Tender Moments

Maintaining a steady clip on the freeway so that we wouldn’t separate was difficult.  Rain pounding against the windshield made driving tedious and my nerves raw.  I couldn’t wait to

get where we were going.

            Locating the address gave us anything but relief.  Nothing could have prepared us for the bizarre setting.  The property was unkempt and ghoulish-looking. Rows of tombstones lined the premises of a dreary monument factory located on Main Street.

            Surely I’d fallen asleep and was having a nightmare!  Or were we on a movie set?  That would explain the out-of-the-ordinary premises.

            Stepping inside the office entrance, we found ourselves in a time warp. In the waiting room were huge dusty-rose overstuffed chairs with crocheted doilies draped on their backs.  Family portraits done in oil and encased in ornate gold-gilded frames hung on the wall, the subjects glaring at us. 

            The eerie atmosphere smacked of dust and mustiness.  Frozen in time, workers went about their jobs as though nothing was unusual.

            Maybe it was a “Candid Camera” set-up, I thought.  Viewers across the nation could be hysterical, watching us react to the “Inner Sanctum” setting.  That was not the case.

            The woman I’d spoken to on the phone led us down a narrow path overgrown with tangled vines.  I shivered as we drew aside veils of cobwebs and twisted vines along the way.

            Stepping inside the apartment, I knew how actress Janet Leigh must have felt entering Norman’s spooky house in Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller movie, Psycho.  I expected to see Norman’s mother seated in a rocking chair staring into space.  I wanted out of there as fast as our feet would take us, but we politely waited to be shown around.

            Layers of dust covered the marble windowsills. A mini refrigerator rested above an ancient stove.  The bedding must have been in place forever. Obviously it had been a long time since anyone had lived there.  It was the eeriest, most depressing place I’d ever set foot in, unsuitable for human occupancy.

            “I’m sorry, Ma’m.” I blurted out.  “We’ve changed our minds.  We’d like our deposit refunded, please.”  The woman was silent and left to fetch her husband.