Short Story - Empty, Empty House

Despite her worn couch, her rickety kitchen table and her clutter of useless bits and bobs, the house still felt empty. The rooms echoed her deflated attitude, repeating her fears in hollow monotone voices, and whispering all of her concerns in her ears. There was a certain silence that she could feel, creeping across her skin as she walked from room to room, and it overpowered the soft sounds of the outside traffic and the gentle hum of her fridge. It was a consuming silence, and she felt it in her chest; a heavy weight, pushing down on her with such force that all she could do was hold back the tears.

Her house was missing something, and it had been for some time.

After work each day, after the key clicked in the lock and the door swung open, she would be greeted with a sad stale air.

It would welcome her, as though the house was not her own, bowing low and offering to take her coat. She would graciously accept, taking her time to hang up her coat and untie her shoes, before drifting through the rooms and opening each window as wide as she could, in an attempt to fill the house with fresh air.

The clean air would never stay long though. It would stroll through the house, running its fingers along her shelves and disturbing the dust to inspect her long- forgotten items of memorabilia. It would brush past her desk, scattering her paper across the room, and impatiently rattle the curtains as it passed. For a moment, as she picked up her disorientated pieces of paper, she would feel as though all was right again. As though she wasn’t alone.

But then the fresh breeze would be gone, leaving the soft sound of the door closing in its wake, and she would be alone again with her empty, empty house.

It was full of whispers.

And now, wandering through the house, she felt the emptiness stronger than ever. She sat cross-legged on her old couch, its once red fabric pale from years of sitting in the sun, and waited. She waited for her heartbeat to slow. It thrashed wildly around in her chest, clenching her ribcage and thumping at her lungs. It was full of fear, her heart. It could smell the resounding tang of freedom, of familiarity, of home, but could not quite taste it.

She waited for the sun to go down. It peered through the blinds, watching her with a slow resignation, and sighed. The soft, low light reflected off the sink and soaked into her wobbly kitchen table, highlighting where it had once been stained with coffee, tears and tea.

She waited for the traffic to slow. The constant drone of blurry cars flowed through the rooms, a twisting and turning current of sound. Murmuring waves crashed over her head as each vehicle passed by, carrying someone else to someplace else.

She waited for her eyes to water. She was familiar with that hush of salt in the back of her throat and that weak sting in the corners of her eyes.