Recently, I found myself wandering through the foggy lanes of a quiet English suburb, making my way to my Aunt Margarets terraced house to deliver some important papers. We really only meet on Christmas or Easter, but this time the wind pushed me there as if it were an urgent matter. Aunt Margaret doesnt get on well with others, though her troubles arent due to lack of money. I wouldn’t say Im tight-fisted, but I hold that tidiness and cleanliness are the foundations of a proper life. One can live simply, yet still keep a home in good order.
Inside, her parlour was an odd landscape of dusty relics. Rows upon rows of ceramic hedgehogs, mismatched tea sets, and empty pickle jars towered together like ancient monuments. The bathroom was occupied by her old tomcat, Percy, and his litter tray, which she cleaned once a week if she remembered. Crumpled wrappers danced around my feet as if swept by a breeze only I could feel. The faint but insistent stench of drains and spoiled bread filled the house, growing stronger with every step.
Aunt Margaret offered me some food, her hands pale in the weak light as she set the table. When she produced the cutlery, I noticed a peculiar stickiness still clinging to the forks. As she busied herself at the stove, spooning something unidentifiable from a battered saucepan, I quietly pulled a packet of antibacterial wipes from my satchel and began polishing the forks, the movements feeling slow and strange.
She noticed. Dreamlike, time wobbled, and as I tentatively poked at the food on my plate, she fixed me with a watery, questioning gaze:
Are you not hungry, or is it just not to your taste?
What could I say in that moment suspended between realities? Has anyone else drifted through a bizarre scene like this?
