Prompted Fiction

#4 - Somewhere I used to live (Week 1 No. 4)

The street is lined with trees, mostly Norway maples, sunburst locusts, sugar maples, blue spruces. The houses are all 60s vintage, then-suburban, now well within the city. On the south side of the slowly-winding street there is a concrete sidewalk; the street itself is paved with asphalt; there is no painted centre line. The street has an urban cross-section, concrete curb and gutter, catchbasins with rectangular grates.

Not quite halfway along the street, between two bungalows, is a sidesplit. The bottom is very-slightly pinkish brown brick; up above is white siding, and the house has a roof covered in brown shingles. There is an asphalt driveway leading up to the garage. The front yard includes a flowering crabapple which blooms dark red in May. There is a small flower garden with portulacas, a weeping mulberry, and a tall, young, Norway maple. To the left, there is a wooden fence with a gate in it.

The house consists of a garage and front door on the bottom level. The garage door is painted brown and is to the left of the front door. There is a wooden door (with a screen door in front of it) to the right. There is a narrow, tall window beside the door and a little higher, is a large three-panelled window, made to look like it is formed out of many small panes. Under this window is a cedar shrub and a pair of mock oranges that smell glorious when they bloom in the spring. On the upper floor, above the garage, are two windows framed by brown imitation shutters.

As you approach the door, you notice a little patio made of brown, angled bricks arranged in a circle. Moss grows in between the bricks. The patio is surrounded on two sides by a short alpine currant hedge. The other two sides are the driveway and the actual entrance to the house, a door matched by a long window. There is a screen door, and behind that, a wooden door. The wooden door has a big, curving handle below a lock. It also has three square-ish windows, arranged near the top of the door like an imitation fanlight.

You have to pull the whole door towards yourself to unlock it, and it is heavy, at least for a child. When you go in, you find yourself in a long corridor. On your right is a small nook in front of the window, filled with plants. There is also a bench, one with a back and a base that is a storage chest, and past this, a closet with sliding, mirrored doors. Further still is a staircase, and next to that, a door. At the far end of the corridor is another door, which is almost always open, so you can see into the room beyond. On your left is a rubber mat for winter boots and a plastic rack with shoes. The wall has art; botanical prints, a woodcut of dancers in traditional Eastern European dress. If you close the door, there is a macrame (I think) door hanging on the inside, red, yellow, and warm orange. The floor is reddish-brown tile.

If you walk down to the end of the corridor, you find yourself in a small room with two additional doors on your left. In front of you are two childrens' desks and chairs, beside a set of glass sliding doors. These doors lead out into a garden. One wall of the room is covered in bookcases, full of books, in all genres and for all ages. There is also a hundred year old upright piano with a wonky sound board but a round, warm tone. The piano smells of furniture polish and a pleasantly musty, old smell. There is a very old television in the room, the kind with dials marked "UHF" and "VHF", and a knob you can pull to toggle between the display being in colour and being in black-and-white. This tv is positioned between the two doors previously mentioned. One off these leads to a tiny washroom, and the other to a closet with shelves. The shelves contain board games and puzzles and bottles of tempera paints. The floor is hardwood, light coloured, something like pine. On top of it is an oriental rug, green and cream with a central medallion and pink and blue roses and lighter green leaves making accents and a border. In front of he sliding door is a large plant stand, with African violets and small foliage plants. On the walls are botanical prints and a print of a pheasant done in the same style as the botanicals.