Happy Story Orgy Monday! #storyorgy #blogstory

Happy Story Orgy Monday!

Okay – so it’s been a while since I’ve posted…my bad, but I’ve had a lot of personal changes I dealt with…and with the help of friends keeping me on the straight and narrow (*eyes my muse*) I should be back here every Monday hopefully…*crosses fingers* seriously hopefully…lmao

This is a new story. Will it turn into a blog story or just be this one snippet and no more…um…uh…I have no idea. All I know is when I read the prompt this scene popped in my head so we’ll see if anything happens with it…

This week’s prompt:  He opened the book to the folded page…

No Name Snippet

copyright © 2015

Havan Fellows

“Sean Eric Brittenum get your ass in here and start cleaning!” Amber shouted through the sliding glass screen door.

Sean looked up from the garden, shielding his eyes from the unforgiving midday Florida sun. “Can’t you see I’m busy here? We’ve got a week…that’s plenty of time for me to gut and clean the house,” he hollered back before returning his attention to the weak looking plants that never bore anything even close to being edible—the strawberries should’ve been called waterberries, they were always so mushy and nasty, the sweet peppers looked like someone siphoned all the air out of them leaving them shriveled up. He might not have known much about gardening, but Sean knew that tomatoes were not supposed to wear their seeds on the outside.

He wasn’t surprised by any of this; he had a perpetual bad habit of killing everything he tried to grow…

“Damn it, you promised Sean. I really want the house clean before the foreclosure is final. Don’t do this to me.”

Amber’s voice rose with her panic level, something that always happened when she freaked out. Losing their family home to the bank definitely qualified for freaking her out.

It wasn’t that Sean didn’t care that they were going to lose a house that’d been in their family for over a hundred years, and it wasn’t that he was worried his twin and he would soon be homeless and forced to bunk in his best friend’s garage apartment—god knew he wasn’t looking forward to living with that slob.

Sean’s problem was his inability to believe this was actually happening to them. Losing the house and having to move in with Lyle…well that shit just couldn’t happen to them. When their parents died they didn’t have any life insurance, but at least the house had been paid off. It was Sean’s brilliant idea to take out a mortgage and use the equity in the home to pay off all their parents’ outstanding debts to the vultures that always came out of the woodwork when someone died, plus use any left over for college for them instead of taking out student loans that he’d heard so many bad things about.

So hey, good for him, he managed to put off the vultures for a full four fucking years.

He let his sour mood get the better of him. “God fucking damn it. Fine.” He stood and stomped his way to the back porch, up the three steps onto the wooden deck that led to the sliding glass doors. When he saw his twin opening her mouth he shouted as he wretched the screen open, “I said fucking fine! I don’t need you trying to be all mommy to me. You aren’t mom.”

With that parting stab he pushed past her and continued to make sure every step sounded like an elephant charging through their ancient farmhouse with its old wood floors, perfect for echoing each heavy footfall.

It only took him until he reached the stairs to feel the sadness he knew was radiating from her. His stubborn side wanted to ignore it and continue to the attic to start rummaging through the crap up there, but he could never put his anger in front of Amber and today wasn’t the day to start.

Turning around, he hurried back through the kitchen to where she stood frozen by the sliding glass doors and wrapped his arms around her. He didn’t even get the sorry out before her tears hit his shoulder, soaking into the thin fabric of his tank top.

“Hey honey, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry; you didn’t deserve that.”

She leaned away from him, brushing off his comment with a wave of her hand. “I don’t care what you said, you’ve been saying that shit since before mom and dad died. I just hurt because I can feel you hurting. You hold it all in, Sean, and that isn’t healthy.”

Oh shit…she suckered him into this one—a discussion about feelings.

He inched away from her, moving toward the closer side entrance of the kitchen that would take him the long way through the dining room and sitting room, but he’d still get to the stairs—and more importantly, out of this room faster than trying to forge his way across the whole kitchen and more direct route to the stairs.

“We are not talking about this right now.” He held up his hand, palm toward her in warning.

She sighed as she moved in his direction. “It’s just that you’ve never cried…never mourned their deaths. You immediately went into guy mode and started doing what you needed to in order to save the farmhouse and me…” She threw her arms up, practically growling her next words, “When is it your turn, Sean? When do you get to breathe and sit and relax? You even have two jobs, for god’s sake, because you wanted me to focus on college. You tell me not to mommy you…well stop daddying me! Maybe if you allowed me to work and help out…may—”

“We wouldn’t be losing our home? So it’s my fault because I was too proud to allow you to drop out of college and get a job? Is that it?”

“That’s not what I mean and you know it.” Shaking her head from side to side, her Shirley Temple curls bobbed with every twist of her neck. “Oh for Christ’s sake, Sean, people go to college and hold down a job all the time. It isn’t that unheard of.”

But with their parents gone it was his job as oldest (by a full five and a half minutes) to make sure they were taken care of. When his full time job as night stocker at the Publix grocery store in town didn’t offer enough to keep their bills current, he’d gotten a part time job with a landscaping company.

He didn’t have the drive his sister had for college and academics. He still planned to go to college one day…but it was clear they only had the funds for one of them to attend at a time, and he made the executive decision that it would be her first.

“Okay, you want to have this conversation now, let’s do this. But I’m not cleaning the attic until tomorrow then. I only have the strength to tackle one mountain a day—you or the attic. You choose.”

Amber crossed her arms and glared at him. He knew she wanted to finish lecturing him, but he betted she wanted that stupid attic cleaned out even more since it meant something to her to have the house pristine before they had to hand it over to the bank.

And with that last thought all the fight faded from him. He had failed her. So many things he could’ve done differently, but they were barely nineteen when their worlds came crashing down on them and the officials explained that their parents hadn’t survived the car crash.

“Yeah,” he mumbled more to himself than his twin, “I’ll make sure the attic is finished today. There can’t be that much crap up there. Most of it will probably be tossed.”

“Don’t toss anything…special, okay?”

He nonchalantly nodded in response as he hastily made his way back to the stairs and second floor of the farmhouse. Special? What did she even mean by that?

Walking down the second floor hall that overlooked the entryway, he eyed the string hanging from the pull-down stairs for the attic.

When Amber decided the house had to be spotless it was a no-brainer that he would be the one to clean the attic.

Once when he was either ten or eleven, he’d pushed the hope chest from the foot of his bed all the way down the walkway to below the string that always dangled from the ceiling. Amber sat look-out on the top part of the stairs with their first dog Buick—a very hefty beagle that loved belly rubs.

So, Sean had pushed, pulled and dragged that heavy hope chest to the attic door and stretched on his tippy toes to reach the rope. His fingers wrapped around the old dried cord and he began pulling it down when—and this is where his and his sister’s recollection varied—he thought he heard some wind, as if opposite windows up there were left open and a heavy gust rushed through the attic at the exact time he started to yank on the rope.

Amber, though, had started screaming at the top of her lungs over and over again. She’d abandoned Buick and jumped up the few steps to the landing, throwing herself at him with all her might.

Their parents had shown up; Sean had a huge knot on the side of his head where he banged it against the wall thanks to his twin’s antics and he had a full week of no play after school because he knew better than to go in the attic because “it was dangerous up there”.

He held a grudge against Amber that whole week, even though she stayed inside with him and refused to play. The grounding wasn’t the reason for his anger, though; it was the stupid story she came up with later that night, telling him she’d done it because she saw a hand in the slim opening of the door reaching for him.

Ever since that day they’d both stayed away from the attic—she out of complete and utter terror of the place; he because a little part of him wondered if what she thought could be true.

But he wasn’t a kid anymore and the attic held no weird or spooky vibes for him now. Even if he never went up there in the four years since his parents died, he’d never had any reason to until now.

Grabbing the string, he deliberately pulled down on it, keeping his gaze on the slowly widening entrance to the attic. When the door was completely open, he reached up and unfolded the ladder attached to it.

That was easy enough.

He carefully crawled up the ladder and hoisted himself into the dusty and muggy attic. It was bigger than he imagined; he had no problem standing up straight in certain areas, his five feet eleven inches not withstanding. Of course there were more spots than not that he had to at least bow his neck some and keep his head down, but still.

He was amazed that the attic spread the whole length of the house it seemed.  The far corners he’d have to crawl into, but thanks to the morning sunlight coming in the four double windows, he could almost see that the corners were more than likely empty anyway.

A well built table, the odd height and slim width of it suggesting it might have been meant for a foyer or hall of some sort, stood in the middle of the attic. Its prominent position made Sean almost think of it as maybe a table of greeting. It sounded funny, but really it was right there in your face when you climbed into the attic.

There was one lone book centered perfectly on the table. Sean froze as he looked at the leather bound old tome.

Engraved on the front in gold flakes was Sean Brittenum.

As if he no longer had control of his limbs, his hand ran the length of the beautiful—and oddly enough dustless—book.

Something wasn’t right. This wasn’t right…

The hairs on the back of his neck hardened, the skin there prickled, and he wanted nothing more than to turn around and jump through the hole in the floor and back to the safe haven of the second floor of the farmhouse again. Because this…here…he didn’t feel as if he still stood in the shelter of his beloved home since birth.

Instead of turning around, his fingers fluttered over the frayed uneven edges of the pages of the book, letting them tickle the sensitive pads on the tips. He noticed that one of the pages was folded over, but not creased and pressed down to close properly again. Therefore it caused a slight hitch up in the soft leather cover of the book.

He opened the book to the folded page...

Not sure if this is to be cont’d or not…

The fun is never over with just one turn—we are the Story Orgy™ remember *winks*—so head over to the next blog and enjoy multiples with us…

Hank Edwards’s blog

Lee Brazil’s blog