I took a long pleasing bath to ward off the chill I’d felt walking through the late evening breeze and put on nothing more than a tee shirt before heading into the kitchen wet hair and all to get a bowl of the savory stew.
My fourth bite in I began to feel this now familiar feeling of edginess, no that’s not quite right. It wasn’t so much edgy as it was a feeling of…. sensuousness, yes that’s it. I felt like a sensual being, as if everything I did was poised and accurate, but in a way meant to entice.
I shook my head to relieve myself of the feeling but to no avail. My body felt odd and I wondered not for the first time if I were coming down with something.
It had started happening, this strange phenomena a little more than a month ago. And it was usually after I ate a meal made in the old cooker I’d found when I moved in.
I got up and walked to it now, wondering if maybe there was some chemical left over from the making of it that was somehow getting into my food and making me feel this way. The thing had to be a good fifty years if the faded writing on the bottom was indeed accurate so who knows.
But funnily enough, it was one of the only things my aunt had asked me not to get rid of in the little note she’d left with the will, for my eyes only. That, and the sleigh bed that might be just as old. She’d also left a closet full of clothes, old mementos and knickknacks all over the place.
I never thought much of it, just figured she had some kind of weird attachment to those things, and it was a small price to pay, holding onto them at her request, to keep the house that must be worth millions in today’s market. That too I was under strict orders not to sell.
A quick but very close inspection showed that there was nothing wrong with the crockpot, not that the eye could see anyway, so I put away my fanciful musings and got ready for bed. The nights come early here in winter, which is fine since there’s not really that much to do here after dark anyway, so I headed for the bedroom and the aforementioned sleigh bed.
After choosing one of my favorite romance novels from the little book shelf in the room, something else I’d gotten into since moving here in fact, I climbed under the covers and slid my reading glasses up my nose and in place before switching on the bedside lamp.
It cast a nice soft glow around the room and gave the place an ambience reminiscent of a time gone by. I still find it strange that I haven’t changed anything in the room since moving in. It’s so not my style, but it seems like each time I try or even think of doing it, something else comes up to distract me and I never get it done.
And each time I start to think how strange this whole thing is, my mind suddenly starts to drift elsewhere. Like the fact that before moving here I’d never had much to do with books, never read one, recommended one, nothing.
But the fact that my aunt had been the town librarian for over thirty years seemed to be enough for the good people of the town to give me the job. It didn’t entail much more than restocking books on the shelves once they were returned, since it didn’t seem like there were ever any new books coming in so that was a breeze. But I still found it odd.
And the hours were perfect for someone who had nothing better to do with her time. The fact that it pays way better than my cocktail waitressing job back in the city where I once lived is a nice added bonus as well.
My eyes fell casually on the framed photo of my aunt which each time I see gives me a start. I’ve heard of Doppelgangers and lookalikes but it’s uncanny how much alike we two really are. Everything, from the raven blackness of our hair, the almost white paleness of our skin, to the mole that sits just above the right corner of our top lip.
The first time I saw it I felt like I’d stepped into an alternate universe. The clothes were all wrong, more nineteen-sixties flower child than my usual fare of baggy cargos and skinny tanks. But everything else was me to perfection.
After two weeks here I’d even found myself wearing my hair in the same way as my aunt had worn hers in the photo, down around my shoulders instead of a high ponytail, which I favored and had started wearing the clothes she’d left in the closet.