Three

Jack, now alone in the house, sat at the kitchen counter and ate his breakfast whilst reading over the list his sister had given to him.  

JACK'S CHORES

1. Hand wash my favourite pink satin gown use exactly 1/3rd of a cup of Summer Breeze soap powder.  Hang outside to dry.  Make sure all the creases have gone but do not use the iron.

2. Clean my Wendy House from top to bottom.  Wash the windows and make  sure there are no smears.  KILL the spiders.

3. Remove all the green hundreds-and-thousands from the jar of hundreds-and-thousands.

4. Exactly two minutes before I get home put on the sideboard all the ingredients I need to make a chocolate fudge cake.

Jack decided that he would carry out the chores in the order they appeared on the list; if he washed the gown as soon as he had eaten breakfast then by the afternoon it should be dry. With the gown drying, he could then clean the Wendy house this leaving him the afternoon to remove the green hundreds-and-thousands from the jar of hundreds-and thousands before ensuring all the ingredients were ready on the counter for when his sister returned home.

He sipped his juice from the glass and closed his eyes, the house was quiet, except for the humming of the fridge that stood at the other end of the counter.  Jack’s thoughts turned towards his sister’s parting comment, which reminded him of his own wariness that he had felt earlier. He concluded this was just a coincidence and pushed the thought to the back of his mind.

Standing at the sink, Jack added exactly one-third of a cup of Summer Breeze washing powder into the tepid water.  He wondered why it was called Summer Breeze because it smelt nothing like the wonderful summer breezes that had blown through the gaps in his shed, it wasn’t an unpleasant smell, just not a summer breeze smell. He dipped the pink satin gown into the water, he lifted it out and dipped it in again. Jack rinsed the gown in clean water and decided not to wring the water out of it because if he did then it would cause the gown to crease.  He hung the dripping-wet gown on a padded coat hanger and fastened it to the clothes line in the back garden.  Already the sun was unusually warm for the time of day, and Jack hoped that this would eliminate the creases in the dress.

After clearing up the sink and washing the pots from breakfast, Jack gathered the items he needed to clean the Wendy house and with a feather duster tucked under his arm, and a broom in his hand, he picked up the bucket of soapy water and walked down the garden to-ward the Wendy house. He left the items outside of the Wendy house and returned to the kitchen and picked up the rest of the cleaning materials including a spray bottle, which he filled with water and added a little bit of white vinegar, and a newspaper - his Grandma had shown him how to make windows gleam using only these items.  The Wendy house had eight windows over the two floors with four facing front and four at the back.

Jack walked up the steps that led to the front of the white wooden Wendy house and pushed open the pink, heart-shaped door which opened up into the spacious ground floor, divided by a spiral staircase that led to the second floor. Jack looked around and concluded that Ellie-May had not used the Wendy house since he had cleaned it the previous week. To the right of the spiral stair case stood a table made from black Ironwood that Jack, with his father, had carried the sixty-five footsteps from the back door of the family house to where it is now. Four chairs accompanied the square table, one placed at each of the table’s sides. Expensive crushed pink velvet covered each seat, Jack’s mum had painstakingly sewn on each piece at Ellie-May’s insistence.  Three of the chairs matched and complimented the table perfectly, the fourth chair, which was positioned at the back of the table and faced the front window was made from brass. This was Ellie-May’s chair and she did not allow anyone else, but herself to sit on it.  

The seat back of Ellie-May’s brass chair almost reached the ceiling and Jack liked to admire the detail that had been carved into the seat back. Jack walked over to the chair, knowing should his sister catch him doing anything other than polishing it he would find himself in trouble. He rubbed the palm of his hand over a piece toward the bottom of the seat back, each time he looked at the chair he noted details he had not previously seen and this gave him a sense of wonder.  He rubbed his palm over the cherubs feeling the harps they held. He looked at the castle and mote where guards holding guns stood stationed at each side of the entrance to the castle.  The next piece detailed a battle between a lion and a zebra, the zebra stood with its hoof on the neck of the lion. Jack interpreted the next piece to be of a group of fairies battling over a creature that Jack did not recognise and the scene seemed unusual to him given that fairies are generally defined as peaceful.  Jack’s eyes reached the top of the seat back and he saw what he was looking for, a piece he had not previously seen.  Two doves adorned the top of the seat back, their beaks all but touching, and with opened wings they formed an arc. Together, with the cherubs at the bottom, he felt they were sending calmness through the chair which diluted the angriness of battle from the other pieces. Jack smiled, glad to see today the chair was still good, and the air around it felt good, The chair, at other times filled their with badness, and days like that made Jack want to run back to his shed, which he resisted as Ellie-May’s dissatisfaction would be a far worse punishment that muggy feeling air.  Jack climbed on to the seat and stretched his hand up reaching for the doves but he fell short, the doves out of his reach.

Defeated, Jack stepped off the chair and walked over to the front window and sprayed it with the water and white vinegar solution and rubbed the window with the newspaper until it gleamed. He repeated the process on the other three windows, the sun’s rays helped by highlighting smears that he then buffed away. He wiped the table and the three wooden chairs and polished the brass chair using the feather duster to help reach the top.

Jack moved to the other side of the room and brushed the ruby-red three seated so-fa forcing the fibers to stand just so that Ellie-May could see that he had tended to it. He cleaned the glass topped coffee table, using the white vinegar and water solution, and then swept away the dust that had gathered on the wooden floor.

He climbed the stairs to the second floor, taking with him his bucket of soapy water.  The upper floor would take Jack less time to clean as the room was empty. In the far corner was a second room that took up a quarter of the floor. Jack was forbidden to enter the smaller room, not that Jack minded as he did not have any desire to enter this room and was thankful that Ellie-May kept the door to this room locked.  Jack knew what was in there, but didn’t know what it was.  He knew because his sister had told him on many occasions that that room held The Dark. Sometimes, when Ellie-May was feeling mean she would tell Jack that if he did not meet her demands to her satisfaction then she would have no choice but to lock him in the room with the thing she called The Dark.

This did scare Jack because he knew that whatever The Dark was, it was bad, and he knew this because he felt it.  He felt it whenever he reached the top of the spiral stairs, and he felt it whenever he walked from his shed, up the garden and looked up at the dusty, cobwebbed window that was in the corner room. He looked most times he took the walk, he looked because he couldn’t help but look and each time he looked he shivered for a second before walking on.

What Jack didn’t know was that Ellie-May was also scared of the thing she called The Dark.  What he didn’t know was that Ellie-May had put it there not long after the Wendy-house was built for her.  When she first put it there it was very small, the size of a pea and what he didn’t know was that the Dark had grown each day, it had doubled in size until it filled the room and couldn’t grow anymore.  This scared Ellie-May because she didn’t know what to do with it or how to get rid of it and Ellie-May also felt the evilness of the thing she called The Dark so-much-so that unbeknown to Jack she never ever went upstairs.  Ellie-May would never know if the second floor was covered in an inch of dust, but Ellie-May knew that she had to hold this secret to herself and she did this by using The Dark to scare her brother to ensure he never discovered her secret fear.

Author's Note

thank you for reading.

Hopefully you will have read my previous two chapters, I would love to know what you think about the story development. How does it make you feel?