the tiredness.

Grabbing your stuff, you go up to bed. Laying there you try to laugh it off and blame it on your bad day. A nurse or a doctor’s life is tough.

Dawn starts to break and you began to doze.

Maybe it was a ghost?

What? Haha. Why would you think that?

No. It was nothing. Just shadows and imagination. Maybe there’d been an insect on the wall? Perhaps you had something stuck to your hand and didn’t know about it? It could have been anything, but what if…?

You listen, suddenly more awake then before. You can’t hear anything inside. Outside comes the quiet calling of birds and car engines just getting through the double glazed windows.

It was nothing, you say then repeat it a loud and get back to resting. Clearing you mind of the whole thing. Whatever it was or is can’t get you now.

You feel whatever it is right before you fall asleep. The dancing black patterns before your closed eyelids. That notion of floating or falling. Everything becoming lighter then heavier. The loss of everything.

Your last thought as in distance you hear a familiar click noise; perhaps, it is…