Friday 29 July 2011

Friday Flash Fiction - The Where House

I work at the Where House. If you've ever lost anything for good, chances are it turned up here. That's not to say I could find it again for you, though. Lost things like to stay lost; the Where House just gives them boundaries in which to do it. There's a mountain of missing socks in here somewhere, but it tends to move around, and so much loose change that you'd be a billionaire if you could collect it all.

The Where House itself is kind of hard to find, too. It's listed in phone books, but they seem to suffer from strange printing errors on that entry, or else someone has ripped out the page. The phone keeps being accidentally disconnected and reconnected under different numbers, and people trying to drive here tend to make wrong turns, or just find something more interesting to look at. The only mail we ever get are lost letters that were supposed to go to someone else.

That's why it was so odd when we started getting deliveries. At first it was confidential government documents in archive boxes that I assumed had been accidentally rerouted with the mail, but they were coming on such a regular schedule. I supposed that someone had figured out how to specifically trick the postal service to find us by mistake.

After the documents came a crate of computers, evidently redirected during an office move, then two cars and an army truck. Three suspicious lumpy packages wrapped in black plastic were last, and I shoved them out of the way before I could wonder what was in them. The last thing we received in this weird time was a name: the Red Giant Initiative. Whatever it means, it's gone now, deep into the Where House, never to be found again. My best guess is that some General used us to bury his pet project when it went awry, but even I can't prove it. That's what it's like at the Where House. Whatever comes in never comes out again, whether lost socks, covert military operations or me.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - In part inspired by Warehouse 13.
PPS - And, I suppose, the Room of Requirement.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I really dig on this one :) I would def pay money to read this in novel(la) form :)

John said...

Thanks, Bron. :) I'll keep that in mind in case I ever get around to writing something longer.