RDP : Anticipation

Photo by Scott Webb on Pexels.com

Camila Viles sets a beautiful  dining room table.

Her handmade centerpieces are tastefully crafted with ribbons, silk flowers and little ceramic  birds, rabbits and dogs with their heads tilted to the side.

It’s always a treat to sit at Camila’s table for a meal.

But the meal that Camila’s family  and friends  enthusiastically look forward to  is the one that Camila prepares for Halloween.

The table is set with her best china, her finest  crystal and her polished and well sharpened cutlery collection.

Dried sunflower and corn stalks are tied together with heavy twine and bunches of them lean against the kitchen door, the front door, the attic door and the basement door.

Uncarved pumpkins and gourds are scattered around the dining room, the living room and in the corridors that connect the rooms together.

In vases and jars are flowers- living roses, bunches of silk seasonal flowers, all of them arranged artfully, like pictures in a magazine in various stages of decay.

For Camila’s Halloween dinner,  her guests arrive by moonlight in long black cars and they walk right in because – as they will tell  you, Camilia’s house is their home away from home.

They chat with each other, with Camila’s cats and dogs but they all have one eye on the door that leads to the dining room, when Camilia asks them to join her at the table their collective  sigh sounds like  a chilly autumn breeze blowing across an empty field at midnight.

As her dinner party start to take their seats, they hear the kitchen door swing open  on it’s rusted hinges. A cool blast of air swarms down the hall and the candles in the living room and dining room flicker and just when it looks like they’re going to be snuffed out they flare  up instead.

Camila’s guests, seated around her table don’t turn their heads towards the hall to see if they can catch a glimpse of who has made their way, along with the chilly night air to Camila’s Halloween dinner party.

Their eyes are locked hungrily upon Camila’s face.

She motions for them to sit and she smiles warmly at them.

” Dinner is served. ” she whispers.

” Hello? ”  the voice calls to them from the hallway ” is anyone here? Hello?”

They hear a few more footsteps and then, ” Hey, Sam- it’s Adrian. Yeah, I’m here, but look the invoice has to be wrong. Well. Because this house is abandoned. It’s full of dead plants and leaves and crap. Fine. Yes. I will. In the dining room.  So does this  Cook person have to sign for it? No? Good. Because like I said, nobody is here. Uh huh. I’ll be back in an hour.

The man seated at Camila’s left looks up at her and whispers gleefully, ” dinner sounds perfectly delicious. What do you have planned for dessert, you wicked thing.”

Camila brings her glass to her lips. ” It’s running late, but I’m sure Cook will have no probblem catching it,  too.

Photo by Scott Webb on Pexels.com