Twist+-+The+Lady+Upstairs

=The Lady Upstairs = = =  The journey of a couple getting married soon leads them to finding an accommodation where they can live together happily forever. On a perfect Saturday afternoon, Lena and Leo were standing in front of their dream house. The appealing house on Main Street, Number 245, was perfect for this couple. Except for the lady upstairs.

One thing that seemed to be wholly unreasonable was that the house also was holding an old lady upstairs. Basically if they wanted the house, they were going to have to accept the lady. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, a first meeting can often lead to thousands of impressions. Leo and Lena, the perfect couple they were, decided to have a visit to her 'space upstairs.'

“Sure, sir: Mrs. Hayden would love to meet you. Just a moment,” said the realtor. He took the perfect couple upstairs and gave them a few pointers on how to behave with her. All of them were pointers on how to behave with an elderly person. With the man knocking on the door, the waiting had taken about ten minutes. Hearing a severe cough inside, the lady finally opened the door with a handkerchief in her mouth.

The appearance of the lady was unattractive, even for an aged woman. She wore a long embroidered skirt with a long sleeved shirt that reached to her knees. Her face was red and she had a slightly odd dark patterned shawl around her shoulders. “Mrs. Hayden, these are the new tenants-I mean the people that are planning to buy this house,” the man told her.

“Mrs. Hayden, I am Lena and this is my husband Leo Bennings. Can we please come in and see your homely abode?” Lena chuckled

“I’m sorry; I am feeling quite ill today. Maybe some other time.” And with that, the old woman went in and closed the door.

A week later, the 75% of the house that was once empty found itself full again. Lena and Leo decided to stay, as the old lady didn’t seem to be a distraction to either one of them. Unless the part where they were fed the 30 year old chocolate and a quite tasteless tea by her was not counted. The meeting with the old lady took only about 15 minutes. She told about her husband who had died at sea and the she had suddenyl fainted. It took another 20 minutes to put her on the bed and put away the mess. The couple was glad to be freed from the cabbage-scented room. The meeting with her suggested that she was a sweet lady, but also a bit mental.

As the sky turned dark, Lena and Leo were fast asleep from the tiring day they'd had and the hard day they were expecting from work tomorrow. Halfway through the night, the TV upstairs was turned on full volume, screaming the songs from the musical "Grease." During the scene when John Travolta and his lady love met, Leo was awake and found that Lena was nowhere close to sleeping either. Feeling the need to do something, Leo went upstairs, politely told the lady to lower the volume, and ran back downstairs. In about ten minutes both of them were sleeping peacefully until the lady turned on the volume again and started jumping. With that do you think anyone can ever sleep? No, and so didn’t the couple, and they had no idea they were not going to have a good night's sleep ever again.

After about a week of sleeping in what felt like a stadium full of people, the old lady had snapped Lena's limits in half. Early in the morning, when the alarm rang at 6:30, Leo and Lena had found that they had only slept only 30 minutes. The TV had been on the whole night. //When did the old lady ever sleep//? As the clock ticked to 7, Lena left for work and Leo stayed home. Since he did not get sleep at all, he decided to sleep more before working in his home office. After snoring for about an hour, he woke up and arrived in his newly furnished office. On the shelf there were books lined up neatly, all written by him. There was a TV in the back of his table and the room was dark. It resembled something like a house in a cave: dark, and yet cozy.

After carefully examining his office for the seventh time of the week with a broad smile, Leo quickly adapted his sleepy self into his work self. One thing that everyone knew was that you cannot interrupt him while he is working. Typing away from one page to another, he did not notice that someone had quietly climbed down the stairs and entered his office. That someone had a cat in her hand and she was wearing a long skirt and a long shirt. She dropped the cat on the floor and looked around curiously as if she was looking for something she could fiddle around with. Spotting a brand new telephone, she reached for it and started punching numerous numbers and talked loudly.

“YOU KNOW WHAT, WHY DON’T WE HAVE A PARTY IN MY HOUSE? IT’LL BE SO MUCH FUN WITH ALL THE GUYS AND GALS AND WE WILL BE EATING LOTS OF TURKEY FOR THE SPECIAL DAY!” Her conversation went on like that. After about five minutes, guess who was suddenly alert? Of course, Leo. He was on his 33rd page for his next award-winning book and suddenly the old lady started to blabber loudly in his office room. Trying to get her attention, he clapped loudly and shouted out her name. She hung up the phone and listened to him with the slightest bit of interest.

“Mrs. Hayden, I know this is also a part of your house but this is my office. I am sorry but you cannot just come in and talk on the phone. I need peace to write my story which is due in about two weeks. Please talk upstairs.” Even though he tried to be as polite as he could be, he left her to be angry and moody; and she slammed the door of the office and stomped back up. She had felt offended about not being able to use the phone and how he had implied that she was a “distraction”.

During dinner time when Lena was back from work, Leo also found out that the old lady had flavored Lena’s day bitterly leaving her to get fired. The day before, at seven in the evening, Lena had been working on her project for the big presentation that was expected to take place today. Lena also had the job to call the president to inform him that there would be a meeting and that he could not miss it. At seven she was editing her presentation to see if she had any mistakes in it. So far, it all seemed pretty good until the old lady stuffed her nose back into Leo’s office where Lena was working and looked into her presentation.

“Pretty good slide you have there.” commented the old lady. Lena looked up and was surprised to see her, yet she was happy about the compliment.

“Thanks, this is a very important presentation for me and it could mean a promotion or a leave.” Lena explained. And with that, she left the old lady with the computer and went to serve herself a cup of coffee. When she returned, she gasped in horror as the old lady had deleted everything. She shoved the lady to the side and tried to get back all her work. It was all gone!

“Mrs. Hayden what have you done?! My boss will definitely fire me, I can’t start all over again I don’t have the documents with me today,” Lena thought desperately.

“I am so sorry, I have never used a computer before so I thought I could play with it but I guess I am wrong.” The old laddy shrugged and left the room.

The next day, during dinner time, Lena told Leo that she tried to explain to her boss about what happened, but he had not understood how she could not prepare a presentation when she was given three months. She had also forgotten to inform the president about the meeting and as he had told her, she was fired on the spot.

“Don’t you think we should talk to Mrs. Hayden about this? I mean since we came here for only a week she has gotten you fired and I am nowhere close being finished with my book.” Leo suggested.

“Yeah,” Lena sighed. “Let’s go now and talk to her.”

“What are you talking about? I have not ever done you any harm!” Mrs. Hayden exclaimed, she was trying to defend herself.

“I am sorry but you have made us miserable and we want you to stop doing that or we will have to take some serious actions.” Lena explained quietly. As she sat by her, the old lady suddenly started to sob loudly, as if she wasn’t ashamed of her noise.

“I just want you to leave, I don’t want anyone here!” She moaned. “Ever since my Phillip died I have been lonely and without cash for about 15 years. If you leave then I will be able to use your money you spent on this house for my own purposes.” She cried. Lena and Leo were shocked to hear about this and quietly calmed her down. As they did this, they also faced a shocking truth. Mrs. Hayden had cancer and she was suffering because she did not have enough money for her treatments or operation. She had been making them miserable because if they left, she would get their money because her son was the person who had sold them the house.

“Mrs. Hayden: you should have told us about this earlier, we could have donated a generous amount for your operation,” Leo told her.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t believe me, and would have thought that I was a cheat. So tormenting you was the only way I could have you to help me, like I did to the other couple before you.” Mrs. Hayden sighed. She had stopped crying and had gotten a hold of herself. That was pretty easy, she thought, I hope they believe my lies. Leo got up and took Lena to the corner of the room and talked to her privately. It seemed as if they believed her because the next thing Mrs. Hayden knew was that they told her they were going to leave her alone to the house, and be back in a week.

A week later after the incident of Mrs. Hayden telling them the truth, or to them it seemed to be the truth;, they were all packed up and ready to leave. Mrs. Hayden had especially gotten up early and made them an excellent breakfast, which she had done to the other couples before them. Lena and Leo got into the minivan and waved to her. The week had been ugly, but it would still be memorable. As the minivan vanished from the old lady’s sight, her eyes began tinkling again when she saw her son driving up with the new couple to see the house.