Today’s writing prompt and my response.
Prompt two for the week. Write a poem, a story. Link the prompts into a longer piece. Or simply read and enjoy.
Stone steps into a cellar: pic prompt
She hesitated on the top step. Once she would have skipped down, unthinking, her way among the shadows well-practised since childhood.
Papa had brought her here before she understood the cellar’s purpose. Earliest memories of rows of dusty bottles in worn wooden racks; great barrels with tiny taps in their sides; the lantern swinging as Papa studied labels, stroking his beard, muttering over difficult decisions
‘What shall we feed our guests tonight, ma cherie?’ he would say, gazing at her intently, and she would reach up and touch a random bottle and Papa would laugh and tousle her hair before slipping the bottle from the rack.
‘Aha! A Chateau Seval Blanc, St Emilion.’ He would wink. ‘For the dessert, yes. But for our meat, this.’ And he would run his fingers along the wrapped corks until he found what he had been after all along.
She adored these excursions into the shadowy cellar. Long after Papa passed, she kept the cellar well stocked and would take children, then grandchildren down the steps, bidding them learn their way among the dimpled stones as she had.
The cellar was one of the things she missed in the years she was ill, bed-ridden. She would question the children, how was it going, are you looking after my wines? They would smile and say, yes Maman, only the best for the cellar.
And now, today, she is here again. At the top of the old staircase which once sloped down into gloom, where once the walls were dusty, the roof beams cobwebbed. Her body is light, lighter than the days Papa steered her down here, picking her way with toddler steps. She stands in the entrance, aghast at this strange, pristine place.
Soulless.
Soulless?
She tilts her head and smiles as she floats, ethereal, through the air above the steps, around the corner and into the merciful shadows of the cellar, where the outrageous electric lamps are dimmed.
‘Hello, Papa,’ she whispers to the dusty racks. ‘I am here.’
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Find Cheryl’s flash fiction and short stories here!