Story Requests

Home, but not her home

The door swung inwards, creaking on its hinges. Eugenia peered inside with trepidation and stepped daintily through open doorway. She turned around to look back at her mother, who was unloading the car. 

Leaving her suitcase on the doorstep, she began to walk around, her blonde braid swinging behind her and thumping against her sun browned neck. Her wide eyes took in every sight:  The spiderwebs, the dust, even every crack and every paint bubble in the walls. 

She entered one of the bedrooms and gazed out the window. 

You could see the backyard, which was bigger than she'd expected. Towering trees grew all around it; it was almost like they were sheltering the land. The sky was grey and covered with clouds, but the sun shown like a bright ball behind them if you looked hard enough. 

Eugenia looked away. She suddenly noticed how hot and stuffy it was in there. She opened the window and the let the morning breeze drift through. When she turned around, she noticed something. 

A painting. With a slip of paper. 

There was a painting with a slip of paper on the wall, and she was sure it hadn't been there when she came in. 

So she did what anyone else would do: She walked forward and took the slip of paper in her hands. It read: 

To the Birch family: We found this painting from the old owners, and since we didn't want it, we weren't sure what quite to do with it. Mrs. Birch said that the daughter liked flowers, and so we thought she would like it. 

— The Thomas Family

Eugenia stared at it, drinking in every detail. It was a vase of flowers, sitting in a windowsill, with the sunlight pouring in. She blew on the dust that had thickly covered it and wiped her hands when it didn't all go away. 

Her mother stepped in. "So what do you think of the house? Have you decided which room you'd like to take?"

Eugenia nodded. "This one. This one's my favourite." 

Her mother grinned and held up a vacuum, some washcloths and a bucket full of cold water. "Then let's get started. This place needs cleaning before we completely move in."

Around six hours later, Eugenia stood back, hands on hips. She was beaming, happy with her work. Her empty bedroom had almost completely transformed. 

She'd cleaned the windowsills and wiped down the walls, so all the remaining dust was completely removed. It'd taken a while to decide where to put everything, but her bed was in corner and her dresser beside it. Her plants were lined up on the windowsill and some little bright lights were taped on the ceiling, tangled between her plastic vines. It was just like at her old house. And all her magazines and books about flora were neatly arranged on her bookshelf. The painting was on the wall, above her bed. 

Some dusty boxes still lay around, but still. She thought she'd done a pretty good job. 

Her head turned towards the painting, and she saw a memory.

The memory was this: It was her, putting the pink azaleas that her mother gave her on her windowsill amongst her other plants, choosing where it wound fit. Her eyes scanning the garden she'd worked so hard on for so long. Her plants. 

She snapped out of the memory and almost, for a split second, she thought that was still in her old room, that she would look through the glass and see her garden, the one she'd planted and tilled and watered herself. But all she saw was an empty garden bed. She was in the new house, and her garden wasn't there. 

Her eyelashes flickered, her lips trembled, her head bent, and her heart ached. 

The tears fell, and she couldn't stop them. 

She curled into a ball onto her bed and cried silently, letting the tears show her emotional pain.