Mrs. Pratchett's House

891 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The importance of books in teaching

This place is revolting; there is mold everywhere. It’s like a receptacle for disposing food and rubbish. No, I’m not talking about a trash can. I’m talking about Mrs. Pratchett’s house. My mother sent me over here to look after her because she’s been missing for a while. The house was a dingy gray Victoriana. The brickwork was crumbling away. There was a sinister threat within. The path to the door was overgrown with bushes whose thorns reached out to capture me. I walk through the open door and the floor didn’t show any signs of water, which is astonishing because last night it rained. I am currently standing in what appears to be the living room, or the dining room according to all the food everywhere. Milk way past their expiration date, the doors are a shade of many colors, rotten pizza on the ceiling fan, little bits of candy sprinkled on the floor like a cupcake. Dead, wilted brown flowers in a poorly chosen vase. I mean a carnation pink vase with this ugly mustard yellow walls? That is a fashion don’t. There is a putrid smell, like a dead animal mixed with body odor. I assume it was probably one of the many cats that ate the chocolate. Wondering how a person could be this disheveled, I walk over to the fireplace and see coal. There’s nothing unusual about that except it’s still warm. A cat scampers across my feet to the back of the couch. Thinking "there probably shouldn’t be another dead cat while I’m here." I go and find some food for it to eat and set out a bowl. I then walk to look behind the couch to check on it. Guess what? It’s not a dead cat that I was smelling, it was a human corpse. Being closer there was a penetrating smell, as if a dozen eggs had been left out to rot. It’s unclear to me how long he’s been dead ...

... middle of paper ...

..., the sun is coming up. My mom’s home!” I scream for my mother at the top of my lungs and bash into the door, making as much noise as I could to attract her attention. It didn’t matter if I injured myself trying, I needed to get out of this situation. Mrs. Pratchett slowly coming back was delayed by the cats clawing at her saggy, wrinkly skin. A couple of them raced and disappeared through the wall. Mrs. Pratchett is still wrapped in a blanket of cats so, I went to look at where they were going. There was a secret entrance, just big enough to fit someone like me. I used a lot of strength to push away all the garbage and tried to crawl through. Mrs. Pratchett, now free, is leaping through the piles of trash and grabs her knife. I barely make it through before she slits the bottom of my leg. Limping, I hurry home. "What about her son?" I wonder. "Who cares? I’m alive."

Show More
Related

  • Symbolism In The Ghost Of Crutchfield Hall By Mary Downing Hahn

    2362 Words  | 5 Pages

    In Mary Downing Hahn’s “The Ghost of Crutchfield Hall,” Downing Hahn shows that sometimes the best of people who deserve the best end up getting the worst. In this companion book, you will see the difference between the two main characters; Sophia and Florence. You will also find out about the setting and what dangers can go on at Crutchfield Hall. You will see what something in the book symbolizes, including the cat and the mice, and the cold. I will show you Sophia’s mind and her thoughts, and what she is planning on doing, more about her death, and possibilities of what could’ve happened.

    Read More

  • Comparing The Fall Of The House Of Usher And The House Taken Over

    680 Words  | 2 Pages

    Usually, their home is silent, but when one day the narrator suddenly hears something inside another part of the house, the siblings escape to a smaller section, locked behind a solid oak door. In the intervening days, they become frightened and solemn; on the one hand noting that there is less housecleaning, but regretting that the interlopers have prevented them from retrieving many of their personal belongings. All the while, they can occasionally hear noises from the other

    Read More

  • David J. Hufford's Beings without Bodies

    1253 Words  | 3 Pages

    Filban said the home had a yard that was overgrown. “The trees and bushes were overgrown, and the house was dark,” Filban said. “And the windows were covered.” She and her sister slept in the front bedroom of the house. She remembers the bedroom having a large, floor-to-ceiling window. She said you could look out and see the wra...

    Read More

  • Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping - Beyond Reason

    955 Words  | 2 Pages

    Marilynne Robinson gives voice to a realm of consciousness beyond the bounds of reason in her novel Housekeeping. Possibly concealed by the melancholy but gently methodical tone, boundaries and limits of perception are constantly redefined, rediscovered, and reevaluated. Ruth, as the narrator, leads the reader through the sorrowful events and the mundane details of her childhood and adolescence. She attempts to reconcile her experiences, fragmented and unified, past, present, and future, in order to better understand or substantiate the transient life she leads with her aunt Sylvie. Rather than the wooden structure built by Edmund Foster, the house Ruth eventually comes to inhabit with Sylvie and learn to "keep" is metaphoric. "...it seemed something I had lost might be found in Sylvie's house" (124). The very act of housekeeping invites a radical revision of fundamental concepts like time, memory, and meaning.

    Read More

  • Figures of speech in The Fall of the House of Usher

    654 Words  | 2 Pages

    Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, sets a tone that is dark, gloomy, and threatening. His inclusion of highly descriptive words and various forms of figurative language enhance the story’s evil nature, giving the house and its inhabitants eerie and “supernatural” qualities. Poe’s effective use of personification, symbolism, foreshadowing, and doubling create a morbid tale leading to, and ultimately causing, the fall of (the house of) Usher.

    Read More

  • Little Charity in Eudora Welty's A Visit of Charity

    1289 Words  | 3 Pages

    Many features of the setting, a winter's day at a home for elderly women, suggests coldness, neglect, and dehumanization.  Instead of evergreens or other vegetation that might lend softness or beauty to the place, the city has landscaped it with "prickly dark shrubs."1  Behind the shrubs the whitewashed walls of the Old Ladies' Home reflect "the winter sunlight like a block of ice."2  Welty also implies that the cold appearance of the nurse is due to the coolness in the building as well as to the stark, impersonal, white uniform she is wearing.  In the inner parts of the building, the "loose, bulging linoleum on the floor"3 indicates that the place is cheaply built and poorly cared for.  The halls that "smell like the interior of a clock"4 suggest a used, unfeeling machine.  Perhaps the clearest evidence of dehumanization is the small, crowded rooms, each inhabited by two older women.  The room that Marian visits is dark,...

    Read More

  • Interview with an Elderly Woman

    2237 Words  | 5 Pages

    Marie’s grandparent’s had an old farm house, which was one of many homes in which she lived, that she remembers most. The house was huge, she learned to walk, climb stairs, and find hiding places in it. The house had a wide wrap around porch with several wide sets of stairs both in front and in back. She remembers sitting on the steps and playing with one of the cats, with which there was a lot of cats living on the farm...

    Read More

  • El Con Society Of The Paranormal

    1122 Words  | 3 Pages

    Finding a door to exit would become a puzzling exercise during one of their St. Albans investigations. Terri and Marie were in what is known as “the safe room,” because a large old-fashioned safe is located there. They had completed their investigation and were readying to leave the room when they realized they couldn’t. There wasn’t a door. “It was as if it had been morphed over,” said Terri. “We went around and around in circles. We were growing concerned when we made another lap and there it was. It was as if the door materialized out of nowhere,” she said.

    Read More

  • Room, by Emma Donoghue

    1358 Words  | 3 Pages

    Since Ma’s kidnapping, seven years prior, she has survived in the shed of her capturer’s backyard. This novel contains literary elements that are not only crucial to the story, but give significance as well. The point-of-view brings a powerful perspective for the audience, while the setting and atmosphere not only affect the characters but evokes emotion and gives the reader a mental picture of their lives, and the impacting theme along-side conflict, both internal and external, are shown throughout the novel. The author chooses to write the novel through the eyes of the main character and narrator, Jack. Jack’s perception of the world is confined to an eleven foot square room.

    Read More

  • Themes In A Visit Of Charity

    1603 Words  | 4 Pages

    The heavy door seemed like a prison door that was meant to keep inmates inside. The Nurse on the other hand who was attending the visitor’s desk was dressed in a white uniform. She was as cold in her reception, similar to the day that was cold outside. Marian does not tell the nurse her true intentions of being there except that she was a campfire girl wanting to visit some old lady. When asked by the nurse in a manly voice “Acquainted with any of our residents?” (122), Marian nervously pushing her hair behind and stammers “With any old ladies? No – but – that is, any of them will do”. (122) showing that the both of them were really not concerned about the

    Read More

  • Gothic Theme in Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher

    843 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the beginning of the story, with an extensive and vivid description of the house and its vicinity, Poe prepares the scene for a dreadful, bleak, and distempered tale. The setting not only affects Poe’s narration of the story but influences the characters and their actions as well. Both the narrator and his boyhood friend, Roderick Usher, question w...

    Read More

  • A Lesson In Procrastination

    1416 Words  | 3 Pages

    11:14 p.m.-I slowly ascend from my small wooden chair, and throw another blank sheet of paper on the already covered desk as I make my way to the door. Almost instantaneously I feel wiped of all energy and for a brief second that small bed, which I often complain of, looks homey and very welcoming. I shrug off the tiredness and sluggishly drag my feet behind me those few brief steps. Eyes blurry from weariness, I focus on a now bare area of my door which had previously been covered by a picture of something that was once funny or memorable, but now I can't seem to remember what it was. Either way, it's gone now and with pathetic intentions of finishing my homework I go to close the door. I take a peek down the hall just to assure myself one final time that there is nothing I would rather be doing and when there is nothing worth investigating, aside from a few laughs a couple rooms down, I continue to shut the door.

    Read More

  • The Yellow Wallpaper Analysis Essay

    700 Words  | 2 Pages

    Ever since she has been entrapped in her room, the narrator’s vivid imagination has crafted fictional explanations for the presence of inconsistencies in the wallpaper. She explains them by saying “The front pattern does move! And no wonder! The woman behind shakes it” (Gilman 9). In the story, the narrator explains the woman mentioned creeps in and about the old house she and her husband reside in. Venturing towards the conclusion, the narrator becomes hysterical when thinking about the wallpaper, explaining to her husband’s sister Jennie how she would very much like to tear the wallpaper down. Jennie offers to do it herself, but the narrator is persistent in her desire-”But I am here, and nobody touches that paper but me-not ALIVE”(Gilman 10)! The narrator has realized the apex of her mental instability as the story

    Read More

  • Personal Narrative: A Horror Story

    622 Words  | 2 Pages

    It was dark that night, I was nervous that this dreadful day was going to get worse. Sunday, October 23, 1998 I wanted to start writing this to tell about the weird things i’m starting to see in this new neighborhood. Gradually I keep seeing pots and pans on the sink suddenly move to the floor. I would ask my sister but she is out with my mom and dad getting the Halloween costumes. When they got home I didn’t tell them what I saw because i've seen Halloween movies and I have to have dissimulation otherwise the ghost will come out and get me first. October 24, 1998 I think I got a little nervous yesterday with the whole ghost thing. 12:32pm, Went to eat lunch with the family today and I go to get my coat. I heard the words furious and madness,

    Read More

  • Realism In Jane Eyre

    664 Words  | 2 Pages

    This detailed description shows Jane’s dedication to her decision to leave Thornfield, and allows the reader feel as if they are with her in the moment. The sequence conjures up strong imagery, which the reader is likely familiar with, such as the sight of early dawn. The locked gates suggest both a sense of confinement and security within Thornfield. Such a layering of small details and observations creates the sense of realism that is characteristic of classic Victorian realist literature.

    Read More

More about Mrs. Pratchett's House

Open Document