Story: Cheap! 1BR, Cozy Space, Kitchenette, 3/4 Bath

This was inspired by and fills the “Back to Square One” square of my January Fresh Starts Bingo card. 298 words, CW: referenced Abuse.

 

Cheap! 1BR, Cozy Space, Kitchenette, 3/4 Bath

 

The bookcase was his favorite antique from the spacious apartment he’d recently been forced to abandoned. For the past three years it had been used to house Andi’s cookbooks with a small bar crowning the top shelf. Now it was bare and one of the few pieces of his old life Charlie had taken with him into his new space.

 

The cozy one bedroom above a small downtown gift shop had been a lucky find. Something within his newly limited budget and close enough to work to be bikeable. What had really sold him however was the small hallway nook, a space just large enough to place Charlie’s bookcase. Placed in the nook, a single recessed light right above it, this was now the perfect place to give the case a new life. No more cookbooks, no more booze, and no more Andi, it was now a sacred place for Charlie’s practice.

 

Stripped down to the bare wood and empty Charlie worked diligently with a dusting rag, lightly covered in furniture polish, carefully outlining all the tiny carved details. One handed it was a much longer chore than usual, but his left arm still hung achingly in its sling. He took the majority of his first day in the new apartment cleaning, and then cleansing, the bookcase before beginning to build his altar.

 

Placed in prominence, on the high half-shelf, Charlie sat the only figurine from his collection that had survived Andi’s rage. A roughly carved wooden figure of Hlín, one of Frigg’s handmaidens, the protectress who provides refuge.

 

Starting over would be okay. Charlie had been at the bottom of this ladder before, and honestly it was better to begin again than to have stayed and wound up dead when his lover finally succeeded in killing him.