The Alcove And The Afterglow

The Alcove and The Afterglow

Chapter 1

"Searching For Something"

Her

She's been awake for a while, lying still beneath the weight of unfamiliar blankets in a room that smells like lavender soap, vanilla candles and someone else's memories. The silence is too complete and it takes a moment for her to realise that this means it's still too early for the owners to have emerged from their private area of the B&B. Converted from an old farmhouse, it's small, with just two rooms for guests in the main house and an old outbuilding converted into a chalet that doubled as a self-catering unit for those visitors who preferred it.

She'd considered that of course. But eventually the luxury of not having to think about cooking or cleaning for a while, and the fact that it really was too big for just one person made her decide against it. And so far, she wasn't regretting her decision. The creaking floors, the 'handed down through the generations' mishmash of decor, the owners bickering in that way that only people who have been married for decades and are still madly in love can. It's charming in the kind of way that makes her feel like a character in someone else's story.

And she doesn't quite know what to do with that.

The holiday was her idea. Her own credit card. Her own plan. "A reset," she'd told herself. Some quiet town somewhere between the middle of nothing and the back end of beyond, far from the noise and the people who still look at her like she might break if they speak too loudly. Civilised enough to have a tiny mall complete with movie theatre, backwards enough that it was more tourist destination and a place to 'get away from it all' than anything else.

No one here knows her name. Conversations are of the small talk variety. She likes that. Mostly.

Now that she's been here a few days though...already done the trail ride and canoeing around the dam and the whole day hike thing...the days are starting to feel long and loose around the edges. The mornings are the worst--empty hours stretched out like blank canvas, waiting for her to decide how she wants to fill them.

And today, she doesn't know.

She drags herself out of bed, running a hand through the tangled mess of her curls as she pulls on a pair of low-rise jeans and the rib-knit top she left hanging over the back of a chair last night. She usually tied it up when she went to bed, but she'd been leaving it loose since she'd arrived here. It meant her days started with the battle of brush vs knots of the restless tossing and turning variety, but a change was as good as a holiday they claimed.

And if you make a change while on an actual holiday, then that's like doubling down right? Double the holiday, half the price? She snorts as she moves toward the dresser and her hairbrush. The mirror above it is old and slightly warped, but it still does what it's meant to. Reveals that while she might feel like her and ghosts have a lot in common at the moment -- she's still here. Still her. More or less.

She pauses for a moment, staring unseeingly into her own eyes, thumb rubbing absently at a chip in the lacquered wood handle of the brush in her hand. The silence presses gently against her, not quite heavy, not quite light. Just...expectant maybe? Waiting. For what, she doesn't know. Shaking herself out of her reverie, she gets to work on her hair. She's here for two weeks. She's got time to figure it out.

Downstairs, the kitchen is still shrouded in darkness. She finds the light switch and sets about making herself some coffee from the supplies left out for guests. She stands at the sink staring out at the stables just starting to appear out of the gloom of night. Maybe she'd go riding again today. Try a different trail from the one she'd done before. Did she really feel like all that outdoors today though?

She grabs an old newspaper off a pile by the door as she heads back up to her room and settles into the window seat that is arguably her favourite spot in the whole house. Only half reading as she sips her coffee, far more interested in watching the sun nudge the world outside the window awake.

A headline tucked in a corner catches her eye though, and she shifts her full attention to the paper.

"Ten Overlooked Treasures for the Curious Wanderer"

She skims the article, smirking a little at the wording. Clickbait for the ink-stained generation. It lists all the usual sort of things for this type of destination. Horse riding, hiking trails, fishing. But one entry looks intriguing and she pauses to take it in.

The House of Echoes and Unwanted Things

She reads the blurb twice. An eccentric family museum on the edge of town. Founded by a long dead local woman as an excuse to indulge her personal passion for personal obsessions and private mythologies. It had grown over the years, becoming a collection of things that told stories about invisible lives: heirloom letters, anonymous portraits, love tokens, forgotten art, household oddities. The latest generation had no interest in the place, but they'd hired a new curator to try to bring it back to life.

It wouldn't usually interest her. But with a day full of nothing to do stretching out in front of her, it seemed like a good way to while away at least a few hours. She'll head over about mid-morning. Have breakfast, help Mr. Botha with the horses, have a shower, let Mrs. Botha know she would be having lunch in town somewhere. Maybe at the mall. She could leave her car there and walk over to the museum if it was close enough.

Yes, she thinks. That's what I'll do. Something different for a change. Triple the holiday for just a few bucks more!! Smiling at herself, pleased that she can still make jokes (who cares that it was corny enough to make her dad jealous), to have a plan -- she settles herself more comfortably on the window seat and waits, only a little impatiently, for everyone else to wake up so her day can finally get started

A place for unwanted things, she muses as she sips her coffee, might be just the place to find whatever it is she hasn't figured out she's looking for.

You

You throw down your pen and lean back in your chair with a frustrated sigh. You stretch your arms overhead -- fingers interlaced; palms turned outward. Trying to ease the tension climbing your neck toward a full-blown headache.

The movement pulls something tight in your lower back and you breathe through it, rolling your shoulders a little to help your muscles unclench a little faster. You hold the stretch a moment longer, then let it go with another sigh.

It's not even lunchtime. And already you feel like you've been here for days.

The desk in front of you is a scattered graveyard of yellowed inventory sheets, faded purchase records, and the mess of notes and plans for the new exhibition you're slowly, slowly, bringing to life. It had been weeks of reorganising and cataloguing, trying to bring some sort of order to the chaos masquerading as an archive while identifying the pieces that would fit with the vision in your head. But it was all starting to come together now. Finally.

It had all started with a small cigar box tucked away at the back of a steel cabinet you'd had to break into because the keys had long ago disappeared, buried in the corner of a storeroom that probably hadn't been catalogued ever. Inside the cigar box were dozens of letters, one woman writing to another. The types of letters that would have idiot historians classifying them as 'great friends' but that anyone with half a brain would immediately recognise for what they were.

Longing wrapped in domestic updates. Tenderness folded into weather reports and travel plans. Intimacies dressed in the mundane fabric of living a life you're pretending is more than just quiet despair.

Careful words. Coded truths.

You haven't been able to find out anything about who the two women were, despite your best efforts. There's nothing unique about these letters, you'd found others almost exactly like them as you'd dug through the archives. And some had even been a lot more blatant and obvious about what the writers were feeling, wishing for, fantasising about. So, you don't know why these particular letters struck you the way they did--but they did. You've read them all. More than once.

Maybe it had been the photograph tucked between the carefully opened envelopes. Casual at first glance -- just two women mid-laughter at what looks like a party. But their bodies are too close, their eyes too aware of each other. It looks like the camera caught them seconds after pulling apart from an embrace neither wanted to break.

You don't know why it matters so much. But it does.

The museum has never done an explicitly queer exhibit before, though it's always been about the invisible and the forgotten. This story fits. Whether the family likes it or not. They can mutter in the group chat all they want. You've been tasked with reviving the museum and this is exactly the type of exhibit that would get people talking. So, you're not asking for permission.

You glance at the bank of monitors lining the wall--half out of habit, half as an excuse to let your eyes rest. A moment of rest before returning to drowning in the paper tide.

That's when you see her.

Standing in what you've dubbed the west gallery is a woman in jeans and a ribbed top. Hair loose and curling down her back, the strands catching the light from the high windows in a way that makes you pause. She's still. Not just not moving -- but entirely, completely still. Like the moment has folded itself around her, freezing her in time like the subjects in the photos she's looking at.

Of all the displays and collections in the museum, this one is your favourite. You remember the first time you saw the collection: sensual, gritty, and too beautiful to be comfortable. A fine art style series of photographs featuring sex workers. Framed in shadow and neon, back against a wall with one leg propped to reveal a flash of thigh, leaning through the window of an obviously expensive car, scantily clad and hip cocked, cigarette dangling from fingers and in the background the blurred figures of a man and woman clearly striking a deal. And the final image: a woman seated alone on a curb, elbows propped on knees and high heels dangling from her fingertips, her head bowed into her arms and a curtain of hair swinging forward to hide her face. Anonymous, painful, stark reality by the soft glow of a streetlamp.

Your personal touch was the addition of a poem you'd seen years before on Tumblr, now handwritten by the poet on raw cotton paper and framed for all to see. If the photos themselves didn't drive home the message that this was never a life that anyone wanted then the poem would.

The woman on the monitor is reading it now. You can tell by the way her weight has shifted forward slightly, arms folded loose across her stomach, head tilted just enough to expose the line of her neck.

There's something about the way she's holding herself--like if she moved too quickly the moment would crack.

You glance toward the time stamp in the corner of the screen. Nearly lunch. You've still got so much to do, both for the new exhibition and simple day to day admin. Your hand moves to the mouse, zooming in on the display. The monitor shows her from the side, what you can see of her expression showing that she gets it -- she's feeling everything you did when you first encountered the photos. More even.

You find yourself leaning in. Wanting to be closer.

She tilts her head again, one hand moving to push her curls back over her shoulder where they tumble like spilled ink. Your eyes follow the arc of it, trace the exposed line of her throat. Her arms are crossed loosely over her stomach, not in defence but in some tender instinct -- like she's trying to hold something in.

You've watched plenty of visitors on these monitors. School groups. Couples. Retirees wandering in for something to do. You've seen people cry. You've seen them laugh too loud, roll their eyes, scroll their phones. But this is different. She's different.

There's a stillness in her that draws you in. A kind of brittle gravity carefully contained by a shell of manufactured calm.

You wonder what brought her here.

You wonder what she sees in those photographs that makes her lean forward instead of away.

You wonder how long she'll stay.

Something flickers in your chest. Sharp and warm, you let it curl, low and slow, somewhere beneath your ribs.

On the monitor, she turns slightly, revealing more of her profile. Her lips are moving and you suspect she's mouthing the words of the poem to herself. Your pulse shifts as you watch her, like her silent words have cast a spell aimed directly at you, the pen suddenly in your hand tapping against the desk in time with thoughts that bristle uncomfortably.

She's probably just passing through, the typical curious tourist, like so many others.

She'll see what there is to see and never come back.

Still, your eyes stay on the screen even after she finally steps out of frame and the small office feels suddenly, shockingly quiet.

You glance back at the notes scattered across your desk. Try to remember what you were doing before she appeared. Before something inside you shifted. You pick up the pen again, but this time it's not to make a list or circle a line of inventory code. You write one word in the corner of the page, almost absently.

"Letters."

You're not thinking of the ones in the cigar box. Not anymore. It's just the shape of the word, as if writing it out was a spell that might call her back into view.

You stare at it a moment longer, then set the pen down carefully and reach for the folder closest to you. There's still a full afternoon ahead. Still so much to do.

But all you can think about is the woman in the west gallery. And how still she was. A musing smile plays across your lips as you wonder what she'd look like if something...someone...managed to break through that shell of hers and release whatever it was holding in check.

Her

She's not sure how long she's been standing there. Frozen in place by feelings that are both too much and not enough all at once.

The ache behind her ribs is delicate and precise, like a bruise blooming slowly with her heart at the centre. The photographs had hit her hard, all synthetic glamour bottled like cheap perfume and reckless bravado disguising the mourning for a life never lived but desperately wanted.

It's the poem that lingers though, taking root somewhere deep. Each verse unfurling a silent tendril of something that cuts as it wraps around her bones, tightening with each breath.

She exhales, long and low, and lets her eyes trace the words one more time -- softly, like a hand brushed soothingly over bruised skin.

Tousled Angels

Midnight drapes itself along a back road

That knows not to ask what broken

Dreams led you here

And uncaring of the faults in the

Stardust of our souls,

A street light flickers a halo on the heads

Of nobodies whose choice would be

Anything but this

Had they been given it instead of the

Wounds that trademark them

As warriors

But they were born on the

Wrong side of lucks draw for that

And so here they are

Jaded eyes and cherry lips

Renting happiness by the hour

Practising the artistry of the ending

And laughing away the idea of perfection

Looking anything like them

Concrete angels

Who just wanted somebody to die for

Back when the hearts on their sleeves still

Believed in forever

Before they knew anything about

The business of saving us

From the loneliness of ourselves

Who have never seen how the neon

Fantasies of a thousand men

Gild their tousled wings

In forgotten hope

She hadn't expected this.

She hadn't expected any of it if she was honest. The wind had been moody as she walked, strong enough that it had kept blowing her curls across her face. But she hadn't minded. Just wrapped the ends around one hand, enjoying the way the town had slowly unravelled before her.

Quiet streets and uneven sidewalks, pale succulents blooming along the fences, stubborn old trees whose roots cracked the surrounding pavement in quiet rebellion, sun half-hidden behind a scrim of cloud. The buildings had become older as she followed the map on her phone toward her destination. Quieter. The sort that slouched into their own shadows.

The house itself was stunning. High stone walls almost completely overgrown with ivy, a brass plaque with the name etched in slanted cursive beside a gate that had sighed softly when she'd pushed it open. Like it still remembered almost rusting shut with how long it had stood unused and was glad to be serving its intended purpose again. Tall windows that looked out over small flower beds surrounding the building, and a massive medieval looking wooden door complete with weathered ironwork standing invitingly open.

Inside was something else entirely.

Room after room unfolding like a whisper. Or a memory. Or both. Each one told a different kind of story, all strung together without any kind of logic. A series of confessions arranged not by era or value, but by some feeling they'd invoked in whoever had put each display together. A home for all the types of things leftover from an estate sale. Things that didn't quite fit anywhere else. The misnamed. The misremembered. The misplaced.

Anonymous family photo albums next to a row of discontinued perfumes that had long since lost their scent. A collection of matchbooks from clubs and bars, open to reveal the phone number scrawled on the inner flap and a room with nothing but shoes of all shapes and sizes, all worn and beautifully ruined.

A hallway practically wallpapered with the childish art that had once decorated fridge doors and classroom walls leading to a space overflowing with paperbacks given as gifts, sometimes multiples of the same copy, complete with a message from the giver scrawled on the first page.

A pile of recipe books, battered and outdated, on a table beside a shoe box of ticket stubs. A packed suitcase found in a train station locker and never claimed. Another room crammed with every instrument you could imagine, all broken and damaged beyond repair.

A wall of Polaroid portraits -- all featuring homeless people, migrants, sex workers, runaways and each with a short written or recorded response to the question 'How did you end up here?' Sometimes one sentence, sometimes a whole story.

There might not be any logic to any of it, but she could feel what it was all trying to say. That even though each item might once have been deliberately concealed, erased, coded, overlooked, or just forgotten -- someone had loved them so much that they'd given each one a new home where they could live forever in the light.

She continues her slow wandering, eventually ending up back near the entrance lobby. She pauses, eyes catching on a small sign tacked beside an old banister.