triangular · ground floor · last swept long ago
the ceiling slopes from a man's height at one edge to nothing at the other, so the corner narrows to a point you cannot reach without lying down. there is a broom in it, leaning the wrong way. there is a single shoe whose pair has not been seen for some years. there is the smell of old wood, and a draft from somewhere unlocated.
it once held the coal scuttle and the boot-jack, and before that, briefly, a wireless set with a dial illuminated by a small valve. now it holds whatever the house puts down when it cannot decide where else. the paper cat sleeps there on certain afternoons, folded into the angle as if it had been measured for the space.
a child tucks themselves into it during a count to twenty and is not found. the keeper bends down once a season, sweeps as far as the broom will reach, and admits that the far point of the corner has not been touched within memory.
field-note: the dust here is finer than the dust elsewhere — it has had longer to break itself down.