Flash Friday #50 'The Persian rug'
Original flash fiction: A much loved possession reaches the end of its life...
Welcome to ‘Flash Friday’ where every week I share some of my original flash fiction.
This week’s story was inspired by the writing prompt advice of ‘write what you see’ i.e. look around you and pick an item or a view, or what ever, and write your piece around that and what ever thoughts or images it conjures. We have a small Persian-style rug in front of our sofa, and as I was drinking my morning tea, looking at said rug, I started playing around with story ideas.
I hope you enjoy reading this one, and please leave a ‘like’ or a comment below if you’d like to share your thoughts - I’d love to hear what you think.
The morning sun illuminated the worn and threadbare Persian rug, highlighting the reds and blacks and greens of the intricate pattern, or what was left of it. The rug was old, much of it had worn through completely to the plain warp and weft foundation. It had been old when Sara first remembered it, as a toddler playing on it with her wooden bricks, or later as a moody teenager sitting on it cross-legged watching TV. Now, it had sadly reached the end of its life.
The rug was large, covering most of the living room floor, and was now devoid of its former furniture companions. Those had either been claimed by various family members or quietly donated to the local charity shop in the hopes that they might find new, appreciative owners. Sara looked around the familiar room slowly, noting the blank spaces on the wallpaper where pictures and framed photographs had used to hang, the flowery pattern slightly darker in those places, protected from the daylight until now.
In the empty room, every movement sounded loud and intrusive. As she sank down to kneel once more on the old rug, Sara spread her hands out over its slightly rough surface, committing to memory the feel of its tough woollen fibres under her fingers, and tracing the faded geometric pattern just as she had when she was a girl. This rug, more than anything else in this room, had seen so much of her life and of those connected with hers. Originally bought by her grandparents as newly-weds, it had stayed with them through every house move, every birth and death, and every illness and celebration. Now, both of them were gone, and no one had a place for it in their modern small-roomed homes. Reluctantly they had agreed that it was time to let it go.
Nothing lasts forever, and how ever many memories it held, it was still only a ‘thing’, Sara reminded herself as she got back to her feet. She took one last look at it in situ, before the house clearers started rolling it up to remove and dispose of it. She watched as the two men hoisted it onto their shoulders and walked slowly out to their van like a pair of grubby pallbearers. With the rug gone, the room was left totally bare. And suddenly this wasn’t her grandparents’ home any more. It was just an empty space awaiting its next set of occupiers.
With the rest of the house already cleared, Sara did the rounds of checking each room and bidding them a silent goodbye, before closing each door quietly behind her. The next time they were opened would be by a stranger with no attachment to the creak of the landing floor, or affection for the quirky cupboard in the spare room where she’d hidden as a child after being told off for jumping in muddy puddles. Lastly, she returned to the living room, the former heart of the home, and closed that door too.
Once all was locked up, she pocketed the keys ready to drop them off at the estate agent in town later. On the road outside the men were fastening the van doors as closed as they could, using a mixture of string and bungee cords. The old Persian rug was too long to fit, so had been left protruding out between the doors, uncomfortable and undignified. A sorry end for a once treasured possession. She returned their wave with a thin smile and a nod of thanks, then stood in solemn witness as they drove off, feeling in a strange way like it was her duty to mark the rug’s passing, just as she had her grandfather, and more recently her grandmother.
As she walked down the short path and reached her own car parked by the curb, Sara resisted the temptation to look back at the house, at its dark, empty windows and the ‘Sold’ sign hammered indiscriminately into the formerly immaculate flower bed. Instead, as she pulled away and checked her mirrors, she took a deep breath and focused on the future: it was done.
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