Vacant Stair

This is a Friday Fictioneers story loosely inspired by Ted Strutz’ photo.

On this case, the link to the inspiration is rather tangential, if it exists at all, but none of my other ideas stuck.

I’ve done a lot of dialogue based pieces lately and I’m aware this one could have been made much shorter if I’d written a narrative account but U hope I’ll be forgiven for (probably) going over the word limit.

Enjoy…(small print:enjoyment is optional)

-Guess who I ran into in Eindhoven?
-Who?
-That MC Escher
-MC Escher?
-That’s the one.
-Flash sod.
-I know.
-How is he?
-Pretty cheesed off, as it goes.
-How come?
-…You know that impossible staircase in his house?
-How could I forget. He insists on showing me round every time I visit.
-I know.
-Three days I was there last time. THREE DAYS…What about it?
-Well, now he and Magdalena want to start a family.
-Ah.
-He says it’ll be a bugger dealing with it if the kids wake up in the night.
-I see.
-Says he needs a full night’s sleep if he’s going to make woodcuts of hands drawing themselves.
-He’s got a point.
-He wanted to build a nursery on the ground floor but the council wouldn’t give him planning permission.
-Oh.
-So he built it anyway.
-Good on him.
-Only they want to make him take it down.
-Miserable gets.
-Still, he didn’t seem too worried.
-Why not?
-Says they can’t get up the stairs to serve him notice.