Chapter One -Beauty and the Brit (Patreon)

CHAPTER ONE: A HOME NOT A HORROR FLICK 

“It’s charming!” Rae had exclaimed when she and her friend Paige had viewed the house only a short two months ago.

“Yeah if you’re into horror flicks,” Paige muttered under her breath in trepidation.

“Oh c’mon you know me I love horror movies! I'll protect you from the big baddies! Besides, everybody knows that horror films have rules! Stick to them or away from them actually and you’re totally not going to die first!” she teased her friend who laughed only a little when Rae shook her by the shoulders good-naturedly.

“Right: no going to the basement after dark, no having sex openly in the woods or upstairs before or after babysitting, no opening any strange or mysterious books and reading out loud from them,” Paige listed off on her fingers, “no running some asshole over in the middle of the night and dumping the body…”

“No going to summer camp, no mistreating anyone who might have supernatural powers, no devil worshipping, no calling ghosts names…” Rae continued, “don’t go to sleep in a town that might have a curse or some guy who died in a fire…”

“No Ouija boards,” Paige put in as she rounded the corner into the next empty room.

“Yes exactly. You’re going to be fine Paige,” Rae declared calmly as though it were only natural to discuss one’s horror film survival odds. “And you’ve not driven into the middle of nowhere or passed a sign that said ‘Silent Hill’ on your way here. Peanuts. You’ll be fine.”

Paige stuck out her tongue at her friend and tucked a wayward strand of her brown hair behind her ear as she felt it fall forward onto her forehead. 

“So my b-f-f are we going to take it or what?”

Paige sighed. “This place needs a lot of work, Rae. Are we going to have the time?”

“You forget I’m Artist-In-Residence meaning my time will be split between the college and my studio meaning I’ll have a good chunk of time to be home here and managing things. We’ll have the time.”

Paige still didn’t look convinced. “Look I know the price is great but… but can’t we find an apartment suite?”

“For the same price as we’d be paying to own this place and have like a gajillion times more space? I thought you were smart, Pay!” Rae teased.

“I get it; you’re right but I just…” She looked around picturing all of the bare rooms of the long-ago abandoned Victorian style house and sighed. “Fine, Rae if you want to make this your pet project. But we need to budget and prioritize. Stuff that can wait to be fixed or repaired or brightened up will just have to wait. I only have about another year or so of payments on the store before I fully own it so we need to be smart til then and after that I’ll have a bit more income to play with, okay?”

“Deal,” Rae exclaimed immediately, moving forward with hazel eyes flashing in determination as she held out her pinky to Paige. “Look we both need this change and I promise that if this place turns out to be shit we will move and I will personally handle the resale or renting out of this house. In the meantime we’ll slowly have it fixed up to give ourselves a better living space and in a couple years if all goes well we’ll have enough to properly put things the way we want and live out our wildest dreams!”

Paige couldn’t help but laugh at her best friend who she hugged after the pinky swear was implemented. “Pfff!” she exhaled, spitting out air and hair. “Girl you have got to get this hair thing under control!”

“Oh please I look fabulous!” Rae argued as she took a step away and flicked her dark, wavy hair behind her shoulder.

“If I wanted a mouthful of protein I’d have asked if we could do lunch at Cam’s!” Paige laughed as she led the way out of the house.

“So are we gonna take the place?” Rae asked a bit nervously as they arrived at the front door where their realtor was waiting outside on the lawn.

“Yeah. Let’s do it. I’d rather deal with repairs and the possibility of ghosts than stay where I am anyway,” she added as a final thought to convince herself they were making the right decision.

And two months later now that the two were happily settled in for the past week, Paige found she couldn’t yet regret the choice. Yet.

It was nice having a house instead of just an apartment. And although they still needed to put a lot of work into the place, it already felt like home; someplace that Paige (and Rae for that matter) could come back to and feel relaxed. It was wonderful.

Paige was most excited about their backyard. There was just something about the untended open space that once contained a well thought out and landscaped plot that seemed somewhat magical. Maybe it was because she could see how the space was supposed to look unlike the rest of the house which still sadly reminded her in some way of all those stupid ghost movies or slasher flicks.

The twenty-two year old calmed herself by the silent reminder that they hadn’t moved all of their stuff out of boxes yet –and more things were to come when they could afford more furnishings and home decor. It just looks empty and abandoned still. Once you’ve got more set up it’ll be like a whole new place! This pleased her to envision and thus calmed that irking feeling that some entity was lurking in this empty wasteland of space inside the currently unoccupied rooms of the house. She and Rae had two extra bedrooms which they would eventually convert into an office type space (or a library Paige had better suggested) and a spare bedroom for any friends who came to visit from out of state. Rae had immediately picked another bedroom for her art studio and the two friends had gotten rooms beside one another for their actual bedrooms. Then they’d convert the sitting room at the back of the house into a den where they could host movie nights or sit reading or sketching and have best access to the patio and backyard from there too.

Meanwhile though these empty rooms that held only boxes or a random chair creeped her out to look at or stay in longer than a couple of moments. She didn’t dare look into them at night! It was times like these that she cursed having a vivid imagination and a love of stories of all sorts whether they were in books or on film!

With a sigh, pulling her chestnut hair out of its ponytail and letting it fall to her shoulders she looked around her bedroom which she’d customized as quickly and as best she could in the short time she’d been here this past week. It was a comfort to see her own things around her. So with that in mind, she got into bed, and leaving the curtains open to let the moonlight shine in, she lay her head down on her pillow.

“Here’s the next chapter Pey!” she stated aloud into the nighttime around her. “May it be stellar!” She turned over and allowed herself to drift off to sleep so that she’d get up and be ready for the day of work tomorrow.

Hey everyone what did you think of this opening chapter? Please leave me a comment!

Love,

Britt xoxo