Home Is What You Make It: A Collection

By Ann Stratton

A short collection of stories examining the idea of home.

What happens when the previous tenant won't leave?

What's the point of arguing with an inanimate object?

Why does wrestling with demons make such a mess?

What do you do with a body in the freezer?

How can you defend everything that you hold dear?

How do you define home?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ann Stratton
• Release date: Aug 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201001865

Ann Stratton

Ann Stratton started writing at age thirteen with the usual results. After a long stint in fan fiction, honing her skills, she hopes she has gotten better since then. She lives in Southeastern Arizona, trying to juggle all her varied interests. 

Book preview

Forwarding Address

My mother said the house I bought was built in the early to mid 50’s or so, part of the post WW2 building boom. It sat in a subdivision full of similar little houses in the ranch style that had gotten much more eclectic and, in one or two cases, eccentric over the years. Mine was one of the more conservative ones. It had been stuccoed some time in the last twenty years or so and painted a modest dirt brown with dark brown trim. The landscaping had gone through every fashion in the intervening years and now consisted of white gravel and one ancient, shedding eucalyptus tree.

Originally, it had been a two bedroom with one bathroom, but a previous owner had added two more bedrooms and another bathroom. He hadn’t done much with the layout, and it was cramped, dark, and confusing. As soon as I could get the money, I would get the whole thing redone. I wanted wide open spaces. I wanted light. I wanted a layout that didn’t require a map and a string to figure out.

In the meantime, I was stuck with it. But it was my house. My very own house! I could spread out how I wanted! I could decorate how—or as best as, considering what I had to work with—I wanted! Oh, how I had plans!

The previous owner had been an elderly woman who’d died of either cancer or natural causes, I was never quite sure which. Whatever the case, it involved a lengthy illness, leaving her bedridden for the last year or so of her life. It’s not really as creepy as you might think, or at least I wasn’t creeped out. It was my house, and as soon as I got it cleaned up and up to my own standard, there wouldn’t be any problem. One of my psychic friends declared it conflict free. The woman apparently died without regrets, or at least none strong enough to leave any residue. Since I’m about as psychic as a rock, that didn’t bother me.

Once the deal was closed and all the inspections and paperwork were taken care of, I had to clean the place out. The previous owner’s friends and family had done a good job of getting her belongings out of there, but you know there’s always some kind of detritus left behind. If I finished cleaning it out myself, then I’d have a better idea of what I needed to do to make the place all mine. Also any repairs that needed to be done. I was kind of cringing about that little detail.

Getting the kitchen clean was an involved project. I think I must have gone through a fifty five gallon drum of degreaser and cleaner getting the walls and ceiling clean. Nothing deliberate, just too many years cooking in there, and Mrs. X’s inability to reach higher than my head, and later the lack of strength and health. The appliances still worked, so I could use them until I could get new ones. I put refacing the cabinets on my list, and a new sink, and new counters, new flooring, a paint scheme closer to my own tastes. It took me three days to get the place scrubbed out. It was a considerable relief to put my pots and pans and dishes in the cabinets, and make myself my first real meal in my own house.

The bathrooms needed to be gutted and rebuilt from the ground up, and I resolved to not use the shower in the back bathroom until that was done. The wallboard behind the tile was melting. Any more water on that, and the whole thing would fall in. All the fixtures needed replacing, the wallpaper had to go, and all the latches and hinges on the cabinets had given up. Still, the bathrooms worked, for which I was properly grateful, and I scoured every surface in them until I felt less squeamish about using the toilets.

The hot water tank worked, though it was high on my list of things to replace. It knocked something terrible when it was heating. Hot showers did wonders for my well being after long hard days of cleaning.

I picked the bedroom closest to the back bathroom to be my master. The carpet was ratty and almost as old as I was, so it went first. The curtains were in similar shape, so out they went too. I scrubbed the walls, scraped windows with a razor blade to get years’ accumulation of dust and grime off, mopped up the mud the carpet left, hung up a couple of sheets as temporary curtains, dragged my bed frame in, and laid my mattress on top of it. I fell on the mattress and almost didn’t get out again, but duty called. I brought in my dresser, put my clothes in it and the closet, and the bedroom was mine, all mine. It would be a lot more mine when I’d had the chance to paint the walls a more acceptable color, put down new carpet, hang new curtains, and generally spread myself around.

The living room and the dining room were next. Once again all the carpet came up, all the curtains disposed of, the walls and windows scoured down to the shine, my own furniture set up, all my remaining boxes shoved into one of the other bedrooms to deal with later.

The other two bedrooms were similarly dealt with. I cleaned them down to the shine on the windows, sorted out most of the boxes, and installed my own stuff. I had lots of stuff to install...

I saved the back bedroom for last. It had been used as a home office the last time around and had been fitted with shelves and built in file drawers. Neat, I can use them. I think the carpet was original to the time the bedroom was added on. I pulled that up first.

The windows were just as filthy as every other window in the house. The walls took considerable scrubbing. The shelves took more scrubbing. By the time I got down to the file cabinets, I was pretty much beat. I had a nearly clean room for all that though. It smelled more like cleaners and wet wood than it did stale old carpet.

I made myself a giant salad with iced tea, fruit, and a jerky stick to go with it. I took my dinner to the dining room and set it on the dining table. Collapsed in my chair, I smelled cleaners, wet wood, wet dust, and no stale carpets, no old cooking grease. No more of Mrs. X’s lingering odors. I felt quite content. Slowly, but surely, I was making this house my own. I was putting my own marks and smells on it. Too tired to do more than pick lettuce leaves out of my bowl with my fingers, I admired my work.

I was listening to the evening news when I could have sworn I saw somebody walk past in the hall. Despite being here almost two weeks already and changing out every light bulb in the house, I still wasn’t familiar with all the lighting peculiarities, and it’s possible I just misinterpreted a shadow. Still, it made the hair on my neck stand on end. I licked my fingers, I got up from my chair, and I went chasing a shadow.

As shadows go, there was no such thing. The hall light was dim, new light bulbs and all. I made the rounds. Nobody in the house but me. I went back to my salad, shaking my head at my own gullibility.

It might not have been my first night in the strange old house, but I was still not familiar with all its quirks and characteristics, like wandering shadows. The neighborhood was considerably different than the one I had been living in. It was closer to a main road, and so I could hear the road noise clearly. Earlier in the day, a siren sounded so close it had just about stopped my heart, and I was dreading that late night call.

No emergency vehicles in full warning mode went past that night, but the road noises, traffic on my road, and every anxiety ridden dog in the neighborhood disturbed my sleep, exhaustion or not. I wondered how long it would take me to get used to it all.

I pulled out all the file drawers and scrubbed out the cabinets. I cleaned out the file drawers of all their dust and detritus, occasional notes, paper clips, that sort of thing, nothing I didn’t already expect. I’m curious. I can’t pass up the written word. I read all the notes I found, and none of them made any sense to me. They made sense to their writer who was long gone, so I shrugged and dropped them into the garbage can. I’d shred and recycle them later.

At the back of the bottom cabinet of the last file drawer, I found a folder. It looked like it had gotten pushed back behind the drawer somehow, which was why the previous owner’s friends missed it. I smoothed the wrinkles out as best I could.