Setting Essay

can you believe it, i chionged this essay in an hour! the plot has metamorphed from drug rings, ghosts and international intelligence. now its a sappy romance piece. i am so not stephenie meyer. well. here it is!

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The house was truly a foreboding presence at the end of the Mildew Walk cul-de-sac. Its crumbly stone walls, slimy with algae and moss, tower over the street it overlooks. They look astonishingly like castle fortifications, designed to keep out unwanted visitors. A crooked “Keep Out” sign, clinging to the barbed iron gate by a frayed plastic twine, defies anyone to approach it. Bottle green creepers grow from the cracks in the wall of the house itself. They snake along the wall; their roots threatening burst the house open from the inside out. It had no garden, only a barren concrete courtyard with a couple of wilted potted plants.

The house had been empty for months ever since its owners, an elderly couple passed on. Not that they had lived in it while they were alive, they had long been sent to a nursing home. The house had already been empty for years before they died. Empty, until a couple of days ago, that is. Unbeknownst to most of the residents in the street, a stranger had come to reside at 13 Mildew Walk. She entered the house in the dead of the night. Not by climbing over the gate, no, but with a key. She locked the gate again carefully as it had been, and nobody knew she was there.

She resurfaced from the depths of the house 3 days after her arrival, again in the dead of the night with a smouldering cigarette gripped loosely between her bony fingers. But this time somebody saw her. Jack was out for his nightly smoke as well. Focusing his bloodshot eyes on her, he swaggered over to the opposite pavement where she sat.

For awhile, they sat in silence, each taking deep drags on their cigarette. Then Jack spoke up. “Susie, so you came back after all.” She looked hard at him. “It’s Susan. What are you still doing here Jack?”

Jack sniggered. “Same thing as you, nowhere else to go.”

“I have a home.”

“Uh huh, a room in some exotic hotel. That’s not a home, Susie. So what you back for? Here to stay for good?”

Susan shook her head, taking another drag on her cigarette. “Maybe, maybe not. With Mum and Dad dead, I have been left with a neat little inheritance which will keep me comfortable for quite a while. I might move on, or I might stay here.” Jack breathed out a cloud of smoke. “Move on? Again? Susie, this isn’t the life for you. You need to settle down sometime.”

Susan is angry. “This isn’t your business Jack. This is my life.”

“But are you happy?”

Susan was taken aback. Was she happy? Years of travel to exotic countries had left her feeling restless and dissatisfied. No matter where she was, she had always felt like she was in the wrong place. What was missing?

Home.

She took another thoughtful drag on her cigarette. Home. Yes, perhaps that was it. She did want to “settle down”, have a go at playing Happy Families. The Big Thirty was looming and she knew she could not lead a life of partying, skinny dipping and drinking forever.

Jack threw his cigarette stub into the drain. “Think about it. Here is a perfectly good home just waiting for you,” he waved towards the house. “I sure hope you’ll stay.” He was about to walk away when he turned back suddenly. “Well if you uh, need help refurbishing the house, you can call me anytime.” He scrawled his number on the back of his cigarette packet before striding away quickly back to his house.

Susan was left staring at the number on the cigarette packet and watching Jack walk away. He had certainly grown during the years she was gone. No longer was he the awkward teenager who never got the girls. Tucking the packet into her pocket, she too walked back home. Not back to the house, HOME.

She smiled. Maybe she would stick around a while longer.

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i don't think this is my best piece actually...i will try to do better!