Free Write #3

Prompt Seventeen

It was, honest-to-the-gods, terrifying.

Tuesdays always seemed to end up worse than the rest of the days in the week; it had always been like that, as long as I could remember.  This particular Tuesday had been mucky, the air so thick with humidity that it could be sliced open with a knife (and then water would pour out of it like a supernatural waterfall).

It would've been normal if it were anywhere but central Texas on a perfectly sunny day.

I should've taken this as an omen, but I didn't, because I had learned the lesson over the years that Tuesdays were just weird.

But, opening the door after walking home from school on a Tuesday afternoon in July, I walked into my house after struggling briefly with the keys.

Nothing was the same.

The house had been constantly changing.  It would progress from states of clean to unclean and back to clean again in ridiculously short amounts of time.  The paint was chipped at the edges of the doorframes, a result of the various man-height projects me and my family had to haul through entrances to small rooms.  The walls had been a pale yellow, rather ugly but still somehow comforting, and there had been thousands of holes in the walls from various works of art.

Memories were embedded in every inch of the house, from the stains in the carpet to the paintings to the shelves of books to the small cracks in one of the den windows from when a fox had once rammed straight into the glass as if it had been drunk.  It was home, and that meant something.

Of course it meant something.

So walking into my house—my home—this odd Tuesday afternoon, only to find that everything had been changed...

"Am I being pranked?"

(I wasn't being pranked.)

"This isn't funny—Stuart, what did you do?"

(My older brother hadn't done anything.)

The walls were a vibrant blue, the carpet was white (it had been brown, before).  The furniture was completely different—instead of a deep, forest green, it was brown.  The bookshelves were gone, leaving bare walls devoid of any holes in its place.  The glass tables were replaced with wood-topped coffee tables, the tiles in the kitchen were four shades darker, there was a new microwave, oven, fridge, and dishwasher.  The piano was gone altogether.

There was a different bed in my room—I had a special relationship with my bed!

After pulling out my phone and frantically calling my mom, she picked up, and eventually the conversation ended in her saying, "Honey, there's no way.  I'll be home in a few hours.  Love you."

Grumbling, I took the phone away from my face, scrolled through my contacts, and tapped on the name "Stuart."  If he had done this...

(He wasn't.)

"Why are you calling me?  Rehearsal starts in two minutes."

"Hello to you, too, my dear brother."

"What."

"The house is different—did you do this?"

"Different, how?"

"The walls are blue!  The furniture is brown, the carpet is white, my bed is two feet shorter and lumpy, all of the posters in your room are gone..."

"Shut up; I don't have time for this."

"Stuart--"

Just as I was about to investigate further, though—the cliché happened, and I woke up.  In my bed.  The same old one, with the memory foam and the permanent water stain in the headboard.  Thank the gods.