danchaon:

From the story “The Farm, The Gold, The Lily-White Hands,”  forthcoming in Stay Awake by Dan Chaon

In the basement of Sydney’s new house is a little room that is about the size and shape of a coffin.  Sydney and her husband discover it a few days after they have moved in.  There is an old, heavy door that they hadn’t noticed when they were touring the house with the realtor.  There is a door knob, and one of those iconic keyholes like in cartoons, with a real skeleton key in it!  They unlock it. 

              Behind the door is a space just big enough for a little man to stand in.  The walls are cement and plaster, the corners are curved rather than straight.  It smells like a cave.  

            “I think this is possibly the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen,” Sydney’s husband says, and Sydney looks at him sternly.     

            “It’s a closet,” Sydney says.  

            “No it’s not a closet,” her husband says.  “There’s nothing to hang things on.”

            “Maybe it’s a fruit cellar,” Sydney says.  “They probably kept their sacks of potatoes in there.  To keep them cool.”   

            It is cool in there, her husband concedes.  “It’s like something you’d store a dead body in,” her husband says.  “That’s what it’s like.”  

            Sydney sighs.   “Look,” she says.  “This was a great bargain.  I hope you’re not planning on getting into one of your superstitious things.”    

            “I’m not,” her husband says.  “I’m just speaking metaphorically.”  And they both glance over to where the washer and dryer are lined up, mute, open-mouthed, on the opposite wall.  They will have to have their exposed backs to this dreadful coffin-door every time they put a load of clothes into one of the machines, they are both realizing.  

               Metaphorically.  And she has an uncomfortable flicker, a little thought that swallows itself before it actually makes it to the forefront of her mind “in the farmer’s basement was a little room where he kept his gold”  she thinks briefly, a line from a story she read once as a child.  Her mouth hardens. 

 Metaphorical.  And she watches her husband turn the key in the lock of the coffin-like door.      

Metaphorical for what?