Thursday, April 1, 2010

After the Fire

They wait, quietly. Five suitcases no one came to retrieve. A jacket and hat folded on the concierge's desk. A set of Mah-Jong tiles trapped in mid-game, unending.

The burned walls were patched where they could be and the rooms sealed where they couldn't. More extensive repairs waited, too, in potentia. There was no help for it. The doors were closed. The spiders and silverfish reclaimed the floor inch by dusty inch.

Only the caretaker remains, keeping the grass trimmed, making what repairs he can, and sleeping every night in a blanket of cobwebs, dreaming of the past.

And waiting.

4 comments:

Loren Eaton said...

This reminds me just a little bit of Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains," which is an incredible story if you've never read it. Short, too.

r2d2y said...

oh, that one was creepy tho (the Ray Bradbury one). Poor doggy!

Scattercat said...

I love that story. Used it to teach indirect characterization to my seventh graders once.

I actually was inspired by a link to an actual abandoned hotel that someone went through with a camera. Pretty much this whole thing is stuff from the article, just in flitterfic form.

dolorah said...

It works for that abandoned feeling.

Like the audio too.

........dhole