FLAPPER GIRL | ❝All those people, all those lives, where are they now?❞
In all her ninety-something years of death, all Effie Connolly wishes for is some excitement in Button House... from anyone other than the fellow ghosts she's stuck in purg...
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CHAPTER SIX the fool of button house
⊱ ────── {⋅. ✯ .⋅} ────── ⊰
THE SUN RISES another day over Button House, the dawn illuminating the dew drops on the lawn outside. In her room, Effie awakens at the usual crack of dawn — even almost a century later, it still amuses her that this is the time of day she wakes up. She was certainly never so efficient when she was alive. In fact, in her last few months, she can recount times where she woke up just in time for lunch; she might have slept longer, had someone not shaken her awake.
Recently things have been different though. There is something missing... or someone.
Ever since Alison had come to Button House, Kitty sucked onto her every word and motion like a leech. Indeed, the Cooper girl was her new beam of shining light, which meant freedom for Effie. Oh, what joy! How wonderful it felt to awaken at her own pace in the mornings, to not have a Kitty-shaped alarm clock screaming in her face (right after Fanny's routine jumping-out-of-the-window to kick off the day, of course). This morning in particular, Effie relishes in every second of solitude. She had put up with this for over ninety years, so she thought it was high time she caught a break, passing the baton to a reluctant Alison.
Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, Effie gets up and stretches out her arms, as if it would make a difference to her ghostly form. The sun shines on the dew-adorned lawn outside Button House, ready for a new day. The flapper girl just starts to pivot around, when —
"Good morrow to you!"
Effie yelps, then clutches her heart with an indignant sigh. "Hello, Thomas..."
Without her asking him to, the poet trails behind her down the hallway, his mind clearly burdened as always. "I was wondering if you would serve as a critic for my verse? You know, for Alison? Last time, much to my horror, I stole the exquisite words of KylieMin-ohg without the slightest awareness beforehand!"
"Oh, I don't know about that," she grins mischievously, "I thought you were quite the hit."
Indeed, it had been of the most amusing things Effie had gotten ear of in Button House — Thomas had ventured into Alison's bedroom late in the evening, the two of them alone, and he masterfully recited his poetic verse ("I'm dreaming you fell in love with me, like I'm in love with you, but dreaming's all I do, if only they'd come true...") to which, in his utter amazement, Alison had echoed back to him ("I should be so lucky in love..."). Of course, that was when she had broken the news to him, through stifled laughter, that his poetry was a carbon copy of a song by the eighties pop star Kylie Minogue, which he overheard on the radio only hours prior.
