Friday Fictioneers is on Facebook hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields. You can read other stories or, better, join in and write your own at https://rochellewisoff.com/. A complete story in 100 words in response to a photo prompt.  This week I realise I’ve been trying to channel my inner Merricat (I recently read and fell in love with Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle and there are some wonderful descriptions of what’s kept in the cellars and the rituals of how it is used or not.

When we moved here, the cupboard under-stairs was chill and full of forgotten things:

Ten jars of lavender honey

Plum preserve prinked with peppercorns and cloves

Old bottles of gin with sloes burst

A tray of skeleton mice laid out

Pickled frogs…

 

Which we ate and drank and threw away (the mice we buried in the garden).

Cleaned out the cupboard, added light and silly things, unmended-or-not-needed-now-but. Someone, someday will wear red monster slippers.

It is airy too with space for things we fear. These have multiplied of late. That clock for instance, always stopping at exactly the same time.