Works & Wonders

The Stain

     He stood there, at the bottom landing of the stairs, staring down at it...that stain on the floor. It was quite large and didn't have any recognizable shape but rather, was highly abstact in its form and terribly persistent in its presence.

     He had tried to scrub it off of the floorboards numerous times, strenuously raking a sea sponge across it for hours. But it always remained. Then, one day, he bought some sandpaper and sanded the oils and varnish off of the wood and scrubbed it with all of his strength. He then re-stained the area and varnished it again. It seemed to have disappeared for the moment but the next day when he trotted down the stairwell to the main floor...there it was, as always...that...stain. By now, he had gotten furious over it. It haunted his dreams at night and plagued his walking thoughts like a demon. That damned stain had virtually taken over his entire life.

     Finally, he'd had enough! He awoke early the next morning and headed off to the lumber yard. He paid a pretty penny for a bundle of new floorboards, cursing that damned stain all the way back home because his wallet had gotten so much lighter.

     Then, he set to work. Like a surgeon, he meticulously cut through the tongue-in-groove notches that married each board to the next while removing the metal spikes that held the boards down and together. Then, he carefully pried them up, each at the perfect length, so as not to disturb the tessellated flooring pattern. He did this all to perfection.

     Next, he laid down the new boards and spiked them properly before sanding them smooth to ready them for stain. He then stained the new boards meticulously so as to match the rest of the floor. After the staining process was complete and the floor was fully dry, he applied the varnish. He was careful to gently feather the varnish outwards onto the other floorboards, the same way he had done with the stain. It came out like glass. Absolute perfection! He sat there on his wooden toolbox for a while, admiring his work.

     That night, after he'd stripped off the stain and varnish from the old floorboards he'd removed, he poured himself a nice glass of sherry and loaded those damned boards into the fireplace. He sipped the sherry with quite a sense of satisfaction while he watched that...stain on the old boards, burn away in the fireplace. It took some time of course, being a hardwood. But he savored every moment of that damned stain's demise.

     The next morning, he arose in great spirits, quickly got dressed and bounded down the stairwell with the confidence of a king! He rounded the first landing on the stairwell, passing by the portrait of his lovely young wife on the wall and hopped onto the last set of stairs, in full view of the magnificent work he had done on the floor below...only to find...the stain.

     He stared down at the stain on the floor, not knowing what to think. How was this at all possible? He'd removed the boards completely! How can the same exact stain reappear on the new floorboards? He thought and thought until he finally arrived at a conclusion: "Perhaps...it's just all in my head? It must be! Ingrained like the very stain from before. And since it weighed so heavily upon my mind, perhaps I just need some time to adjust to this new section of floor...before it fades away?" he said to himself, confident with his reasoning.

     After this, he went about his days as always, yet still, the stain remained. It never faded over time. And once again, the stain began to plague his mind. He continued to question why that damned stain wouldn't just go away. But he never, once, had the courage to ask himself the most important question: How did the stain get there to begin with? And, unfortunately for him, only he knew the answer to that question.