It's Still Life

Brigid and Felreil Arrive in Room 215

Brigid and Felreil came through the hidden closet of Room 215 as though stepping between centuries were merely a poor plan carried out with good manners, and Felreil, without visible surprise, laid his French Imperial Navy-cut coat across a time-aged leather wing-back chair with the air of a man reserving territory in a foreign campaign.

At the chair’s elbow stood a bellhop-automaton of decidedly lesser stature, red-jacketed, pillbox-hatted, one gloved hand fumbling industriously in its waistcoat while its clockwork gaze held Felreil’s with the grave offence of an equal interrupted.

Felreil looked it over, murmured, “Lilliput,” then turned with Victorian courtesy to the Tall Thin Man and extended his hand, saying, “Lemuel Gulliver, I presume,” before bowing slightly to la Raconteuse, smiling at Chris as though the room’s absurdity had at least remembered to be well introduced.

When he took Frank’s hand, his glance dropped to the white cloth at the man’s wrist and he added, with the dry concern of one who has seen too many ports and too many wars, “From this rising Crimea mess, perhaps; I trust the wound is not deep.”

Brigid, by then gone pale with the strain of accidental time travel and the general tide of other people’s stories, sank into the wing-back chair and managed only, “Dizzy,” whereupon the bellhop at last produced an intertitle card and held it aloft with mechanical triumph.

“Cake is the answer — who cares what the question is.”

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Written for Denise’s Six Sentence Story including the word plan  Some images created with Midjourney; all writing is authentically my own original work.©Misky 2006-2026.