Episode 6- long description

I feel like a bleary-eyed zombie. I could have had a full night's sleep, but I decided to finish the last hundred or so pages of Cassandra Khaw and Richard Kadrey's excellent book, The Dead Take The A Train, instead. It was great. I feel like a bleary-eyed zombie now.

Anyway, prompt. From https://yourartpath.com/character-art-prompt-generator :

And from https://writingexercises.co.uk/subjectgenerator.php:

I want more practice sticking in key moments and fleshing them out with description, so this is a perfect opportunity. Let's go:

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I’ll keep the introduction brief. My name is James Jones (don’t ever call me Jim) and I am a damn good butler. I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but I have been given awards. Families consider it a privilege to obtain my services for a period of months at a time. And if the other household staff don’t like me, far be it from me to coddle them. I’m here to manage them, not befriend them.

Twenty-two years I had been at the height of my skill and influence when it happened. The thing you wanted to know about. The first time I became truly afraid for my future. I’d found myself in the employ of a Mrs. Withers, the widow of a computer company of some sort. Her husband was living, of course, but he spent all of two days a month in the house. Still, I knew when he liked his tea, how hot, and with how many sugar lumps placed forty-five degrees clockwise from the top of the saucer.

The duties in Mrs. Withers’ home were largely unsurprising. She took breakfast at 9, lunch at 12:30, and dinner at 7. She set a household budget of $35,000 per month for supplies, groceries, staff, maintenance, property taxes, and other necessities, which I managed for her. Someone like Mrs. Withers doesn’t pay attention to the brands of her restroom tissue, only the comfort of it, and with careful comparative research, I was able to identify cheaper versions of the exact same products all over the house—paper towels, sponges, laundry soap, chlorine tablets, that sort of thing. I had created quite a surplus in the household kitty, and she wasn’t above calling me a “household miracle worker”.

All was going swimmingly, until Mr. Withers’ visit in early April of that year. He frequently brought a guest when he came home— usually some starry-eyed young employee of the tech firm, eager to show Mr. Withers he was ready to do anything to further his career. I didn’t ask questions, it wasn’t my place. One could see the sadness in Mrs. Withers’ eyes, though, as she hosted these young men for dinners and gave them tours of the kind of house that they all thought they would inevitably end up in one day.

Few of them, I understand, made it more than a year in the company.

When I heard Mr. Withers would be coming home on this particular spring evening, I set two of the maids to preparing the poolhouse, as normal. Mr. Withers’ guests typically stayed there. The Withers’ poolhouse was, after all, quite a bit larger than many poolhouses, and its bedroom wasn’t often in use otherwise.

Knowing from communication with his driver that he would be arriving at fifteen minutes past six, I had the household staff lined up along the driveway at ten past, the last cool breezes of the dying winter ruffling braids and skirts and coattails alike. I tolerated the staff’s nervous chatter, until the subject turned to a rather crude speculation about this month’s guests. I silenced the staff, and a minute later, Mr. Withers’ car could be seen in the distance of the driveway.

It is, one should be assured, a mark of distinction that the fence and gates that surround one’s property should not be visible from the immediate perimeter of the home. Thus, when the black towncar appeared, it did not do so while turning in from the street, but while winding its way out of the carefully kept forested drive, the growth of which faded to open field one hundred and thirty-seven yards from the edge of the house.

The car prowled up the long drive, a big cat approaching its pride with equal parts arrogance (well-earned, of course) and laziness. It shone in the early afternoon sun, all black and chrome and window tint, sleek and predatory. The crunch of gravel under the tires became louder as it approached the final curve, and the driver—Nathan, I believe—afforded us a wave as he brought the car around to parallel with with front door.

I stepped forward, hands clasped behind my back, to align myself on the car’s passenger side with the division between the end of the front door and the beginning of the rear door. Martha Nuñez took her position opposite me, so that we flanked the car door, me ready to greet Mr. Withers and her ready to take whatever items he or his guest may not wish to carry into the home themselves. At a fractional second of eye contact with Martha, I leaned forward, grasped the door handle, and pulled it open.

Staring back at me from the back seat was not Mr. Withers, though he, too, was in the car, adjacent to the figure which I now describe; neither was it a starry-eyed twenty-something in a cheap suit, gawking at his first true mansion. Instead, what met my gaze as I opened the door was a perfectly round face of white plastic, with all the distinctive features of a human face and none of the characteristics that bring such a thing to life.

It had lips, which were permanently molded into a mild smile, a mirror of my own face in front of my clients. It had a nose, a smallish one that did not subtly flare in and out with the breathing of a natural being. Its eyes had whites and pupils and retina, and they did move, tracking movement and focusing on points in the distance as any human’s eyes would, but the lids did not move. It did not blink at the sudden sunlight piercing the darkened interior of the car.

Below its chin was a high, white collar, from which protruded a black bow tie so perfectly tied that I thought at first is was the pre-tied kind they sell to mediocre groomsmen at middle-class weddings. It was not. The lines of its knot were perfect, moreso than even I could have managed, yet I could see no evidence of glue or pins used in the folding of the strip of cloth.

It stepped out of the car, and I could see the rest of the perfectly pressed black tuxedo that it wore. Its shirt bore no ruffles, and it wore no cummerbund, the same as the male members of Mr. Winters’ household staff, and its coat featured the same long tails as mine. It stepped to the side and offered me a pale plastic hand. Dumbfounded, I shook.

“Ah, James, good,” said Mr. Winters as he followed the monstrosity from the Towncar. “This is DEV-1-N. You will brief him on your household duties.”

“You may call me Devin,” said the Thing in the Butler’s Coat. “I am a household miracle worker.”

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I keep writing these 1,100 word stories for my 500-1,000 word blog, which is great, until the weekend comes and I have to revise all of this. Oh well, that's a problem for another day. Bye!