Gelatinous Puddle
The Haunting of Watermill Valley - Chapter 2
Amelia didn't have a lot of clothes to spare, considering many of them had been ruined when they'd all spilled over the highway. But she had to do something about the lions. All that first night in the new house she'd been unable to sleep because of their brooding presence. It didn't make any sense but somehow, she could feel them staring at the house.
No, not at the house. At her.
She had never been one to buy into ideas about energy or auras or spirits, and yet she found herself without explanation for the sensations brought on by the statues. The word she settled on was presence. They had a presence to them, and it was terrifying the living daylights out of her.
So that's how she found herself outside at 6 a.m. after a sleepless night, wearing faded pajama shorts and a ratty old Led Zeppelin tee. She padded toward the lions with a small bundle of clothing. When a stray rock found its way right under her foot, she yelped. As she wrapped a pink bandana around the rightmost lion's neck, she saw her next-door neighbor walk to their car. In the dark she saw the outline of a middle-aged woman with curly hair and a pantsuit. They locked eyes and she felt her stomach drop with embarrassment at being caught dressing statues in her pajamas.
"Hi," Amelia waved. She put on a smile despite her embarrassment.
Although the woman had seemed to lock eyes with Amelia through the meager morning light, she either hadn't or pretended not to have seen or heard her. She turned her head away and climbed into her car. When the woman drove away, Amelia tried again to wave to no effect.
"Okay," she breathed. She finished dressing the lion on the left with a scarf. The final touch on each was a pink ribbon wrapped into a neat bow on the end of their tails.
"Not so scary now, are you?"
Surveying her work with her hands on her hips, she smiled despite the feeling that she had barely dented the feeling of repulsion that she felt in the lions’ presence.
She laughed at herself. Where was she getting these silly thoughts? It was obviously just a fixation that her mind had chosen as a distraction from the stress. A breakup, a car crash, a solo surprise mortgage that she'd thought her ex's income would be contributing to. It was enough to test anybody’s limits.
She doubted she could make enough money to hire any but the most dubious contractors, but she still told herself that she would ask Gianna if she had any recommendations for someone to destroy those lions.
Turning her back on them, she went back into the house and managed to take a nap until midmorning. She had the sensation upon waking that she'd had a bad dream, due to the fact that a slick film of sweat covered her entire body and her heart was pounding. But when she tried to think of what had caused such a response in her, it was like tuning in to static.
The alarm on her phone went off shortly after she awoke like this, and she swiped the off button and groaned. It was already time to dress and get ready for Gianna to take her to the car rental place. Amelia’s eyelids still felt heavy despite the nap. It felt like she’d hardly slept at all, even though it had been several hours. She reasoned it must have been the influence of the bad dream.
The late morning was quiet as she unpacked her tote bag of belongings. Her hairbrush, cell phone, and a few outfits were placed in the main bedroom next to her stack of blankets. She placed a protein bar and a bottle of water on the blue Formica countertop in the kitchen just to make it feel less empty. It was a nice enough place, even though it felt like it came from another century. Her eyes roamed the peeling edges of rabbit-print wallpaper in the north corner of the kitchen. She looked at a round stain on the ceiling and wondered how badly the roof would leak in the rain. The house needed some love, that was true. But every apartment she'd ever lived in had needed work also.
And this time, she could fix it up herself. She owned this house. She could do what she wanted. She didn’t need anybody’s permission. She wasn’t on anybody else’s schedule but her own.
For the first time, she felt an expansiveness in her chest at the idea of living alone. All her life, she'd lived either with her parents, a roommate, or her ex. She hadn't been thrilled to be saddled with a mortgage on her own, but in the late morning light of her little galley kitchen, she found herself imagining the possibilities.
She could go for a cottagecore look here. It was the perfect size for it. She could just see it now. Maybe she’d get a social media account for her little life, wear peasant dresses, show off perfectly braided loaves of sourdough, and display what she bought at the farmer’s market that week. Maybe she’d get a dog.
And the only person she'd have to answer to was herself. Herself and her meager budget, that was. There was something freeing in being on your own. Maybe it didn't have to be terrifying at all. Maybe it could be an adventure.
Still, it sucked that her ex had left her like this. It would have been better if she'd planned this particular adventure rather than having been thrust into it.
She took off her clothes and headed for the shower, shivering as she imagined that those lions were somehow still watching through the walls. After stepping over the lip of the bathtub, her foot was immersed in a wet, gelatinous puddle that squelched and spread into the spaces between her toes. Touching the cold substance was so shocking that she twisted her ankle, plummeting back toward the yellowed linoleum.
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