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I have succumbed to misery, sorrow and disbelief in life’s fairness. One of my tenent has not paid me rent since May this year. Now he is not answering the phone, or email. I feel he has decamped leaving me a mess of a house, and unpaid bills. What I’m dreading is that he must have left the electricity, gas, phone and Internet charges in my name, and how in God’s name I will pay for them.
I had never expected it.
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DAILY PROMPT
Succumb
Write a new post in response to today’s one-word prompt.
I was hungry, in need of sustenance and a restroom too, but I kept climbing the stairs stoically after my brother in law B. There was no elevator. At every turn I felt hopeful that I was going to reach the final step —- no such relief.
There was a painful stitch at one end of my side. We reached the roof. The rooms were in a row. It was bitterly cold and the wind blowing made me shiver in spite of my warm clothes. I said no to that room, and told B I would stay in the ground floor room which I saw earlier in a different Mess.
All the Messes were booked, and there was a shortage of rooms. I stayed alone in a different Mess whereas B and Shahida stayed elsewhere.
I had gone to Rawalpindi with B and his wife Shahida. They had come to attend a marriage. I had tagged along to give the necessary documents to the Army department concerned with it.
The officials kept asking why three and a half years after my husband’s death I had come to collect the arrears. Where was I? What could I say? I wasn’t in the country, or I couldn’t come?
The irony was that the department concerned was also on the top floor of a building. At every turn I kept hoping to see the final step but I wasn’t in luck.
DAILY PROMPT
10,000 Spoons
…When all you need is a knife might not be ironic, but it is unfortunate. Add your own verse, stanza, or story of badly-timed annoyance to Alanis Morissette’s classic.
Flowers and Breezes 