The Visitor's House

Pulling into the driveway of the house on Agate Road, a person would have to purposely be traveling to that sleepy shell of a residence to actually realize it was there. A humble structure of moderate size, it was the only building in its vicinity that was not constructed to mimic the wintry feel of a log cabin; rather, it was closer in design to a suburban home that was not accustomed to snowfall, which, unfortunately for the dwelling , occurred annually and without fail. Other than an address beside the front door, the home’s ownership was ambiguous; whereas most of the neighbors had a carved tablet imprinted with their surnames, this house had no such label; peering into its wide-eyed windows did not give way to some kind of hint, but was instead obscured by a cascade of fabric. The interior was always safeguarded in this manner, unless the cloth barriers were physically removed by whoever was renting the building at the time; as a result, every few days the windows would be clearly visible, and every few days they would be masked once again, due solely to the steady number of people coming in and out; this transition of occupancy at times reached a point when, as our family of four was preparing the house for the next anonymous tenants, who should appear at the entrance but another family of four, luggage at the ready, children in tow.

Upon thrusting into the house on Agate Road—for the front door, like a weighty stone, required some unnecessary exertion to budge—not only would a person be standing in the tiled entryway, but in the living room as well. The area’s two sofas were within reach of the front door with a matching easy chair close by, very noticeably propped in front of the sole television. A coffee table was also settled in the room, stacked with dated magazines that were organized into thick piles as dense as the brick wall behind them.

This wall of dying red acted as a partition between the living room and the kitchen, a place that, if not for the worrying smell of a pungent cooking oil, was often found spotless. The entire space could have just as accurately been christened the vinyl room; the countertops were made of vinyl; the floor was covered with vinyl; the kitchen table had a vinyl finish; all of it had a smooth, albeit lackluster appearance, due to years of wear and messes made on the surfaces of nearly everything in the room. The refrigerator, oven, sink, and washing machine were all in one corner of the area; with more storage space than stovetop, the kitchen was ideal for the purchasing of food, rather than the preparation of it.

As if there were no more space in the kitchen for it, the oddly-placed microwave of the house could be found in the adjacent laundry room. Here was where an omnipresent rattling and hissing heard throughout the entire indoors vicinity originated from, due to being the location where the dwelling’s water and heating pipes were founded. The backyard, apparently always caked with snow, was accessible from here; the only obstacle between the room that doubled as storage for winter clothing of all sizes and a bare field of white icing was a door fastened with a broken ski as a latch, reminiscent of the kind found in a make-believe medieval dungeon. Aside from the standard washing machine and dryer, the room’s most distinctive feature was a functioning air hockey table, which, like the microwave, was a vagabond with nowhere else to go.
Acting as a prelude to the adjoining living space, the air hockey table gave way to another one of the home’s many side quarters. The game room was the most compact area of the lodging, where a visitor would be greeted by a worn but sturdy billiard table, nicked and scuffed by countless jabs from cue sticks polished with billiard chalk. Beside the table, there stood a little audience of foldable chairs, and beside those, there sat a bookshelf, weighed down by as many books as it could carry. The novels were bricks of peanut brittle, with pages ready to crack and break into yellowed flakes. Their bent spines indicated many reads, though with titles such as The Tender Night, Lesson in Love, The Butcher: Deadly Deal, Poets and Murder, and Great Issues in American History: From Reconstruction to Present Day, 1864-1969, one could only guess when those particular books were ever in high demand. The bottom half of the bookshelf, however, was blocked from view by a dollhouse, or more appropriately, a container for deformed dolls, saggy stuffed animals, and battered building blocks that overflowed onto a bench in between the bookshelf and another shelf of identical appearance. But rather than books, the second shelf instead had a display case for the billiard table’s cue sticks, and beneath that, a scattered poker set without a large sum of its chips. Also of note was a Harrah’s slot machine in disrepair; despite its proximity to casino-ridden Reno, the residence lacked the luster that the machine represented.

After exploring the most prominent sections of the building, all that was left were the bedrooms, placed in a lonely hallway in an empty section of the interior. The three bedrooms served only a utilitarian purpose, much like the rest of the abode; people were always entering and leaving; whether their objective was to go skiing, or to gamble in hopes of financial success, or to spend time with an aging family, the house on Agate Road in the town of Tahoe Vista served only as a vessel for each of its visitors, a place to stay while they fulfilled their purpose for travelling to the home in the first place.

-Mandy