part two by John Riley
THE ONLY THING THAT GEORGINA CAN REMEMBER is having doubts about the stranger renting next door. She has been ignoring him.
George, her preferred name, but only close friends can call her that, is beginning to wonder if the informality should continue. Well, she hasn’t seen any of her old friends anymore.
What is she doing here? What possessed her to live out an existence in limbo in this backwater of a place.
Georgina hangs on to things and is unable to let go. Same with her memories. The house is up for sale, and the odd person shown around ignores her as if she is not there. How rude. She finds a lot of time to reflect now, hell! Even wonders if anyone knows she lives here. She doesn’t think the house looks good with that burnt-out wreck next door.
Georgina thought herself popular among the crowd, kinda was a social creature. Someone always eccentric, taking risks and all that, especially with those she got involved with, or you could say entangled. It is not the acquaintances she needs to be careful about better if they avoid Georgina.
Some days she can’t get herself off the floor, spends hours sprawled out in some rag doll discarded way. She won’t admit that she’s losing it. Wouldn’t you think it strange that she talks to the wallpaper? Just because the patterns in it look like faces, she’s trying to hear what they’re saying. She’s wondering if that puts people off the place.
Georgina likes to take the cards from bouquets of flowers left outside next door and do it before they get to know. That’s Georgina through and through. She pins them to all her dead flowers in the house. Scribbles out and adds a name, past acquaintances, although she would never add the name__William.
He put up a fight. Georgina didn’t know how she got away with it that night. She needs to be careful about the punters she brings into her house.
Damn it!
She drifted away then and missed the latest flowers for next door. Blast too late, they have been taken into the house. Georgina didn’t see her do it, or did she?
Well, that’s strange, a face on the wallpaper wanting her attention. Georgina got close. It was Michael again, the one before William. She shouldn’t be thinking of that name.
Michael, last heard of, dead in her deep freezer. She thinks the face is saying something to her; better to listen this time. Michael always did want to help. She’d have been better clinging on to him. Sounds like he’s saying – answer the front door.
Someone is approaching.
When she looked up, on cue, there was a knock at the door. Looking through the glass is a shadow.
Looks like that stranger renting next door with a carpetbag. Georgina had an idea she might need to leave and told Michael to tell the others she might not be coming back…
