Hello everyone!
Little Stories Premium. Little Stories Premium gives you more of the stories you love,
“an ad-free listening experience, and access to little stories for sleep and exclusive bed time podcast”
featuring brand new sleepy stories perfect for that last track on a bedtime playlist. Subscribe or purchase a gift subscription by visiting littlestoriespremium.com. Now on to the show.
This is Ria. Welcome to Little Stories for Tiny People. Our story today is perfect
for bedtime. It has a slow pace and a heartfelt theme. It's main character doesn't really move a whole lot. So settle in beneath your weighted blanket and close your eyes and listen. To our tale. I don't know if you'll be able to stay awake until the end, but you won't regret it if you do. It's called the story of a house.
“Take it away, Ulrich. Remember there are no pictures you can imagine the pictures you might”
you can imagine them however you want. Okay, let's go!
This is the story of a house. You may know this house. Not this exact house, but you likely know of a house just like this one. Once I describe it to you, you might turn to the person next to you and nod knowingly saying, "I do know that house." There's one in nearly every place that has houses. Most of the other houses on the block are tidy. If there's a patch of grass out front, it's trimmed once in a while.
“If there are trees, they grow leaves in the springtime.”
At 4am, there is usually a car tucked against the curb or a motorcycle in the shed. When it comes to most houses, there is a clear separation between the house and the floor and fauna surrounding it. If there are animals inside these houses, they were invited there by people. Perhaps most importantly, nearly every other house. Even if the grass is not trimmed, or the tree out front does not spring leaves. Nearly every other house shows signs of
serving the purpose that all houses aim to serve. Providing a home for people. But this house, the one our story follows, has none of those characteristics. It sits away back from the street at the end of a long driveway itself broken and worn away in places. The grass surrounding the house has long since given way to a meadow. An entire ecosystem unto itself. The lone tree in the yard died years ago, but there's no one within striking
distance to worry each time a storm rambles through. Spinnedly arms of English ivy creep upwards over its edifice, as if perpetually pulling it into an earthly embrace. There is no clear distinction between the house and its environments at all. There's a hole in one of its sides where the wood rotted through which a shrub pokes. An upper window pane is missing and bats have taken up residents. The basement is home to innumerable creatures and is the stage for
unceasing dramas starring rats, mice, snakes, and the occasional frog. The house is an
Eye sore, a blight on an otherwise unremarkable landscape.
the kind board teenagers dare one another to approach, then run away from giggling. But mostly
“it's the kind of place everyone ignores. The house size under its own weight. It flinches each time”
someone tosses an empty can through a window. It sleeps during the day and wakes at night when the bats are up and shuffling around. It watches the moon. It remembers a different life.
It wasn't always this way. No house ever begins as a falling down mass. They all begin.
Each one has a dream, a promise. A newly built house is concrete evidence of hope. Each one is built with a clear purpose. None of them ever expect to end up like this. Every single one of these sad, decrepit houses, the ones you know and the ones I know,
“all started out brand new. So let us remember that as we visit this house of ours on a very”
particular day in early spring, it is the middle of a crisp sunny afternoon and the house is a
sleep upstairs in the attic. The bats are asleep down below in the basement. The mice are asleep within the walls. The house is on a quiet street and since it is still early in spring, there are no sounds of lawnmowers or any of those other things people get up to as the weather warms. It is quiet until the house awakens to the sound of voices on the porch. Why haven't they put it on the market before now? I think they moved out of state a while back and
“I guess it just didn't seem to be worth the trouble and won't get much forward of course.”
The person presses a steel-toed boot downward testing the porch. We'll be lucky if this porch doesn't collapse with us on it. The house is fully awake now, feeling the heat of embarrassment, creep up its ivy, the house shutters and loud creaking sound emanates from the porch. See what I mean? Both men laugh as if it's some big joke. They peer into the house's windows and she wishes they were even grimyer than they are. The house cringes imagining what they can see through
the window, the living room with that big hole in one of the walls, the chandelier that hangs crookedly from the ceiling. The forgotten pieces of furniture that act as a playground for woodland creatures, at least the stench can't travel through the glass. Check out that wallpaper. It's all too much. The house considers waking the beds. Maybe they'd fly out, scaring the people away. Maybe the house could? Oh, good. The people are leaving. A sad thought comes to the house.
Just looking through the window was enough to make them leave, but the house shakes off the grief that comes with that thought and replaces it with relief. The people are down the front path. All right, take care now. See the house size the porch size two. The beds seem to stir for a moment in the upstairs room, then settle. The house drifts back to sleep. As the sun is still high in the sky, and being awake at this hour makes her think of things she wished to forget. The house
has a thought as she settles into the quiet. They are gone now, and they will never come back.
But the people do come back. A week later, the house is asleep in the middle of the day. This time it wakens to the sound of people at the rear of the house. This is new. The house is used
To teenagers sneaking around the front, peeking into the windows and being sc...
No one ventures out back, but here are these same people again. Doing just that.
“The approach, the shed, not the shed, the house thinks her shutters rattling. The house has no idea”
what they'll find back there. There could be anything in the shed. The man with the steel-toed boots pulls at the shed door. It is warped from years of disuse, and it catches against the ground. It's not going to open. The house's thoughts drift gratefully to all the rains in the humidity over the years that twisted the shed door so that its angles are not quite square. The man plants his feet firmly against the ground and pulls the door with greater force. It catches again,
“and then it opens. No, oh wow, there's a mower in here. I think it's got to be like six years old.”
I know that model. Must have been top of the line when it was new. It was the house thinks, in spite of herself, a memory of the mower, brand new, comes to her in a flash. Why are these people doing this? Steering up things that should be left to the past, after traipsing around the property, the people leave. This time, the house has a bad feeling. They will return.
“She settles into an uneasy sleep. The house sleeps fitfully for a few weeks.”
On tender hooks, expecting the people to come back. But after several weeks of quiet, she slips deeper into a troubled slumber. Late spring comes, bringing heat and damp. The animals in the house are sluggish. The sounds of lawn mowers and the buzzing of leadwackers come
and go. But it is the sound of a mallet hitting wood that finally jossles the house from its stupor.
Her shutters rattle as she ascends from the depths of sleep. The animals in the house stir and turn over. The sound stops for a moment, and the house begins to doze once more. But then the sound comes again. The house flinches. She gazes out her front windows. She sees a man, one of the people who visited her, hammering a sign into the ground. A foresail sign. What happens next happens swiftly. The sound so familiar,
so lodged in her frame, knocks the house back in time. Decades shrink to nothing. As the house is long memory, carries her back, far back to when another mallet hit another foresail sign into place. When she was just a few days old, there is so much more to this story. You can hear the full episode by becoming a little story's premium subscriber. Visit littlestoriespremium.com to join
and thank you as always for listening in.
