moonandsun

“Loonybin,” I murmured as I pushed open the doors. Unlike the large open room in Shining Sun Daycare, Rye Valley was made up of narrow hallways with tiny rooms nestled here and there.
Mary Anne Leemore, identified by name tag, greeted me with an enthusiastic wave. A wave adorned with a striped glove, blue and white.
“Um, I’m here to volunteer.” I approached the young woman who nodded vigourously.
“I know, I know. Your assignment is,” She flipped through a group of complicated schedules and a shifted slowly. “Oh yes, now I remember, we put you with Marm and Philip.”
“Where exactly?”
“Oh, how silly of me! I forgot you’re new.” I rolled my eyes at the ceiling at the inconvenience called Mary Ann. “Room 263, second floor of course. Up the stairs to the right.”
I hurried around the corner and Mary Ann called after me, “Have fun!”
“Oh, I will,” I muttered, leaping up the stairs with a certain agility that comes when one is angered and bothered. The door was like all the others marked with plain lettering; a dingy white color.
With one deep breath, I opened the door to room 263. I was greeted by purple, a bright purple radiating from the walls of this small, highly decorated room. The windows I had scrutinized standing on the sidewalk were adorned with lace, thick, heavy, antique lace. As I took in the scene for a moment, a shrill coughing began followed by a hiccupping. Alarmed and afraid I had killed off one of the elderly, I turned to face the room’s sole inhabitant.
Marm was wide and tall, intimidating in every angle. She sat propped up by a lavender pillow with her beady eyes shaded by a violent purple hat. The brim was huge, spilling over with large feathers and fake violets stuffed in each corner. Her dress was a dark shade of plum, a hot looking velvet material that was wrapped around her in twists and odd turns.
The hiccupping continued, louder and louder. “What is it?”
The woman of purple waved her mighty hands in the air and I was hit by two white gloves.
“Put them on! Hurry you little miscreant!” She shrieked desperately.
I put them on my hands and looked at her dumbstruck for a few brief moments. A bald man’s head poked around a sheet of lace. He was small and pale, though much like the woman on the bed, he wore a purple shirt with a pair of lilac shorts. Like Mary Ann and Marm, his hands were clothed. On closer inspection the oven mittens on his hands were painted with many scenes. Moons and suns, fields of corn and images of space all blended to together on the short man’s mittens.
“Marm likes covered hands.” Phillip said, giving me a smile and a hearty handshake. “You’re the new miss?”
“Yes, and you’re Phillip?”
“Right, right, right you are. I’m Phillip O’Teraly,” He gave a bow then grabbed the hand of the silent woman. “And this is Marm. Marm likes purple, don’t you dearest dear?”
The woman spoke with a booming voice and thick accent, adjusting her hat to hide her eyes, “Purple is the color of a queen. A color of royalty reserved for the worthy.”
“I guess like purple,” I said, shuffling my feet awkwardly.
“Of course, you like purple. Everyone loves purple. Everyone wishes they are worthy of royalty. Some are simply not,”
Phillip gave another hearty laugh as though finding this conversation endearing, “Silly dear, let’s not scare away our new friend. And who is our new friend, anyway?”
“Hannah, sir.”
“Hannah? Leah’s sister!” Phillip exclaimed, dancing comically around the room with wide eyes.
“Yeah, she’s going to be busy this summer. I’m stepping in.”
“Do you hear that Marm?” Phillip said moving back and forth beside the purple sheets. “She’s Leah’s sister. You know, Leah! Hannah is Leah’s sister,”
“Ah, the kin of fair Leah,” said Marm regally, before seizing my gloved hands. Before I knew exactly what was going on my white gloves where replaced by yellow ones and Marm was giving me a sly smile.
Phillip clapped excitedly behind me, “Oh, brilliant! Brilliant! Brilliant! She’s taking a grand liking to you, hasn’t she? Oh, brilliant it is.”
I settled myself in velvet chair near the bed, “Ah, so what does Leah do?”
“Sit and talk with us. Old people need to feel listened to.” Phillip said, pulling up a chair beside me
“Old?” Cried Marm from her bed as Phillip giggled. “Surely not? A lady is never old,”
“No dear, you are not old in the least,” Phillip replied.
“Of course I’m not Phillip, of course.”
I, with my gloves shoved into my pockets, couldn’t understand why they had placed these two together. Marm seemed indifferent towards her roommate, only focused on her hierarchy.
“Why do they call you Marm?” I questioned, inspecting her for a clue.
“Why do they call you Hannah?” She looked back at me harshly.
“My mother named me Hannah,” I told her, taken aback by her angry reply. I composed myself and looked back at her with more determination. “You’re parents named you Marm, then?”
“No, silly girl. They named me Morrigan Fier Linch. A name of a queen,”
“If it’s such a royal name, then why go by Marm?”
“My name died with my last husband. He wasn’t much, god bless him. Gisbert did enjoy a good game of table tennis, though. Quite loyal to the Queen too, a fair man.” Marm dabbed at her small eyes dramatically though her voice showed no hint of tragedy.
“Oh now, silly Marm! We live in America, haven’t got a Queen here.”
“That is because this is a nasty country. A nasty government, if you ask me.”
Phillip laughed loudly, placing a mitten on the bedspread gingerly, “You’ve lived in Pennsylvania all your life,”
Marm rolled her eyes at the statement, not believing Phillip in the least.
“So, now you know about us, what about you?” Phillip turned to me with wide eyes as he settled in a fluffy chair.
“Well,” I paused for a moment, “I go to East Birkens.”
“That’s a high school,” Phillip explained to the purple walls.
“Right, I play softball,” I broke off, half expecting Phillip to tell the walls that softball was indeed a sport but he remained with his hands in his lap. “I used work on the school yearbook.”
“Honestly!” Marm said, waving her hand above her head and speaking angrily. Taken aback, I faced her. “Muck!”
“Muck?”
“The muck. The things we say when we introduce ourselves. No one really cares what we say. It’s just muck. A school yearbook is muck. It has nothing to do with who you are nor will it ever. I deserve more then muck.” She looked at me serenely, fiddling wit her hats and then, “Well, go on then, tell me about you,”
“My name is Hannah Cree Druis.” Starting with my name, I believed, was a good place to begin. After all, Marm seemed to value names almost as much as gloves. “Which is different then Leah, if you were wondering. Leah’s full name is Leah Marie Sherry. It isn’t really though, her last name is Druis like mine. She just goes by Sherry; she changed it a couple years ago when she found out what father’s last name is. A stupid idea, she never knew father anyway. Mother never changed her name when she married and I got her last name. Leah did too. I guess she didn’t want it. Father left us all; I don’t understand why she would want to be a Sherry. Doesn’t even know who he is. He could be some bum on the street in god knows where. But,” I continued my rant with a roll of my eyes, “No one tell Leah, who insists on being a Sherry. A goddamn Sherry, like she’s too good to be a Druis.”
I took a deep breath and looked around the room with a resolute face. Phillip looked slightly mortified though Marm was giving me a smile before clapping her hands slowly. “That, my dear, was not muck.”
I caught site of clock mounted above the bed and realized my shift had been over for four minutes. “I guess I’ll go,”
“Yes,” Phillip said regaining a smile, “Feel free to get your own pair of gloves. I believe Esther down the hall made herself pair that light up! Simply fabulous, I say! You might want to go ask her how she made them.”
“Right,” I murmured scampering out of the door and into the white hallway. A young man, clad in a maroon coat stopped as I shut the door behind me.
“Enjoying Phillip and Marm?” He asked, giving a loud laugh.
“Sure,” I rolled my eyes, hoping the conversation would be short.
“They take some getting used to. But, honestly, they’re good people.”
“They’re loony, if you ask me,”
His face turned suddenly serious, “I don’t believe I asked you, miss.”
“Whatever,” But, the maroon man was gone.
After a few wrong turns and a parting wave by Mary Anne I found myself finally outside the car with a grim face. I did not like Rye Valley, I decided resolutely. I did not like old people lying on beds pathetically. I did not like the long narrow hallways that were too white. I did not like Mary Anne or the man in the hallway. I did not like the other volunteers with their bright faces and gloved hands. I did not like Leah, at that moment. Not at all.

Well, what do you think? This is of course a first draft and I'm getting a basic feel for the charecter's. My grammar, I know, is lacking but I'd like to know what you think about the style of the writings and the charecters.

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