Photo by Karly Jones on Unsplash
by Coleman Bigelow
After months spent searching, he’d begun to wonder if they’d ever find a house until the agent shared the listing for Los Padres and Piper insisted they needed to put in an offer because the house was below-market in a good location, with enough bedrooms and, just as he was getting cold feet, their offer was accepted, the deal was closed, and the movers had deposited their meager belongings inside the cavernous foyer.
He settled into the house reluctantly and spent the first few weeks avoiding the den, before deciding to reclaim the room by mopping the floors and sponging the walls, all the while ruminating on how dust was composed of dead skin cells. They’d chosen something called Owl’s Perch for the paint color, which he worried wasn’t warm enough, but Piper had promised would end up cozy. She ducked her head in a few times, as he rolled on coat after coat, and commented how this was all a bit unnecessary since everything had already been repainted before the sale and muttered but… if it makes you feel better. When it was done and dry, she stood next to him surveying the room, then gave his shoulder a small squeeze before announcing she was going for a walk.
Several minutes after the front door closed, he lit some sage and awkwardly waved the burning bundle around, watching as the orange embers flared and flickered and the smoke drifted towards the open window, the whole time thinking about how the woman who’d sold him the sage had grown wide-eyed when she realized he was the one who’d moved into that house.
Coleman Bigelow’s work has appeared recently in BULL, Bending Genres, Cease, Cows, Cleaver, Flash Boulevard, and Your Impossible Voice. Find more at: www.colemanbigelow.com or follow him on Twitter @ColemanBigelow.
