The House with Four Chairs

*Disclaimer - This story is inspired by Neil Gaiman's writing style which features dark and unsettling themes*

There were four of them. Each sat in their own chair, facing a dimly lit fire. You could only discern the light emanating from the fireplace if you were a couple feet from it.

“I’m hungry,” said the one we’ll call Lenore. She was always hungry. The others could tolerate their hunger.

“Patience,” said the one we’ll call Virgil. “Good things come to those who wait. The longer it simmers, the better it tastes.”

Virgil was roasting meat rotisserie-style above the dimly lit fire. It emitted odd smells that permeated the air, leaving the others unable to discern its origin. Nevertheless, they were so hungry they’d eat it.

The room they sat in was unremarkable. It lacked decorations on the mantle, and none of its furniture matched. However, they didn’t care; their focus was always on the meal at hand.

“Why don’t we do something while we wait for our meal to cook?” offered one of them, we'll call Nebula.

“Excellent idea. We will each go around and tell an original story. I’ll start,” Lenore said. “There once was a yellow bird that flew through the dense woods. It had no idea where it was going.”

Lenore’s story went on for some time. Then Nebula told a story about a rainfall that occurred every other day for exactly seven hours, causing a weed with thorns to grow and grow and grow.

Once it was over, the other one among them, we’ll call Ambrose, told a story about a black cat and its magical ability to speak. It used its speaking skills to beg from wanderers around an oval shaped lake. The cat didn’t need coins but rather a spell to break a curse bestowed upon him by a crone who was rejected by him when he was a handsome man.

That story went on for some time, leaving Virgil unprepared when the time came for the final storyteller to speak. Virgil surveyed the meat rotating around and around, yearning for inspiration. If any more time passed, the others would grow hungrier and angrier.

“Let me tell you a story about a little girl named Lucy. Her real name was Lucille, but she preferred to go by Lucy. She lived with both of her aunts in a white brick house with manicured gardens and an iron fence that kept any neighborhood dogs out of the yard. They always called her Lucille because it was more ladylike. Her aunts taught her to be a lady, forcing her to wear pantyhose and sun hats. She wrote French verbs with ink pens and sometimes sang beside the piano while one of her aunts played hymns. She was told to never eat sandwiches and never play outside. The only time Lucy got to play outside was at school during recess for 15 minutes of the day. She was careful not to play so hard that she’d stain her dresses or unravel the ribbons on her hats.

It was the last day of school, and Lucy was riding the school bus home to her aunts’ house, who would surely make her stay inside all summer. While seated on the bus, she asked if anyone would like to play before going home. Mary Sue, a seat over, said she couldn’t because she had to make a quilt with her grandmother. Margaret, a girl in front of her, said she had to assist her mother with making a custard pie. Ralph, Phineas, and Niles, all the boys who sat behind her, said no for different reasons. Lucy noticed a boy in the back of the bus she’d never seen before. He had gray eyes and thick brown hair that you could see under his cap.

“Hello,” she said to him.

“Hello,” he replied.

“Would you like to play with me?”

“Alright. Let’s go to my house,” said the boy, who introduced himself as Blake.

The bus stop was on a country road, surrounded by miles of fields. The children who got off the bus walked along paths to their respective homes, not far from the field.

“It’s this way,” said Blake, leading her towards a woodland trail in the opposite direction of her aunts’ house. “When do you need to be home?” he asked as they played on a fallen tree.

“I don’t want to go back.” Lucy quipped.

They listened to crows in the woods and peeled loose bark off tree trunks. After exiting the woods, they played on a deserted bridge with amber-colored worms sticking out of the bricks. They ran through fields, collecting wildflowers taller than they were. The stems made their hands sticky, so they stopped carrying them.

“How far is your house?” Lucy asked after they drank from a stream that was drying up. It tasted like dirt, but she didn’t know that because she’d never tasted dirt before.

“Not far from here.”

They continued to play, climbing trees and pretending to be wolves in a pack. Lucy ripped her pantyhose at the knee, and they both laughed. She fanned them with her sunhat when they both got hot. They didn’t notice that night had fallen until they stopped to rest their backs on a gravestone in a cemetery.

“Is that your house?” Lucy asked, pointing in the near distance.

Blake’s eyes widened like a spooked animal. “No. I could never live there.”

“And why not?”

He became noticeably serious, even for a young boy. “That house is abandoned. It has been for many years. I don’t go near it because I fear what's inside.”

“There can’t be anything in it if it’s abandoned,” Lucy said smugly. She got up, her dress stained with grass and mud. “Let’s go explore it.” She tried to take Blake’s hand, but he stood still as if he had roots growing deep in the ground under his feet.

“I’m not going to wait for you to be brave.” She left him, crunching dead leaves under her shoes before stepping onto the porch to the front door. The house was old and had two stories. An owl took flight from a hole where a window should be.

“See, I’m brave.” She turned around to brag to Blake, but he was gone. Lucy considered running after him, but she didn’t know where he lived. She thought about going home, but she didn’t know which direction that was.

She decided she’d explore by herself. She pushed open the door, which was missing a doorknob. The smell of mold and wet wood bothered her. She could see her shadow on the ground in the doorway, cast by the beam of the full moon in the sky. She breathed through her mouth and went to explore the first room in the house.

Virgil sat back in the chair, satisfied.

“That’s it?” Lenore griped. “That wasn’t much of a story. We don’t even know how it ended. I waited this whole time for that when I could have been eating.” Eyes rolled as Lenore settled back in the chair.

“I sort of liked it,” shared Ambrose. “But it sounded familiar.”

“I suppose we can eat now,” Virgil announced after no one else added any more reviews.

Nebula picked up a hat from the floor and adjusted it on her head. “This is beautiful. A bit small, but still beautiful. Where did it come from?”

Virgil cut the meat into quarters. “Lovely, isn’t it? It came with the meal.”