Chapter 1: The House with Blue Roses

This is the first half of  Chapter 1 in our tale of how many ways I can abuse my characters. I'm dangling a Cadbury egg in front of my computer screen so I'll have a small reward for getting this entry written. Chocolate works for me every time. Hope you enjoy!

Chapter 1:The House with Blue Roses

As usual, something was on fire and I was catching the blame. The mechanics classroom of my school was ablaze. The first day and already I've messed something up. How was I to know that a combustion engine could... combust? Still, it wasn't entirely my fault. Sam was the real one at fault. After all, best friends for fourteen years he ought to know better than to dare me.



I can't be too mad with the bloke. He was the reason this whole thing got started, in an odd sort of way I think I owe him a bit of gratitude.

You see, it was because of that fire that I was expelled from the school. Walking home I decided to take a more circuitous route. The longer I could put off telling my parents the better. I turned a corner down a street about a block away from home. Having lived in the same neighborhood for my whole life I knew every inch of the city, or so I thought. On my slow walk home my eyes saw a new house. I say house, it was more like a shanty, shifty lean-to straw hut sort of thing with smoke billowing from a lopsided chimney. The lawn wasn't so much grass as it was thistles. The only thing mildly attractive about the residence was the roses. The front door was almost invisible due to a rather prolific rose bush. What took the longest for my brain to register was not the fact that this house had never existed before, but the fact that the roses were...blue.

Before I knew it my feet and curiosity won the better of me and I was on the stoop, knocking on the old rust colored wooden door. Inside could be heard the screeching of a chair across a wood floor. The grunt and shuffle of what sounded like an older person moving to answer. With an eerie but beckoning twist of the handle the door flew open and I was looking into eyes so blue they almost made a piercing noise. They were framed by rectangular spectacles and spiral, gray whisps of hair. I noticed his hands were dirty, probably from digging around in the dirt. He had a cigar entwined in his fingers and held a cup of what looked to be tea in the other hand.

"Ah, Seamus. I should have known you'd come at tea time. Hurry up, get in. Going to rain soon." His voice was gravelly, but not unkind. A magnetic force pulled me inside the house.


"The name's Merle, as I am sure you are wanting to know. And yes, before you ask, me and this house have been here for quite some time. I decided this morning that I would let you see it for the first time. And no, no one else can see it. You will be thought crazy if you decide to tell anyone about it. I'm sure that won't bode well after your little stunt with some flammable materials earlier this morning."


My jaw dropping was surely audible, as was the giving out of my knees and the hard thud of me landing on a stool. He gave me a sideways smirk, "Don't worry. I'm not taking you to Hogwart's." He reached into the pocket of his shabby wool vest and tossed me an old watch with a worn band. "We're going someplace much better."




More to come next week! If you've enjoyed reading this little chapter, please feel free to check out the others by clicking on the "Seamus" tag at the bottom of the post. <3