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Good evening, KeePers. So, I was very much inspired by this thread, and I wrote a short story based on it. At the suggestion of a fellow writer friend, I am posting it here. I shall post it in chunks, becouse it is rather long. Here goes…
Theresa’s house didn’t have an attic. She knew that. Her mother knew that. Her five sisters and four brothers knew it. And that is why Theresa was so surprised when she found the staircase.
She was alone in the house one night, a rare occurrence with a family as big as hers. Mom had taken a few of the boys to football practice, the rest of them to band practice, four sisters to a birthday party and the last one, Addy, to doctor’s appointment. Theresa was alone.
She was seven years old, and had never been home alone before. The house felt terribly small when it was crowded, but when lonely little Theresa was the only inhabitant, it became as big as any mansion. A storm was picking up outside, and the old house creaked, and there was no one to tell Theresa every bump and groan she heard wasn’t a burglar or a boogieman forcing its way inside.
She sat down in the living room, intending to watch a movie, but the wind howled and the trees outside scraped against the walls, and before she knew it, she was running upstairs. Maybe she would feel safe in her own room, where she could hide under the bed and cuddle her Teddy bear.
So she threw herself up the dark staircase, while the wind screamed and faraway thunder moaned. But when she ran into her room and closed the door, the storm was still there. She locked the door, and lightning flashed. There was nowhere to hide. But then, she felt her eyes drawn upwards. There, on the ceiling, was a trap door. A long cord dangled down from it, falling nearly to the floor.
We don’t have an attic. Theresa told herself. But what else could the trap door lead to? She jumped as another bolt of lightning flashed outside. Maybe, maybe she would be safe in the attic. Theresa pulled on the cord.
A staircase folded down, like a doorway to a fairyland being summoned out of thin air. A light was on in the attic, and a warm smell wafted down, like freshly baked bread. The sound of the thunder and rain faded out as Theresa climbed the staircase.
What she found there took her breath away. Big, tall shelves stood against three of the four walls, and a desk was set against the fourth. Everywhere Theresa looked, there were pots of paint, paintbrushes, canvases, and all sorts of painting utensils she couldn’t name. Everything was arranged just how Theresa liked it. The spaces on the walls that weren’t covered by shelves had pictures hung on them. Theresa looked closer, and found they were pictures of her family and friends. An oatmeal cookie, her favorite kind, was placed on the desk.
Theresa could never explain how she knew what to do next, but she did. She grabbed a few pots of paint, a canvas, and a handful of brushes. She found an easel leaning in the corner, unfolded it, and put the canvas on it. And she painted.
She painted her favorite thing in the world- her family. She painted Mom, her five sisters, four brothers, and she even threw their pet hamster in for good measure. But when it was done, it didn’t seem finished. There was an empty space next to Mom.
That’s where Theresa painted Dad.
She didn’t remember him very well, only that he always smiled and liked to call her ‘his sunshine.’ So that’s how she drew him, smiling and putting his arm around Mom. She found she was crying a little, and she couldn’t figure out why.Blog: https://weridasusual.home.blog/
“Theresa!” Mom’s voice came from downstairs. She sounded worried. “Theresa, where are you?”
“Mom, Mom!” Theresa ran down the attic stairs, more excited than she had ever been in her whole life. “Mom, guess what I found in the attic!” she cried as she ran into the living room.
Mom was holding Addy, the youngest sister, who had fallen asleep on her shoulder. “What attic, honey?” she asked.
“The attic, Mom!” Theresa jumped around, too excited to stand still. “I painted you a picture!” She realized for the first time that the picture had been for Mom.
“We don’t have an attic.” Said Francine, the oldest sister. “Yes, we do!” exclaimed Theresa. She grabbed Francine’s hand and all but dragged her up the stairs. But when they reached the bedroom, she pulled up short. The stairs were gone.
“There was an attic!” she told Francine emphatically. “There was.”
“Of course.” Francine said. “Now go get in your pajamas. It’s time for bed.”
“But the attic!” Theresa cried, on the verge of tears.
“You just imagined it.” Said Francine. She was tired, but she pulled herself together and knelt to look Theresa in the eye. “I’m sorry. You just imagined it. We don’t have an attic.”
“I saw it.” Theresa insisted. She sniffed. She looked up, but there was no trap door, no long, hanging cord. “I know I did.”
She cried herself to sleep that night, wondering what had happened to the attic. And what had become of the picture she had painted for Mom.Theresa looked for the attic for weeks after that, but she never found it. Eventually, it slipped from her thoughts, replaced with the things that were obviously real. Addy went to the doctor again and again, and Theresa heard Mom say words like ‘loans,’ and ‘debts,’ and ‘bills’ a lot.
One day in late summer, a few weeks before Theresa turned ten, Mom announced that they were going to visit Grandma. On a normal day, this news would have thrilled Theresa. But she was not in a good mood. A girl had called her names at school, and twice the teacher had called on her when she didn’t have the answer. Theresa was in the mood to mope, and moping wasn’t something you did at Grandma’s house.
She slumped in the back seat of the minivan all the way to Grandma’s house, and when they got there and the rest of the kids were climbing out and hugging Grandma, Theresa could barely get herself to move. While Mom and Grandma were busy with her siblings, she found herself wandering off.
She began thinking about the attic, for the first time in a long while. She remembered how happy she was when she was painting, and she wished she could feel that way again. When she looked up, she realized she was in Grandma’s spare room. Absently, she ran her hand over the surface of the desk and the top of the sewing table, then finally flopped down on the bed. She lay there for a moment,Blog: https://weridasusual.home.blog/
studying the trap door in the ceiling. It took her a moment to realize what was so strange about it. Grandma didn’t have an attic.
Theresa smiled.
There was a cord hanging from it, but it was short and Theresa had to climb on a chair to reach it. But when she pulled it, and the stairs folded down, she knew she had found the attic again.
Everything was how she’d left it; the painting of her family was still on the easel. But Theresa took it off and put it aside. She had a new picture to paint. She pulled out a new canvas and found some new paints. And with quick, angry brush strokes, she painted school.
She painted the girl who bullied her, and the teacher who always called on her when she felt the most clueless. She painted herself, trapped between the two. She cried again, and this time she knew why. Heart pounding and teeth clenched, she sat back. It was then she noticed an empty spot, like the one in her first painting. This one was next to her. Finding some golden paint that shimmered in the light, she drew an angel. And then she knew she hadn’t been alone at school that day.
“Theresa!” Grandma’s voice called, seemingly from far away. “Do you want any cookies?”
Theresa stood up. “Yes!” she called. She was about to run down the attic stairs again, but then she remembered something. She grabbed the painting, which had already dried. “It is real”’ she said to herself. “It is real.”
She hurried to the kitchen, where everyone was munching some of Grandma’s world-famous oatmeal cookies. “I found the attic!” Theresa cried triumphantly. Mom and Francine both sighed, and patiently prepared to tell her Grandma didn’t have an attic. But then Theresa held up her painting. Her heart skipped a beat. The canvas was gone.
In its place was a stack of papers, each one covered in her own lopsided handwriting. She leafed through them. They held a story, a story about school and bullies and teachers, but mostly about Jesus. She handed it to Mom. Mom read it, eyebrows lifting incrementally higher with each page.
“This is…” she started. “This is really good.”
“Thank you.” Theresa said, and a little empty place in her heart was filled.
When she got home, the trapdoor was on her ceiling again. It disappeared when anyone else was around, but when Theresa was alone, it would always materialize. She found that painting was her favorite thing to do, and the thing she was very best at. Of course, she didn’t often call it painting, because whenever she took her paintings out of the attic, they became stories. Sometimes, things were lost in the translation between the image and the words, and Theresa realized this was a limit caused by not being able to take people into her attic.Blog: https://weridasusual.home.blog/
Theresa sat in her attic one pale winter’s evening. She was painting Addy, the way she imagined she’d be if she wasn’t sick. She painted her with bouncing blonde curls and freckled cheeks. Not the way she was now, with her hair that fell out more and more each day, and her hollow, sunken cheeks. The words ‘cancer,’ and ‘chemotherapy’ had been whispered behind so many closed doctor’s office doors that Theresa was hardly surprised when Mom had spoken them aloud for the first time. Horrified, but not surprised. Now, she was dealing with it the only way she knew how: painting. It was more like PAINting, but that was the way it was sometimes.
Lately, the stairs had creaked as they opened, the paint either ran or flaked off the canvas, the finished product looked awful, and the story it became looked like the words had been dripped lazily onto to page. And yet Theresa was hardly lazy, especially today. But it seemed the harder she worked, the more the colors smudged. Finally, threw down the brush in frustration.
“What’s the use?” she muttered as she buried her face in her hands. She couldn’t think of an answer to her own question, couldn’t think of a reason to pick up the brush again.
“Theresa?” Addy’s small voice broke through her thoughts. She looked, and found herself sitting at the desk in her room, a half-finished story glaring up at her. She swiveled around on her chair. Addy was standing in the doorway, leaning heavily on the doorframe.
“I don’t feel very good.” She said. Theresa stood up, the urgency of the situation setting off alarms in her brain. Addy never complained unless she was very, very sick.
“Come on.” Theresa put her arm around Addy and guided her downstairs, finding Mom in the kitchen. Within five minutes, they were in the minivan, on the way to the hospital. Theresa rode in the backseat, next to Addy. She couldn’t think of any reason she had ridden along, other than she couldn’t leave Addy. When they got to the hospital, Addy was quickly admitted, and soon Theresa was sitting next to her in her hospital room. She was asleep, as far as Theresa could tell. Mom had gone to talk to the doctors.
Theresa wanted to do something, anything, to help Addy. But she felt so useless. Then, she thought of the “useless” paints in her attic. I know why they’re there.
She was hardly surprised when a long cord fell in her lap. She gave it a firm tug, and down came the stairs, creaking loudly. She jumped up them two at a time. She got a new canvas, and a wide selection of brown and orange paint. She painted a giraffe, Addy’s favorite animal. She also put a parachute on its back, just because she felt like it. When she left the attic, she had a story about a skydiving giraffe in her hands.
“What’s that?” Addy asked when she woke up.
“It’s a story,” Theresa said, “for you.”
Theresa’s skydiving giraffe made Addy laugh so hard, a nurse came in to see what was going on. She read the story next, and soon the whole hospital had heard of the “skydiving giraffe story.”
Theresa and Addy were still giggling when Mom came in. Her face was pale, and she had been crying. There was bad news, very bad news. Both girls stopped laughing.Blog: https://weridasusual.home.blog/
Addy never left the hospital again.
Theresa stood in her attic, staring at the unfinished picture of Addy. When she closed her eyes, she could still see the inscription on the gravestone: ‘Adaline Lewis, 2009-2017. Rest in peace.” She was struck by the emptiness of her painting, like Addy was standing alone in a field of white. Suddenly, she realized she had seen emptiness like that before, in other paintings. She knew who belonged in this one.
Late that night, Theresa finally finished her painting. On Addy’s left stood Dad, who had gone to heaven so many years before. On her right stood a man Theresa had never seen before, but she knew who he was all the same. With the gold-tinged paint, she drew scars on his hands and feet. Scars made by huge, cruel nails that had once pinned him to a cross.
Mom found that story lying on her dresser the next day. She knew who had wrote it; she could tell by the lopsided handwriting.
But she knew it had come from the man whose scars shone gold.Blog: https://weridasusual.home.blog/
Ok, that was a lot of cut-and-pasting. *wipes brow* I’ll tag some folks, and I’m going to miss some, so I apologize in advance to them.
@Christi-eaton @kate-flournoy @ethryndal @shannon @Emily @winter-rose @that_writer_girl_99 @graciegirl (Help, I’m running out of tags!) @catwing @CK4always And Hannah, I forgot your tag! I will have to get your attention the old-fashioned way… *sends smoke signals*Blog: https://weridasusual.home.blog/
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Wow @daughteroftheking, impressive story! Very good imagery, I felt like I could picture things happening! Great plot! I’ll tag Hannah for you. @salome01W4G.
@Shannon Oh, thank you very much! *beams*
Blog: https://weridasusual.home.blog/
@shannon Thanks @daughteroftheking I’m reading threw!
~I don’t know what I’m doing~
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@daughteroftheking wow, first I’m crying….second you did a really good job. It was very vivid. You summed up that article perfectly, in the words of a story. *off to find some tissue.*
~I don’t know what I’m doing~
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Ok, wait…I missed something. What article are you guys talking about @daughteroftheking & @salome01w4g?
@shannon go read it https://rabbitroom.com/2013/08/this-is-for-all-the-lonely-writers/
~I don’t know what I’m doing~
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@daughteroftheking & @salome01w4g Never mind, I found the link. I just didn’t notice it. Typical Shannon thing to do. 🙃
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@daughteroftheking Oh my goodness! That is so great! I don’t think I’ve read that article yet, but now I definitely will. Nice job! 😉
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