So many years ago I used to be a member of a local writers' circle. On Tuesday night I re-joined. It was a member's evening, so everyone took a photo and had to write whatever came to mind. I had the above photo, and wrote the following pieces:
First Impressions
This looks like the central or main staircase in some sort of grand house. Maybe "house" is being somewhat unkind - a castle? A mansion? A chateaux?
There's a curious lack of symmetry to the image, almost like whoever put up the lights wanted any person ascending the stairs to go to the left rather than the right.
Of course, this probably has more to do with the angle from which the photograph was taken, so maybe the photographer's thoughts were wandering to the left, and it's best left to the imagination as to why that would be.
We can see stairs going off from left to right, and in the centre a passage of sorts, leading to the same place you might find the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, that is to say, the place you can only reach via your own imagination.
Either that, or the drawing room.
Other Impressions
This is a haunted staircase. No amount of lights shining upon the walls could deter the Grey Lady when she is afoot.
Many years ago, fleeing from her cruel and violent lover, she reached the top of the last, wide flight of stairs, and could see the summer haze wisping into the house through the open front door below.
As she fell, gathering speed towards that summer haze; towards freedom, even as her life was ending in thuds and thumps and violence, she could think only of how beautiful the day outside looked.
The day she'd failed to reach.
And so, now, every summer, and only in the summer, the Grey Lady walks. She means no harm, of course. She just wants to see the sunlight.
And she wishes she could feel it, more than anything in the world.
