The warm, fruity smell of breakfast muffins baking which rose from the kitchen told me that cook was already up and about her duties.  This meant that I wouldn’t have much time before mother too would rise. I must be quick now before I am discovered.  From the floor beside the chair I am standing on, the clock face stares at me balefully, accusing almost. 

I turn back to the wall again, reaching high to tease another strip of paper from the wall, upon which the clock, now absent had hung.  It had left behind its ghostly mark on a shroud of less-faded roses, the petals of which look blood red in the low light of early morning. A trick of the light perhaps, but light couldn’t explain the warmth of that patch of wall, nor the fact that it seemed to pulse gently under fingers pressed against it.

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Author guidance for This story

Three words. A writer who I met online would poll people for three words in order to motivate herself into a story. Please don't add to this one. I'm happy with the ending. I offer other authours the chance to write their own titles, because half the fun is accosting someone for three words and delivering them the story. But, it has to be a story, beginning, middle and end, collaborative only in that it's now a group activity.

updated Nov 6 '08 by smac972