Chambers
by Mike Zimmerman
The whispers of my lord’s house kept me up; the
ever-louder tap-tap-tap of the radiators steaming and
spurting copper-scented mist into the air. Mist
touched everything with its whispery water. Were I
still in my mother’s house, by the sea, I would have
heard her breath get slower and slower as she’d fall
asleep at night. Here, I heard only his house.
The radiator sighed and closed.
“Here we are,” my lord had said on my arrival
by motorcar this morning. Ah—the memory of when
I first arrived. The place seemed enchanted. He had
taken my hand as I exited the car, squeezed it, and
said, “Here’s home.” I remembered the rough touch,
his hands dotted with soft, red fur. Those lips, so full,
full as a rose. We walked inside together, and I tried to
hide the wonder in my eyes at the gleaming silver, the
grand staircase, the heavy French drapery. “And here,
my lad, is a key to almost every room in the house.”
“Almost, my lord?”
“Only one room, the inner study of the library, I
will keep locked away for myself.”
How strange, I thought, as he handed me keys.
26