Story of a couple – Gold and Goldie, and their old house crumbling with age and disuse
Raphic Burdo
On a narrow lane, crumbling with age and disuse, stood a house that seemed to have forgotten its purpose. The plaster peeled from its walls like old skin, and the garden, once bursting with roses, was now a tangle of weeds and thistles. The nameplate, weathered and crooked, still bore the inscription: Gold and Goldie’s Home, est. 1945.
The house, like its owners, had grown old. Inside, Gold and Goldie shuffled through their days as though sleepwalking. They had lived here for 79 years, moving in after their wedding. Their five children had been born here, their cries echoing through the now-silent hallways. Those children had grown, their laughter and quarrels filling the air until the house itself seemed alive.
But one by one, they had left. The last of them had gone 33 years ago.
Now, the house was quiet. Dust gathered in the corners, the upstairs bedrooms were locked, and bats nested in the attic. Gold and Goldie lived downstairs, where they spent their days in the lounge, always within arm’s reach of each other. The upper floors might as well have belonged to another world.
One morning, the couple sat in their usual places. Gold in his armchair, his fingers tracing the grooves in the wooden armrest, and Goldie on the sofa, her hands knitting a scarf whose pattern she had long forgotten.
“Do you remember when the children used to run through this room?” Goldie asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
Gold thought for a moment. “Yes,” he said, though the memory felt distant, like a faded photograph.
“They used to leave the door open,” she said. “Always running in and out. I wonder where the keys went.”
Gold shrugged. “What would we need them for?”
The house hadn’t been locked from the outside in years. The couple hadn’t ventured out in over a decade, deterred by the noise of the city, the polluted air, and a vague, lingering fear of the unknown. They had no visitors except the occasional taxman or courier, and even they didn’t linger.
Once, a young neighbor had tried to befriend them. She’d brought over a basket of muffins and sat on the edge of the sofa, chatting brightly about the neighborhood. But her words had bounced off the walls, unabsorbed. Gold and Goldie had nodded politely, their faces blank, and the neighbor hadn’t returned.
One rainy evening, as the streetlights flickered outside, Goldie looked up from her knitting.
“Do you think they’ll come back?”
“Who?” Gold asked, though he knew the answer.
“The children.”
Gold leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. “They have their lives,” he said finally. “We raised them to leave, didn’t we?”
Goldie nodded but said nothing more.
The days passed without event. The rain stopped, and the air grew colder. One morning, the mailman rang the bell. When no one answered, he slipped a bundle of letters through the slot and left. Days later, a neighbor noticed that the curtains hadn’t been drawn open in some time.
The police were called. They forced the door open and found Gold and Goldie in the lounge, sitting in their usual spots. Gold’s hands rested on the armrest of his chair, and Goldie’s knitting needles lay in her lap, the unfinished scarf pooling at her feet.
The coroner declared that they had died of natural causes, likely within hours of each other. “Happens sometimes with couples who’ve been together this long,” he said, almost to himself.
The officers searched the house. Upstairs, they found the bats and a thick layer of dust but no signs of a disturbance.
“Where are the keys?” one officer asked as they left.
“Doesn’t look like they had any,” another replied.
Months later, the house was sold to a young couple who marveled at its size and potential. They renovated it, replacing the old plaster and installing shiny new locks on the doors. On the day they moved in, they found a small, rusted key tucked into the back of a drawer in the lounge.
“Look at this,” the wife said, holding it up.
“What’s it for?”
“No idea,” she said, tossing it aside.
The house, now filled with new life, seemed indifferent to the years it had spent as a silent witness to Gold and Goldie’s quiet decline.
Read – Short Story: A Village Without Women
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Raphic Burdo is a poet and writer, hailing from a remote village of Sindh province of Pakistan
