The Boy

At the front entrance of the large Victorian house in which he lived; a ten-year-old boy sat upon the cold stone step watching the heavy rainstorm deluge. How dismal and unwelcoming everything seems to be he thought, even the lupins and roses in the floral garden roundel were bowed and appeared to be shedding tears of rainwater. Rivulets of water coursed in chaotic splashing disorder over the stoney drive stopping at the leafy gateway to swell the already huge brown puddle.

The large open hall that opened behind the boy was dark and uninviting, the interior of the dank hallway was repugnant with the smell of engine oil that had leaked from Mr Mullet’s parked moped together with that of the feline high notes of Thomas, Mr. and Mrs. Gravenell’s stray cat, who preferred to live, sleep and feed upon their half-moon coir mat immediately outside of their front door.

He could hear rainwater splashing from a broken downspout as it cascaded down the stone steps leading to the cellars. The cellars were once used as a large kitchen and storage area for the long-departed gentry that had owned this once grand house. Alas the cellars were an abandoned filthy dilapidated relic of the past. Once a month Mr. Elderidge would deliver coal and together with his son, they would hump sacks down the slippery slimy steps into the darkness of the cellar to the makeshift wooden bunkers that served the ten flats that made up Kent House.

Sudden flashes of lightning shocked the boy’s tranquil observations; in the blink of his eye, it was as if the steel grey sky above him had been slashed in crazed molten streaks of flame. Moments later, the longest, loudest deafening crash of thunder filled the air, closely followed by Thomas running like the wind past the boy and on through the torrential rain until he had reached the centre of the flower bed where he attempted to take cover beneath the dripping lupins.