Everything Has Cupboards

By Sean Monaghan

Learning her way around the office at her new job, Milly discovers a locked cupboard door. Well that just fascinates Milly. As a child she explored everything, and that desire stayed with her.

Sometimes her curiosity creates problems. Mostly, though it creates more curiosity.

This time, though, things might just get out of hand.

A simple, fantastical short story that asks: Do we really know ourselves?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Triple V Publishing
• Release date: Mar 23, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224502639

Sean Monaghan

Award-winning author, Sean Monaghan has published more than one hundred stories in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and in New Zealand, where he makes his home. A regular contributor to Asimov’s, his story “Crimson Birds of Small Miracles”, set in the art world of Shilinka Switalla, won both the Sir Julius Vogel Award, and the Asimov’s Readers Poll Award, for best short story. He is a past winner of the Jim Baen Memorial Award, and the Amazing Stories Award. Sean writes from a nook in a corner of his 110 year old home, usually listening to eighties music. Award-winning author, Sean Monaghan has published more than one hundred stories in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and in New Zealand, where he makes his home. A regular contributor to Asimov’s, his story “Crimson Birds of Small Miracles”, set in the art world of Shilinka Switalla, won both the Sir Julius Vogel Award, and the Asimov’s Readers Poll Award, for best short story. He is a past winner of the Jim Baen Memorial Award, and the Amazing Stories Award. Sean writes from a nook in a corner of his 110 year old home, usually listening to eighties music.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

The cupboard door was locked. Bolted shut. And Milly couldn’t get it open.

The door was a block of solid wood. Probably maple or oak, but someone, long ago, had chosen to paint it green. What a violation. It would have been so beautiful just oiled and maybe stained.

The paint was dark green. Perhaps British Racing green, which had been popular for long, sleek, open-wheeled race cars back in the thirties or forties. Last century.

The cupboard wasn’t that old.

It had a circular floral brass handle, set a few inches in from the lower edge, on the right hand side. On the left, there were two exposed hinges. Just the pin and fold.

The face was about two feet tall and a little over a foot wide. Someone had put a decorative groove in it, a quarter inch across, and deep. Perhaps cut with a chisel, perhaps with a router. The groove formed a rectangle, but the corners had been replaced with quarter circles folded in toward the center. Like a page from which someone had pinched off the corners.

Milly tugged on the handle again. It wouldn’t budge.

Presumably there was coffee within. The kitchen certainly smelled of it, and on the long, stone bench, a coffee maker stood, silvery with an array of knobs that would leave her baffled.

Across the sink was a simple dishes rack with inverted cups and mugs and a couple of plates. A caddy of teaspoons stood nearby.

There was an oven, and a tall refrigerator, mercifully free of expired items, half-eaten croissants and moldy fruit. In the center of the room stood a blue Formica-topped dining table, with a set of mismatched chairs.

All she needed was a can of instant. That would do.

She tried the cupboard next to it. There were four in a row, but she’d seen some of the others opened earlier—yesterday?—and they’d had boxes of cereal and stacks of plates, cans of beans and creamed corn on the top shelf, and glasses and a paper sack of flour, a large plastic salt shaker and little boxes of herbs, cans of soda and sachets of ready-mix fruit drinks.

It all seemed a bit much, really, for a simple office kitchen.

She tugged again. Nope.

The row of four cupboards was built into the wall above the left hand end of