Jane Doe and the Moving Company

By Leo Crawford

A light novel.
Jane Doe is an unassuming person, but circumstances have taken her too far and on she goes on a mission, recruiting a couple of her friends in a world where magic is pushed to the sidelines.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leo Crawford
• Release date: Jul 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005753702

Leo Crawford

I was born.I continue to breath oxygen, and I have a cat.I believe the cat also breaths oxygen, but can not confirm.

Book preview

Jane Doe and the Moving Company

By Leo Crawford

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2022 Leo Crawford

Table of Contents:

Chapter One: Happiness is an Empty House

Chapter Two: Reflection

Chapter Three: Wheels in Motion

Chapter Four: Distraction

Chapter Five: Favors

Chapter Six: Ladies Night

Chapter Seven: Fight Club

Chapter Eight: Babysitting

Chapter Nine: Alex's House

Chapter Ten: Team of One

Chapter Eleven: On the Fence

Chapter Twelve: Age Before Beauty

Chapter Thirteen: The Storage Tank

Chapter Fourteen: Incident Revised

Chapter Fifteen: Aftermath

Chapter One:

Happiness is an Empty House

The sound of Jane's boots echoed musically throughout the house. Each open nook and corner beamed with potential as she wandered past them, and the curtain-less windows each let in a gentle glow of sunlight.

It felt more like an art exhibit than a house, fit for each side of the attic to be inspected amid the consumption of cheese and wine. Albeit the floorboards were in need of a mop.

She thought it was almost a pity to fill the house with furniture, like cluttering the inside of a guitar or a grand piano, but it was after all to be her home.

She'd left her bags on the first story, in front of the door and she took the excuse to drift back down the even, carpet covered stairs. She scooped up the bags and left them in the attic. She reasoned they would be safest there with the door open and unlocked, lest some wandering child or dog intended to make off with her trinkets.

Partially she was just gravitated to the attic. Perhaps she would make it her bedroom, high and mighty above the rest of the house.

She smiled.

There was the honk of a car horn outside, and she hurried to the bare bathroom to use the mirror. Straightening out her dirty blonde bangs, she wondered how exactly the dust had smudged itself onto each elbow of her shirt and brushed it off before washing her hands.

Perhaps she had swooned against a wall at some point, in admiration of the spacious house, although she didn't remember it.

She studied her face for a second, medically. A slightly weary set of navy-blue eyes and a perky nose looked back at her.

Her diagnosis: get some more nighttime sleep.

The first of her furniture had arrived, and she returned to the living room to find it already laid out, couches platonically stationed in a quaint set up in front of the TV- she could never imagine actually using them like that- and dresser carelessly in the corner.

She ambled outside to see if they needed any help and found a few lonely dinner table chairs dotting the lawn. Manhandling them inside, she thought they would probably have to go up the stairs at one point, and wouldn't that be an adventure, but it could wait for now.

She was just hoping they had her bed. She had already forgotten which load of furniture she had permitted onto the first truck and which of it was waiting in storage.

It had been rather a rush to vacate the last house, a mutual exchange. The owner had been left with zero faith in her after the fire, and she had started with zero faith in him, consequent merely to the type of man he was.

Reminiscing aside, she went back out and was happy to encounter a brute carrying her bedframe. She considered a quick how do you do, but didn't look forward to being grunted at in response, and so stayed out of the way.

The man wound up placing her bed in the downstairs guest room, which she thought was fair enough since they didn't know how many more beds she had on the way- zero- but she was slightly disappointed when her mattress was left waiting on the living room wall.

Perhaps they viewed placing the thing on her bed frame an overly intimate thing. Or perhaps it was the role of an interior decorator, and not a mover. God, she hated bureaucracy.

She dragged it over herself, with a fighting spirit, pretended it was her mother even, but got it where it had to go, and straightened out the corners.

They'd finished with furniture, and moving onto boxes, the multiple movers seemed to be constructing the twelfth wonder of the manmade world in the hall between the front door and living room.

She tried to straighten things out a little, feeling like a worker ant, and was none the wiser when the boxes stopped coming. She wandered out to the truck.

She surveyed it, a touch paranoidly, but it was indeed empty.

The brute was just closing up the back of the truck, when she heard a Hey, from the driver's compartment. She approached it easily, and was greeted by the sight of a bronzed, squinting man with a face like a mug.

Your Jane, right? I never forget a face.

She smiled painfully. Yes, Jane Doe.

Right. He swallowed, and she lent in unconsciously, to hear what he had to say next. Her disappointment was spectacular.

I couldn't help but notice, some of your items in storage, he wet his lip were of the rather more, let's say dangerous variety.

He met her eye, and she stared back at him inexorably, like a lizard.

It had been a while since she had a conversation like