(FICTION) (Thanks to Di at http://pensitivity101.wordpress.com/ for the idea for the story.)

PART 3 (FIND PART 1 HERE AND PART 2 HERE IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THEM YET.)

Icy fingers of fear skittered up Petra’s spine as she turned toward the sound in the dark corner of the wine cellar. The gurgle was followed by a quiet laugh. Definitely not a mouse.

“This wine is crappy,” came a deep voice from the direction of the far corner.

Petra turned slowly to find a bearded man in a dirty gray-green raincoat and pants to match. He was drinking “Mother’s” wine. “Don’t hurt me,” Petra squeaked.

“I’m not going to hurt you. Just came in here to get outta the cold.”

“Well, I’m sorry, but you have to get out of here,” Petra said, sounding braver than she felt. She started edging back in the direction of the stairs.

“Nonsense,” the man said. “Why don’t you come and join me. You look like you could use a drink.” He held the bottle at arm’s length.

“No,” Petra said. “Get out of here or I’ll … “I’ll …”

“Tell ‘Mother’?”

Petra’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know ‘Mother’?”

“Pfft. I worked here years ago.” He hoisted the bottle again. “Worst twenty years of my life, my employment in this house was.”

“Why do you come back, then?”

The man laughed. “To piss off ‘Mother.’”

“That’s it,” Petra said, balling her fists and turning once again for the stairs. “I’m going to call the police.”

“Good luck with that!” The man called out from behind her. The last thing she heard before she closed the cellar door was gurgling from the back corner of the wine cellar.

She ran into Geeves on the way through the kitchen to find the man of the house.

“Where’s the bottle of wine for ‘Mother’?” he asked.

“It’s all gone! And there’s a man—”

Geeves headed for the stairs before she finished her sentence. She followed him and waited at the top of the staircase, listening for the inevitable scuffle.

And she waited. And waited. A couple of minutes later, Geeves appeared at the bottom of the stairs.

As he climbed them, he said, “There’s no one here. And all the wine is gone.” Geeves looked her right in the eye. “But I did find an empty bottle. And you. are. fired,” he said, poking Petra in the collarbone with every syllable of her dismissal.

(To be continued on Friday.)

(Di’s prompt was “Petra as a name, wine cellar as a setting, and ‘getting caught’ as your what if. “)

Here are the JusJoJan Rules:

1. Just Jot It January starts January 1st, but it’s never too late to join in! Here, we run on the honour system; the “jot it” part of JusJoJan means that anything you jot down, anywhere (it doesn’t have to be a post, it can even be a grocery list), counts as a “jot.” If it makes it to your blog that day, great! If it waits a week to get from a sticky note to your screen, no problem!

2. I’ll post prompts at 2am my time (GMT -5). The prompt will be the word in quotation marks in the title of my 2am post. You don’t have to follow the prompt every day, but that will be where you leave your link for others to see. You’ll get a prompt for every day except Wednesday, when the prompt is simply my One-Liner Wednesday and on Saturday, when your prompt will be the Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS, which will appear at about 9:30am Friday. Each prompt post will include the rules.

3. Please ping back or link to the daily prompt. To ping back, just copy the URL from the daily prompt post, and paste it anywhere in your post. Check to make sure your link shows up where you want it to, and go back occasionally to see other bloggers’ entries – the more you visit others, the more they’ll visit you! Note: A) The newest pingbacks will be at the top of the comments section. B) Ping backs only work if you’re blogging on WordPress. Everyone else must paste a link manually.

4. Tag your post JusJoJan and/or #JusJoJan.

5. Write anything! Any length will do! It can even be a photo or a drawing – you’re going to title it, right? There’s your jot!

6. If your post is NSFW, do not ping back. Please leave your link in the comments with a warning.

7. If you’d like to, use the JusJoJan badge so that others can find your post more easily.

8. Have fun!

(FICTION) (Thanks to Di at http://pensitivity101.wordpress.com/ for the idea for the story.)

PART 2 (FIND PART 1 HERE IF YOU HAVEN’T READ IT YET.)

When Petra had first heard about “Mother,” she imagined a big, furry Newfoundland dog, such was the atmosphere of this strange house she’d been hired to work in. But no—“Mother” was indeed a woman, the mother of the lady of the house. Not knowing her employer’s maiden name, she couldn’t call “Mother” anything else. And “Mother” didn’t seem to mind.

Petra walked down the hall and knocked on “Mother’s” bedroom door. She hated when it was closed—she never knew what she’d find “Mother” doing when she walked in. One time she’d been staring into a crystal ball she’d set in the middle of her massive bed, mumbling at it in what sounded like backwards English. Another time, Petra had opened the door to catch “Mother” scrambling to hide someone under the bed, even though she’d called out to Petra to come in.

“Mother” had hiked up the straps of her bra (she wasn’t wearing a blouse) and asked Petra, “What do you want?” as she gathered up a deck of cards from the bed. Petra suspected “Mother” had been playing strip poker with whomever she had hidden.

“You called me, ‘Mother,’” Petra had said.

Which was what she said when she walked in tonight. “Mother” was in bed, her bedcovers clutched in both hands all the way up under her chin, her teeth in a small pink pot on the antique nightstand.

“I need a bottle of wine,” “Mother” croaked. “My wine. Not that cheap crap my good-for-nothing son-in-law buys.”

“Yes, ‘Mother,’” Petra said as she turned to go.

“And don’t bother with a glass. I’ll drink it straight out of the bottle.” Without her teeth in, the word “straight” came out “schtraight.”

“Yes, ‘Mother,” Petra repeated. She left the door open a little as she retreated, wondering as she descended the stairs why they didn’t just give “Mother” a cell phone so they didn’t have to keep going up to see what she wanted.

Downstairs, the party was still humming away. Petra avoided the guests by ducking between them with her eyes down. She ran into Geeves again on her way through the kitchen to the wine cellar.

“How did you find ‘Mother’?” he asked.

“Toothless and wineless,” Petra answered.

Geeves sniffed at her and off he went again.

Petra hated the wine cellar. Lit with only one bare lightbulb, the corners smelled of black, oily dust, and it was quiet enough to hear the mice scurrying around.

She hurried down the wooden stairs and turned down the corridor whose walls were lined with bottles in ceiling-high racks, to the back corner where they kept “Mother’s” wine. Only the rack was empty.

A gurgling sound came from the far corner of the cellar.

(To be continued on Thursday.)

(Di’s prompt was “Petra as a name, wine cellar as a setting, and ‘getting caught’ as your what if. “)

Here are the JusJoJan Rules:

1. Just Jot It January starts January 1st, but it’s never too late to join in! Here, we run on the honour system; the “jot it” part of JusJoJan means that anything you jot down, anywhere (it doesn’t have to be a post, it can even be a grocery list), counts as a “jot.” If it makes it to your blog that day, great! If it waits a week to get from a sticky note to your screen, no problem!

2. I’ll post prompts at 2am my time (GMT -5). The prompt will be the word in quotation marks in the title of my 2am post. You don’t have to follow the prompt every day, but that will be where you leave your link for others to see. You’ll get a prompt for every day except Wednesday, when the prompt is simply my One-Liner Wednesday and on Saturday, when your prompt will be the Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS, which will appear at about 9:30am Friday. Each prompt post will include the rules.

3. Please ping back or link to the daily prompt. To ping back, just copy the URL from the daily prompt post, and paste it anywhere in your post. Check to make sure your link shows up where you want it to, and go back occasionally to see other bloggers’ entries – the more you visit others, the more they’ll visit you! Note: A) The newest pingbacks will be at the top of the comments section. B) Ping backs only work if you’re blogging on WordPress. Everyone else must paste a link manually.

4. Tag your post JusJoJan and/or #JusJoJan.

5. Write anything! Any length will do! It can even be a photo or a drawing – you’re going to title it, right? There’s your jot!

6. If your post is NSFW, do not ping back. Please leave your link in the comments with a warning.

7. If you’d like to, use the JusJoJan badge so that others can find your post more easily.

8. Have fun!

(FICTION) (Thanks to Di at http://pensitivity101.wordpress.com/ for the idea for the story.)

Petra was practically dead on her feet. But working the New Year’s Eve party for the Jones’s did that to her every year.

Midnight had come and gone and the be-tied and be-gowned guests were showing no signs of wanting to go home. The men with their “haw-haw-haw” laughs and the women who gossiped about one another the moment they were out of earshot made Petra’s eyes roll so many times, she’d been able to count her own eyelashes.

So she was less than amused when she went into the kitchen with her umpteenth tray of dirty champagne glasses and Geeves, the elderly butler that looked like a fireplace poker in a waiter’s tux, turned to her and said, “‘Mother’ wants you upstairs.”

“Why me?” Petra asked, but Geeves just turned up his nose and walked out of the kitchen with a sniff in Petra’s direction and not much more. She was almost positive “Mother” hadn’t asked for her personally, but what was Petra to do? She needed the job.

So usually twinkletoed Petra weaved her way through the stuffiness of the living room full of guests and trudged up the massive, winding flights of stairs to “Mother”‘s room, passing portraits of “Mother” on her way.

(To be continued on Tuesday.)

(Di’s prompt was “Petra as a name, wine cellar as a setting, and ‘getting caught’ as your what if. “)

Here are the JusJoJan Rules:

1. Just Jot It January starts January 1st, but it’s never too late to join in! Here, we run on the honour system; the “jot it” part of JusJoJan means that anything you jot down, anywhere (it doesn’t have to be a post, it can even be a grocery list), counts as a “jot.” If it makes it to your blog that day, great! If it waits a week to get from a sticky note to your screen, no problem!

2. I’ll post prompts at 2am my time (GMT -5). The prompt will be the word in quotation marks in the title of my 2am post. You don’t have to follow the prompt every day, but that will be where you leave your link for others to see. You’ll get a prompt for every day except Wednesday, when the prompt is simply my One-Liner Wednesday and on Saturday, when your prompt will be the Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS, which will appear at about 9:30am Friday. Each prompt post will include the rules.

3. Please ping back or link to the daily prompt. To ping back, just copy the URL from the daily prompt post, and paste it anywhere in your post. Check to make sure your link shows up where you want it to, and go back occasionally to see other bloggers’ entries – the more you visit others, the more they’ll visit you! Note: A) The newest pingbacks will be at the top of the comments section. B) Ping backs only work if you’re blogging on WordPress. Everyone else must paste a link manually.

4. Tag your post JusJoJan and/or #JusJoJan.

5. Write anything! Any length will do! It can even be a photo or a drawing – you’re going to title it, right? There’s your jot!

6. If your post is NSFW, do not ping back. Please leave your link in the comments with a warning.

7. If you’d like to, use the JusJoJan badge so that others can find your post more easily.

8. Have fun!