Sandy Shores Part 1: The Manor

A brief description of the facility: The compact structure with it's dirt-and-weed based lawn, broken mud-room window, murky lampless exterior, useless swaths of semi-detached door screening and frequent refuse-heaps is largely hidden behind a bulging row of sinister conifers which, to their credit, have not to-date assaulted or harassed anyone. There is a lovely generous back yard locked off; forbidden to tenants but not to refuse-heaps or creeping, window-devouring vines.

Inside we have the off-limits mud room with semi-functioning door locks, a little hallway which almost always reeks of cigarette smoke despite the "no smoking" clause in all resident contracts which, much like the no-drugs, no messes, and noise and visitor limitation clauses, were apparently all penned just for shits and for giggles. We have a little kitchen with a generous supply of implements and crusty cookware, cupboards falling off their hinges, fruit flies, mice, the occasional rat, coffee-sugar-and-sauce-encrusted countertops and a fridge brimming with putrefaction experiments.

We have a grey and jaundice bathroom with inoperative window and four bedrooms each of distinct qualities, each intended to serve as bedchamber, dining room, office and living room for it's lucky tenant. Oh yes! Almost forgot. Also stored within the facility are four assets known as "tenants" who are constructed from flesh and blood and who might even, by some theoretical enlightened beings, be considered "people," with actual lives and emotions and human rights and all that crazy stuff.

Well, frankly, dear imaginary reader, I'm exhausted already. God knows how YOU must feel. Let's recess until tomorrow. And by tomorrow we of course mean: "the unspecified future."