Wednesday's Words on a Friday

On Wednesdays, Delores, from Under The Porch Light, has a word challenge meme which she calls “Words for Wednesday”.

She puts up a selection of six words which we then use in a short story, or a poem.

I’m hopeless at poetry so I always do a story.

It’s a fun challenge…why not join in?

Delores is taking a break from the challenge for a few weeks, so I’ll be putting up a piece (or six) of my own that I wrote without Delores’s words. I hope I haven’t already featured these.

Here is my story:

Damn this was upsetting! Jacob Turner wanted to cry, but as a ghost, he had no tears.

He'd never been lonely before, why did he feel loneliness now?  Before Mr McKay had bought this abandoned old farmhouse and fixed it up, he'd been alone for close to two hundred years and never minded.

Jacob streaked through the house on the gust of wind that had blown the door open. The catch had never worked properly, Mr McKay had held the door closed with a large brick.

Jacob had resented Mr McKay at first, how dare he move in and disturb his silence? Hammering this, repairing that, painting and moving furniture all over the place..but as time went on he became used to having him around, even developing a psuedo kinship of sorts.

After seventy years occupying the same house, Jacob could have sworn Mr McKay could sense him, maybe even see and hear him sometimes. They'd sat side by side near the fire in the antique wing chairs Mr McKay had brought down from the attic and cleaned, enjoyed listening to classical music on the radio, even laughed at the same comedies on television.

There were conversations too, where Mr McKay might have been talking to himself, but equally so, he might have been talking to Jacob and hearing Jacob's replies. One conversation had been about kilts and how Mr McKay preferred the old MacGregor tartan over other tartans. MacGregor had been Jacob's mother's clan....

Jacob sat on the stairs and brooded. How was he going to cope with being alone again, now that he'd known friendship and enjoyed company?

Eventually a new owner would move in, maybe with a family. What if Jacob didn't like them? What if they couldn't see or sense him? He could well spend the next two hundred years alone again, in a crowd, but this time he'd notice and feel the loneliness.