[Fiction] This Final Tether
Read the winning entry for our week of October 27, 2024 prompt, A Knock at the Door.
This Final Tether
by
You’re setting the customary cup of coffee down on the sideboard when you hear the knock at the door. Three sharp, impatient raps. They must have already tried the failing doorbell, you think. The grandfather clock in the living room has yet to announce the hour. They’re early. A sign they are keen.
You straighten the mug, stoneware with an ochre glaze. It’s one of your favourites, brought with you from home, specifically for this purpose. It looks almost chic against the simple lines of the seventies teak, now you’ve packed away the porcelain ornaments and dust-furred photo frames. There’s not so much you can do about the textured wallpaper and the weathered peach carpet. You take a deep inhale. The coffee has done its job, perfuming the room with the scent of home, of life. It’s what they advise.
You open the front door with a prepared smile. Hello! Lovely to meet you, please come in. Oh, no, don’t worry about your shoes. Two women step into the hallway, scrubbing their feet theatrically on the doormat. They are both tall, taller than you. One statuesque, the other slight. One in dungarees, the other in jeans, both wearing Dr. Martens. One has a shock of blue streaked through her hair. A little unconventional, you think hopefully, regretfully. Perhaps these two will like it.
Feel free to have an explore, you say, through gritted, grinning teeth. They thank you and begin walking tentatively down the corridor, boots treading the ghostly footprints you and your brother left as children. You follow behind them at a distance, eyes averted, ears attuned, busying yourself with a loose thread on your cuff.
They observe the downstairs quietly, prodding a wall here, pulling open a drawer there. You see looks exchanged that could be approval, and it ignites a glimmer of light. Hope, or gratitude maybe? Recognition? You’re not sure. You should want to run towards it, but you don’t. What you want to do is hold on tighter. Your hand moves to your stomach. This final tether. Treasured blessing and binding curse.
The women make their way to the staircase. A floorboard creaks loudly and you clear your throat. At the top of the stairs they turn left, towards the room you still have to pause before entering, that still makes you feel like you’re gasping underwater. You hover in the doorway, cheek brushing one of the biro lines that marks your progression to adulthood.
The women move around carefully. They keep a distance from the double bed. Do they know, you wonder, even though you changed the sheets? Do they know, you wonder, that this bed is a lifeboat with the power to surf serenely above the tormented swell of a nightmare?
The woman with the blue streak of hair turns in your direction. You see the slight wrinkle of her nose, that small, emphatic dismissal. Another one bites the dust, you think. And lightly you sigh. Again disappointed, again relieved.
A Note From Our Judge, Dawn Kurtagich
I loved this story. The second person worked extremely well to add an air of mystique and mystery to the story. I very much enjoyed the small details, the ochre mug, the seventies teak, the dust-furred photo frames. They added intimacy and specificity to the setting, letting me know that our protagonist was both nervous and keen about getting these visitors to take the property off her hands. But… why? We learn that this is a home she grew up in, and there is a sense of a haunting. Of a larger story beneath the surface. Her fear and her hope are palpable, always at war with one another—the desire to get rid of this thing, but also hold on tight; a delicious, all too human duality.
About
Heather is a fiction writer from the south east of England. She enjoys writing about the unusual everyday, and what transpires when conventional people depart from social norms. Her stories often play with the macro and micro, exploring the tension in fleeting moments that hold enormous significance for her characters, and making use of small details to reveal something much bigger. She mostly writes flash fiction and short stories, and is working on a novel.
This piece was written in response to the prompt A Knock at the Door.
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Loved it ❤️
Loved this! Well done, writer!