Not Canny, a Six Sentence Cafe and Bistro Story

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Mimi sat at the end of the bar past the last table on the floor of the Six Sentence Cafe and Bistro, the seat closest to the hall with the men's room door on one side and the women's on the other, and just past them, the Manager's Office where The Tall Thin Man presided.

Beyond this, who knew what was back there, the hall turned and turned again, with rooms and passages and staircases to the upper floors most of them unexplored and unused for many years since this ceased to be the bustling center of commerce in a warehouse area.

Just before you got to beyond, however, was a wide set of double doors which was the mechanical room, the A/C and heating units, large water heater, space for the larger janitorial supplies like the janitor's cart and big mops and wringer buckets, and this is also where the electrical panel was housed with what Mimi always called the "fuse box" from habit, although it was all circuit breakers now, including the panel for the emergency power generator they'd had installed in case of a major outage during storms.

As she sat taking a breather from kitchen duty (banana pudding dessert day was always busy), the light in the hall, never very bright and always trying to show signs of ceasing to function, did exactly that once again, plunging the hall into the darkness which seemed to be its natural state.

With a sigh, Mimi stood up and called Hūnga, "Boy, do you want to come with me and help me find which breaker tripped this time?" and always game for adventure, Hūnga came over, Mimi turned on the light on her phone, which led them both to the mechanical room doors, and by habit she went in and started running the light over the panel to look for the "soft" one, because it never fully tripped all the way to the "off" position but just wasn't quite making contact with the "on" side, either.

Flipping it all the way off and back on again, through the open door to the hall behind her she saw the light flicker on, very dim, so she closed the panel, she and the dog left the mechanical room and went back to the Bistro proper with Mimi muttering, "I know it's going to go out again, the electricals are as odd in this place as at my house, and there's something just not canny about the hallway."

Linking up with Denise at Girlie On The Edge Blog, where she hosts Six Sentence Stories, and the cue is Table.     

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