Cleaning- A Flash Fiction

 Based on the beautiful art by Byron. You're a cool dude, man.

"Cleaning" by Byron Otis

Lotte was an odd maid, she was. She never liked having it easy.

She liked her work, Lotte did. She took pleasure in taking control. She didn’t want her work as a maid to be boring. Even now in the middle age, she was stubborn whenever any of her employers made her job simple, and when they did, she would retire.

Always looking for a challenge, Lotte was eager to find an employer who wasn't immediately taken by her.

After quitting again, she traveled along the shore of her homeland, carrying nothing but a pail and a few of her things, searching for someplace new, and hopefully, a new manager to keep her on her toes. Lotte liked to impress. If only it weren't so easy.

That was the problem with the people in her country. Everyone was too happy and easy to please. Sure, Lotte liked good folk. But she especially liked making unhappy people happy.  

And so, she glanced at the many houses along the shore, looking for one that could give her a challenge.

And then she spotted it. A gloomy, withering mansion that screamed despair all the way to sandbar.

She walked up the wooden stairs that led to the porch of the gothic mansion, her clogs clopping along the way. Clop, clop, clop, all the way to the doorstep she went. Lotte knocked.

There were footsteps, and a dark figure emerged. He had long, dark hair and a grim face. He dressed in a black robe that went past his feet.

Fascinating, Lotte thought. She gave him her name and declared that she was a maid looking for a job.

He frowned. “I’m not looking for a maid. I’m a doctor. What do you know about my cleaning ability?”

“Pardon me, but what do you know about cleaning, as a doctor?” She asked.

He scoffed. “Enough to keep things relatively organized.” Lotte caught that. Relatively.

“Well, surely I could be of use. I'm lively, and better yet, stubborn. It'll be hard to turn me away,” she smiled.

“Really?” He questioned. “Even in the midst of a situation?”

“Oh, yes. Even better,” Lotte chirped.

“If you're so sure, why don't you have a look at my work—I'm actually in the middle of it right now.”

He let her in, leading her down the dimly lit hall. The floorboards creaked with his shuffling and her clogs. Clop, clop, clop, they went, until they entered the room at the end of the hallway.

The room was large. One wall had a table lined with equipment of all sorts. There were two paintings of a sailboat at sea and a lighthouse on a cliff. They were spotted with red.

The floor was also spotted at the core, just underneath a metal bed. There lay a man, sweating in agony. The man's leg was the source of the red stains. The thigh was cut open.

“I'm a surgeon, you see,” the doctor said, walking back to the man. “I cut people open, and I sew them back together.” He focused on finishing the last stitches of thread in the man's leg. After being bandaged and given medicine, the man paid his dues, got up, and wobbled out. The doctor didn't bother to walk him out, though—instead, he took the knife he previously used, and wiped it clean in his robe.

The doctor turned to face Lotte. “So, I'm sure that this job wouldn't be quite appealing to—“

He dropped it. She was covered in blood, her pail laid on the ground. Lotte was already scrubbing away the red mess.

She just grinned. “When do I start?”

He blinked, and for the second time that day, frowned at her. “I guess you already have,” he huffed, reaching to pick up his knife. “Well then, do you have any questions?”

Lotte's grin only got bigger. “Yes. How did you get blood on your paintings, doctor?”

Lotte was an odd maid, she was. But she was glad to have found her challenge.