The Tartan Sofa

Welcome to The Spot Writers. The prompt for this month is an unexpected visitor.

This week’s contribution comes from Chiara De Giorgi. Chiara is an Italian author and currently lives in Berlin, Germany. She writes fiction, with a focus on children’s literature and science fiction.

 

The Tartan Sofa

by Chiara De Giorgi

Created with Mistral

 

Elsa popped open a small bottle of soda and took a sip, closing her eyes. Cool and fizzy: just what she needed after a long, hot day. It was summer, and with more free time than usual, she had decided to freshen up the house a bit. By day, she scrubbed, scraped, painted walls, and rearranged furniture; by evening, she worked on her novel. She was halfway through Two Hearts and a Scarecrow, which she thought was shaping up rather well. Even the Squatters (the community of spirits residing in the abandoned house on the southern edge of town, who had become something of a second family to her) approved.

She turned toward the half-empty living room (clearing out the old furniture had been that day’s task) when she heard a moan coming from outside the open window. Who was out there in the garden?

Cautiously, she went to look. She was puzzled when she saw an elderly man staring into the room where, just a few hours earlier, the old tartan-patterned sofa she had taken to the dump that very afternoon had stood. The old man gave no sign of having noticed her; he just stood there, motionless, with a sad, fixed gaze and a downturned mouth. He was clearly sad. And he had a… familiar look?

“Uh,” she cleared her throat. “Can I help you?”

The old man barely moved his eyes toward Elsa’s face, then went back to sighing as he stared at the half-empty living room.

Elsa hesitated. She wanted to do something for him, but what? He was a stranger, after all. She couldn’t just invite him inside. She noticed she was still holding the soda bottle.

“Can I offer you something to drink?” she finally asked the old man.

This time, he looked her straight in the face, intentionally.

“You… you can see me?”

“Well, of course I can,” Elsa replied, caught off guard.

“Hmm,” the old man said, suspicious. “Who are you? What are you doing in this house?”

“My name is Elsa Mon,” she answered instinctively. Then, a little annoyed, she added, “I live here. This is my house.”

“Your house!” the man exclaimed, raising his eyebrows in surprise. “And what happened to Lily Mon?”

“She was my grandmother,” Elsa said softly, a note of nostalgia in her voice. “Did you know her?”

The old man didn’t answer right away. Instead, he studied Elsa in silence for a few heartbeats.

“My Lily… She was my wife. So you… you must be my granddaughter!”

Now it was Elsa’s turn to gape, her eyebrows shooting up in shock.

“Grandpa?”

That explained why his face had seemed familiar: even though she had never met him, as he had died before she was even born, she had seen plenty of photos of her grandfather. Of course, she wasn’t exactly known for being good at recognizing faces. And he did have a slightly translucent appearance… he was a ghost, after all!

“Come in, then!” she invited, excited.

“Gladly,” the man replied, vaulting over the windowsill with unexpected agility.

“Since when can you see and talk to spirits?” Grandfather asked once inside. “Do you know where Lily is?”

Elsa’s eyes turned sad. “I don’t know where Grandma is. I’ve never seen her since I gained the Sight,” she answered. “It happened a few months ago, sort of by accident… but it’s not an interesting story. Anyway, from what I understand, not all spirits stick around. Those who find their way move on to the Other Side right away. I think Grandma is Over There. She was a clever woman,” she concluded with a wink at her grandfather.

The man smiled tenderly at the memory of his wife. “Yes, she was,” he commented. Then, after a deep sigh, he changed the subject. “I’ve lived in this house since the day I was born,” he mused, looking around. Then he stared at Elsa. “What have you done to the living room? Where did you put my sofa?”

Elsa immediately felt guilty. She had taken her grandfather’s sofa to the dump! How could she have done that? And how was she going to tell him?

“Well, you see,” she began, stammering a little. “I’m redecorating the house, and I thought I’d, uh… modernize it a bit. Your sofa is… well, the thing is…”

“We took it to the dump this afternoon!" declared a woman who had suddenly appeared in the room, seemingly stepping out of a flower vase.

“Stranger!” Elsa exclaimed. “You nearly gave me a heart attack!”

Her grandfather was speechless, unsure whether to be more annoyed about his sofa being taken to the dump or about the supernatural creature who had just materialized in his living room. Okay, his granddaughter’s living room. And by the way: his granddaughter, apparently, knew said creature, besides being able to see and interact with spirits. He was one of the Departed, he was familiar with the supernatural realm, but Elsa? Oh, why had he passed on so soon? Look at the exciting life his descendant was living!

Elsa, caught between the Stranger’s lively and oblivious honesty and her grandfather’s irritation at losing his beloved sofa, immediately said, “Yes, but we can go get it back!” She rushed to the entrance and grabbed a set of keys. “In fact, let’s go right now. I want to bring that sofa home as soon as possible!”

After some commotion (the Stranger giggled, and every time she did, flower petals spouted from her ears; Grandfather was bewildered but thrilled by how the evening had turned out; Elsa tried to start the car using the pantry key), they finally reached the dump.

It was almost midnight, the sky was dark, and everything around them was silent. They got out of the car and found themselves in front of a tall, locked gate.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to come back tomorrow…” Grandfather said sadly. But Elsa wasn’t ready to give up and shot the Stranger a pleading look.

The Stranger had been waiting for this. In an instant, she turned into a key: the perfect one to open the gate, of course. Once inside, she spotted the sofa (luckily, it was easily recognizable and one of the last items to have been dropped off). She then took the form of a burly mover and hoisted the sofa onto her shoulders to carry it down from the pile of old furniture.

“Hey, look at that nice nightstand,” Elsa said, stopping to admire an old piece of furniture. “With a coat of white paint and a bit of sandpaper, it’d make a perfect shabby chic piece…”

The mover scoffed. “I’m only here for the sofa. No extras.”

In a few strides, the Stranger was outside and secured the sofa on the roof of Elsa’s car.

 

Once home and after brushing the sofa clean, Grandfather sat down on it and sighed.

“Lily and I shared our first kiss on this very sofa,” he said. “It’s where we sat together so many times to watch TV. Where I’d read to her while she knitted. When I had a fever, I’d lie here, and she’d bring me a blanket and some hot broth.”

Elsa’s heart melted as she listened to her grandfather recall those moments with her grandmother. Moments she had never witnessed. She was glad she had saved the sofa from the dump. Why had she wanted to get rid of it in the first place? It was a beautiful sofa!

With one last, deep sigh, Grandfather stood up and approached Elsa. He took her face in his hands and planted a kiss on her forehead.

“Goodbye, little granddaughter of mine. I’m glad I got to meet you. Now I’m going to find my Lily. I think it’s my time to go Over There too.”

With a big smile, he walked toward the open window. Before he could even think of climbing over the windowsill, a bright white light enveloped him, and he disappeared.

“Wow,” Elsa said, moved.

She looked around for the Stranger but didn’t see her. Who knew what object she had turned into. Maybe it was better this way: to be alone in this moment, to feel it deep in her heart, and to store it in her memory forever. Maybe… while sitting on that beautiful tartan sofa.

 

The Spot Writers:

Val Muller: http://www.valmuller.com/blog/

Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com

Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com/

Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.com/