Today’s writing prompt and my response.
Day five of this week’s challenge. The story starts here.
Challenge Flat Glistening: use these three words
Hilary held her stare, a challenge to the snooty woman to clamber off her perch and act like a human being. Assuming she was a human being. The thought sneaked into Hilary’s tired brain. She squashed it. If there was hot water and food, she could wait to discover the truth.
The woman sniffed. ‘We’re not daft,’ she snapped. Her eyes roved up and down Hilary’s body, apparently took in the quality of the coat despite its grubbiness. She moved her appraisal to the man beside Hilary. Her rescuer, whose name she didn’t know. Finally, the woman gave a brief nod.
‘Okay, if you shower immediately. No luggage?’
‘I have luggage,’ Hilary’s companion offered. ‘And I’m Dirk, this is Hilary.’
Dirk. Why did that name rattle something in Hilary’s brain? She let it go.
‘No luggage,’ she said.
‘I’ll find something from the left-behind cupboard.’ The woman stepped aside and ushered in her guests.
An hour later, a clean Hilary, clad in a too big but also clean woollen shift and cardigan, sat with Dirk at a table in a pleasant dining room, her stomach warmed by chicken and leek soup. She felt human again, the terror of the last few days receding into a nightmarish memory.
She smiled. ‘Thank you for getting me out of there.’
Dirk shrugged. ‘Happy to, although not sure we’re out of the woods yet.’ He waved his arms to take in the size of the room. ‘How does all this, and our rooms and I assume a kitchen, fit into that boot we saw?’
Hilary took up a glistening knife, turned it over, set it back down. She tried a grin, half-hearted about it. ‘No idea. Aliens? Magic?’
Dirk leaned forward. ‘Tell me about these curtains, what they’ve got to do with it all.’
‘It’s how it started, for me anyway.’ She fiddled with the knife again, told him about coming home night after night to closed curtains, no sign of entry, nothing stolen. And then it was taps running, heating on when it shouldn’t be, pictures moved, clothes swapped about in her wardrobe. And still no sign of how, or what, or who.
‘I was frightened to go home.’ Her voice was a whisper as the fearful uncertainty rose again in her mind. ‘What I didn’t know, was that it was happening to others in town.’ She shook her head. ‘Only in Landharwich. When I tried to tell them at work, in the city, they laughed, told me I was losing it.’
‘A kind of mass hysteria?’ Dirk said. ‘Such things have been recorded, you know. They can really happen.’
‘Perhaps.’ Hilary bit her top lip, drawing courage for the rest. ‘My nerves were shot, I slept badly, and when I did, I dreamed of being homeless.’ She grimaced. ‘As if that would solve my problems. If I didn’t have a home, I couldn’t be terrified of going there.’ Her voice was flat, emotionless as she told Dirk the rest. ‘One evening I couldn’t do it anymore. I got off the bus from work and wandered the streets. Which is when I saw the others, so many homeless people. I joined them.’
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