Short Story: Miriam's Guilty Room

However the brightness of the day may have dimmed, but not the joy from the people around me.  Everyone is either watching kids play basketball on the old wooden framed basketball hoop or enjoying a match of badminton while the zip-line flies by overhead.  The night however, does bring a mood about the people of the island.  It's a mood of vigor and excitement!  When the sun is beginning to set and the sky portrays a magnificent array of yellows reds and pinks which reflects off the water making a sort of etched painting glistening in the falling sun.  As the sun sets, dinner has just finished and we all part our ways,  many people sit on the back porch overlooking the water, a few go into to the square where people begin to prep for the glorious bonfire.  Although, I choose to sit in Toad Hall, this place is constructed out of old slender burned wooden planks, that have five little rooms cut out inside.  Toad Hall on the outside looks like a little ranch style home with wooden slabs on the outside along with a red tin roof, which is where I like to call my second home.  As dinner comes to an end so does the daylight.  As I walk out of Toad Hall a dark haze has consumed the island and I am excited by the smell of  burnt pine coming from a ferocious.  The fire has seemed to brought people out to see what the light is, buts it's when they arrive they are surprised to see the glorious fire which has brought people together around the old brick fire pit.  Here we tell stories, sing songs and make s'mores until it is pitch black and the crowd has slowly dispersed into their cabins or tents and it is now I say my goodnights to my family and friends and tread my way back on the dirt path.  I can see the gazebo, as I bank the corner, it stands tall in the moonlight and the water has

The wind chime hung from the roof of the abandoned house , it swayed calmly and slowly against the wind , everything seemed peaceful . We - my father and I - sat on the porch of the rundown house that only we knew about . It was dark and I wasn’t the biggest fan of the night , the night is unpredictable but yet so beautiful .

- During: The wax began dripping down the sides of the candle once the wick was lighted. The flame was blue at the bottom and ombred up to yellow at the top of the flame. The flame was jumpy and not steady.

The Ramsey Summer House remains abandoned during those ten years, decaying slowly, groaning and weeping as it remembers the tenants it once possessed and the movements they made “how once hands were busy with hooks and buttons; how once the looking-glass had held a face; had held a world hollowed out in which a figure turned, a hand flashed, the door opened, in came children rushing and tumbling; and went out again” (Woolf 1927, 339). The house bore witness to every breath and every argument; it absorbed fluttering eyelashes, clapped hands, and footsteps; drowned in laughter and in tears; the house was enraptured by the Ramsey’s and remembers them fondly as their images haunt its halls (Wisker 2011, 6).

At the genesis of the short story, the narrator, upon a cursory inspection of the façade of House Usher, notes the existence of ‘a few white trunks of decayed trees’, as well as ‘a few rank sedges’ not only surrounding the House. This final observation is also noted by the house’s resident, Roderick Usher, who mentions the ‘many fungi which overspread’ the stones of the house. This, coupled with the physical deterioration of the house, which is severely cracked, ties the house symbolically to the physical deterioration of Roderick and Madeline Usher. The house is enshrouded by a ‘pestilent and mystic vapour, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden hued’, and the narrator believes the source of this vapour to be ‘the decayed trees, and the grey wall, and the silent tarn’. The decayed state of the vegetation surrounding the house and the resultant dense atmosphere appear to contribute to the symbolic value of plants as representing the mental illnesses that have ostensibly afflicted the Usher family ‘for centuries’, clouding their minds, ‘moulding’ their destinies, and converting them into the state in which the narrator perceives Roderick. Put simply, this ‘mystic vapour’, the source of which is the decaying vegetation surrounding the house, has poisoned the air, causing substantial illness to all who inhale it. This appears to symbolically reflect the negative

The room was musty and dimly lit. A heavy curtain was drawn across the only window, allowing only a slight and pathetic slant of balmy sunlight to slip in. Faintly, the air tasted of dog urine and stray fur—a fusty undertone hovering beneath ghostly.

He waited until the night’s 11th hour. By now the Princess rested in the highest tower of the castle, locked away from the dangerous world, yet so oblivious to the dangers that which fated the rest of her life. Silently the peasant journeyed outside, where he stopped at the wall of the tower where she lay. He watched her in the darkness from below, lifting his face to her, letting the light rest on his every surface of darkness. The night was cloudless. The winds wailed between the motionless oak trees as its thin branches clawed out, ever so slightly disturbing the leaves with its hostile screeches. Not the thick moss of the trees nor the damp leaves squirming in his toes could distract the peasant from so enticing a scent. All that encircled him was the sweetness of lavender and rosewood, filling his entire being as he sunk into the grass, like sand washed over by the water, with every breeze passing

As I went downstairs the tone of the room felt hot, humid, and empty. Hot, because of the burning Atlanta temperatures of ninety-eight degrees or higher. Humid, caused by the broken air conditioning and affecting the density of the atmosphere. Finally empty. The furniture was missing and minimal sounds can bounce off to make echoes. I was departing from a place that I called home. I lived at the address 353 Leisure Court for almost a year; the identity of the street brings back smiles to my face because of its pleasantry. Living here has made me feel secure like a dog to his owner. Moving away from this security brought feelings of uncertainty. My lack of confidence was about the new beginnings my family would experience after the move. But

The flame had been extinguished, the feel of it snuffed out between his fingers nowhere near comparable to the heat scorching through his veins. His Grace had never been like this, had never scoured every nerve inside his vessel as it grew, it had always been warm, been comforting even in the most desperate of times and yet now. Why? Gabriel let his fingers brush over the heated wax, letting it conform to his fingertips before he pulled them back and watched it quickly dry. Pale nubs sat top his index and middle finger, twisting them slowly back and forth as he studied it before her voice caught him off guard. The wax was easily discarded, pulled off and set back at the base of the candle as he turned, almost uneasy at the fact that he hadn’t realized she woken up sooner.

A morbid melancholy stole over me. Anxiety gnawed at my heart. I was a living corpse. There was a feeling of chill in the air every day as I felt. I faked illness so as not to go to school. Despair hangs heavy in the stifling air. It was a dreary day for me , cold and without sunshine. I dread people and always avoid people. The door was locked from the inside. A cold grey light crept under the curtains. The windows were secured with locks and bars. The room felt cold and sterile.The flowers faded for want of water. A single lamp was suspended from the ceiling. The clock ticked louder and louder in a quiet room. I regarded the room as a refuge from the outside

She disappeared through the doorway and his face dropped a fraction. He drew in a deep, heaving breath and leaned back against the bonnet of the car. A hacking cough escaped his lungs. He lifted his hand to take the cigarette from his mouth. Each chubby finger was covered in soot, every crease ingrained with dirt and grime. Curling his second finger, he flicked the cigarette away. He slid his foot forward to grind it against the floor. A single strand of smoke danced upwards, a fleck of orange still visible on the end of the

A gust of damp, hot air greeted my skin when I entered the room. The fan, in its futile effort to cool the sweltering room, accomplished no purpose other than rustling the shrew pages of “Moroccan National News” and causing the bed linen to shiver. I flung open to the first chapter of my summer reading novel, A Thousand Acres. As I half-heartedly scanned the pages, my gaze drifted over to the servant girl working in the room. Beads of perspiration dipped unnoticed down her temples and the scarf over her head clung wearily to her neck, only adding to the feeling of being suffocated by the humid heat. The warmth did not seem to affect me as much as it did her, but then, I lounged beneath a ceiling fan. She crouched low on the floor with a hand-made broom of pine needles bound together by a copper cord. Her expression appeared stoic and her movement robotic. For an instance her eyes rose to meet mine, and I

There was a loud noise coming from Julie's brothers room and Julie wondered where her brother Gregor was. Julie has noticed that something strange was happening? Julie’s brother Gregor has been in his room for a long time. She goes and checks on him approaching his room fast as a cheetah. All Julie finds is a bug on the floor and no sign of Gregor. There was no sign of escape, no window open, no hole somewhere, and the front door is always locked. She assumes that her brother is the bug on the floor, that it must be him because there is no way a bug can get in. The bug just stood still even when she approached it . Knowing that the bug is her brother and that he has been in the room for a long time she thinks her brother must be starving.

The small wad of burning paper drew down to a wisp of flame and then died out leaving a faint pattern for just a moment in the incandescence like the shape of a flower, a molten rose. Then all was dark again”

Touched by fading moonlight, the girl looked pale as a ghost, distressed and sorrowful. Great drops fell from her eyes; the heavy rain clouds in her mind let loose their turbulent nature. She felt the muscle of her chin trembled like a small child, again, she looked toward the window as if the darkness outside could soothe her. However, she tried to keep her sobbing down by biting her lips, afraid the woman would “visit” again. Meanwhile, in the hallway, there was only deadly silence, creating an overwhelming sense of emptiness.