The Dungeon

I hear footfalls on the old stone steps. I drop the ancient shaping tool I use to shape fallen tree limbs into 1x4s, and quickly hide behind a stack of 10,000 Christmas tree parts.

My name is Tom. I’m a retired electrician, who traded his illustrious Electrical career for an opportunity to be a slave, working in a basement, sweat shop, for my wife.

Currently, we’re in the middle of the Christmas rush, and I am tasked with making a million, little, wooden Christmas trees, for all her friends.

Moments later the door opens, she enters my dungeon and promptly sniffs me out.

“Why are you hiding?” She asks as she peeks around the stack.

“I’m not hiding. Don’t be silly. I dropped a screw and was trying to find it.”

I notice her noticing all the screws, laying around on the floor, that I never cared about before.

“It’s a special screw. You wouldn’t understand.”

“I brought you something.”

My heart soars! I’m thinking a spicy chicken combo, no Mayo, large Coke. The lack of Wendy’s bag in her hand makes the feeling fleeting.

She notices me noticing her empty hands, they’re in the car”

“They?”

“It’s means more than one.”

Her legs are crossed as she is standing there. I know what it means already, but she declares it anyway, “I have to pee, meet me at the car.”

Over the course of our marriage, she has brought home a couple kittens, several dogs, flocks of chickens and turkeys, a colony of rabbits, a peacock and a three legged goat. “They” could mean just about anything.

Whereas, she left the dungeon skipping, with her hands clapping in anticipation, I am trudging to my doom, mentally calculating how much pen a breeding pair of Emus will require.

I open the hatch and am relieved that there are no Emus in the back of her Explorer.

There is a pile of sprinkler fitter piping.

We just recently started firing up the pellet stove again. Sometimes the smoke smell, you get when you first start using it again, worries her a little.

Does she want me to install a sprinkler system in our house?

I can feel my sugar dropping.

She emerges from the house and says, “What do you think?”

“I think you have a pile of sprinkler pipes in your car.”

“They’re not sprinkler pipes. They’re shelf supports.”

“I’ve told you a hundred times when you are at Lowe’s you need to ask one of the people, wearing a smock, for help. I’m sure the aisle you got these out of didn’t have a sign that said ‘shelf supports’ at the end of it.”

“When you screw them to the wall and put boards on them, they magically turn into shelf supports.”

As she says this, she lifts her Chamomile infused, essential oil, locket diffuser from her breast, holds it close to her nose, lips gently caressing the little loop, that keeps it attached to the ancient, dainty, some say magical (mainly just her and a couple of the more gullible grandkids) chain, and takes a long drag.

Its always an adventure, when she’s all hopped up on Chamomile.

She starts grabbing a handful of sprinkler pipes out of the back of the car. “Grab some and follow me.”

“Did you know there’s a Wendy’s right around the corner from Lowe’s?” I say as I grab my share and follow.

“You get these shelves up, I’ll cook you a peanut butter sandwich.”

After hours of polishing, painting and assembling we now have several fitter pipes growing from our kitchen wall, with boards laying across them.

My question for you folks is: Should I take the caps off, and put sprinkler heads on them, so they won’t look so out of place?