Other Lovely Places

9 am
I drank the tea. Whatever people think, I am not a demanding person. I accept everything that is served, although was this tea was mine or meant for someone else. I wonder for a moment if it was the woman at the bottle machine who bought it for me. It doesn’t matter—ginger tea is healthy. I read in an old magazine on the coffee table.
The television is still broken, and the radio plays loudly—not at my place but at the neighbours’, who I think are not even home, and there’s no cat to listen to the music. Is it a trick to ward off burglars? Instead of that noise, a dead body of a bastard in the basement would also work perfectly well to keep everyone at a distance. The police have not shown up anymore, and there are certainly better places to be than this house, which has been avoided for as long as I have been stuck here—except for those dirty friends of that old man.
There are still empty potato sacks, and the last two empty bottles on the kitchen floor stare at me. I don’t remember letting the fourth and third float away in the river, but my diary is missing pages, so I must have torn them out. It wasn’t Devil—he spins when I say something, but doesn’t open an eye. He must be resting after doing nothing all day.

6 pm
It’s evening. I’ve had enough. The house is quiet, and the moon is shining; for a change, it’s not cloudy. I sneak up the stairs—there is still water—and I take a shower. How strange. It seems as if someone was already here. Was it the man I saw whitewashing the wall? I can’t remember what happened after I saw him.

As I step out of the kitchen door with Devil on my heels, the front doorbell rings. I don’t wait and leave for the river. I still have something to post and want to know if there is an answer to all my burning questions—or perhaps someone who will let me know that the knife has arrived safely. I hope I don’t meet that idiot with the easel again. I have hidden two potato sacks in the bushes next to that ugly house near the beach, where no one wants to stay because they say it is haunted. I think it is just modern art.

8:32
It is a sultry evening—who would have thought? It is a blessing that there is no one on the beach. It was drizzling for a moment, and I thought it was snowing, but it was dandelion fluff floating through the air. I did not blow, so I am not allowed to make a wish.
I let a bottle float in the water, and when I look up, a guy is looking at me with an umbrella over his head. Mary Poppins would have been better—she could have cheered things up with a song.

“What are you doing there? Throwing rubbish in the water? You have to hand in bottles. Polluting public waters is a sign of bad manners.”

I turn around and see his face contort in fear.

“Madelon?”

I do not react. I wouldn’t know who Madelon is, and that man must have had one too many drinks.

“I missed you.”

What kind of idiot is that? Definitely a guilty conscience and hasn’t been to confession often enough.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come and see you sooner. I thought that...”

Thinking, I thought—not thinking but doing. I wish he would keep his mouth shut and get lost.

He takes a step forward, and just as he extends his hand, that creep of the top of the rock appears out of nowhere and hands me a bottle with the words: “Here, honey, I found the bottle. Is that man bothering you?”—and he also takes a step forward. It’s getting busy now on the three square metres of beach. I wonder if the water is deep and how much force it takes to push both of them underwater long enough until their mouths are finally quiet.

“I am Dylan,” he says to the man with the umbrella, who does not look like a gentleman—he has a strange grimace on his face. “Would you like to accompany me and model for a while? Up there, the view is delightful. You don’t have to worry—it is not far, and you can keep an eye on her. She is not going anywhere.”*

The same goes for both of you, I think. Those two potato sacks will come in handy after all. The river gives and takes—or is that the sea? It is worth a try.

After you, says Dylan, the very picture of kindness. I hold up the bottle, there is indeed something in it. It promises to be a great evening indeed.

_{18.4.25
The title is the prompt and provided by @freewritehouse}