a mlmm mélange: some wordle words, a dash of Saturday Mix double take, and a splash of photo challenge:

The Triangle district contained the last remnants of fortunes made during the era of sail. But fair winds can be fickle; economic knuckles rapped by chances in taste and transportation.

“Seems the perfect area to look for houses to flip,” Jemenica said that Sunday. “Sooner or later, folks will come back to the city. I love the scent of potential possibilities!”

The pandemic had shifted the population; it sent people fleeing from urban to suburban and rural. Aging farm houses on tracts of land; cookie-cutter McMansions in sprawling subdivisions were the hot properties. Within a 100-mile radius, it took at least ¾ of a million to close any housing sale.

.I laughed. “And,” I asked, “Just what does that smell like?”

“Mellifluous,” she replied. One of her pandemic projects was to expand her vocabulary rather than her waist line.

We dove into a shadowed archway as the first drops of rain streaked the grubby facades. Clouds parted; a single shaft of sunlight illuminated a dirty, pock-marked transom over the door opposite.

“A phlegethon,” Jemenica screeched.

“WTF is a phlegthelhorn?” I asked, shaking my head to get her voice out of my ear. “At least give me a hint.”

“It’s bright finger of fate pointing to our lives’ direction,” she replied. Jemenica was easily sent into a dramatic frenzy. “This,” she said, gazing lovingly, “is our place.”

Whatever vision Jemenica had, I wasn’t sharing it. Paint peeling off the frame, broken windows boarded over. Trash littered the stoop; tin cans, empty liquor bottles adding to the scent of desolation. A fly-spattered For Sale sign hung crookedly in the one first floor window that still held glass.

“Just imagine,” (and oh, could she imagine) Jemenica rhapsodized, “A dashing sea captain, eyes ice blue, built this place from ducats gained through piracy and smuggling.”

“Ducats?”

“Whatever. Secret passageways down to the harbour. Hidden storerooms full of pirate loot!”

“Of course,” I teased, “specters, ghosts, haunts, wraiths!”

“Has to be, will add to the allure, fashion the backstory. An ethereal figure, his one true love, wanders down the main stair case. She died of loneliness waiting for the sail of his ship to reappear in the harbour. The last illicit trip, he had promised her, and then, there is the nasty butler’s ghost who . . .”

I nodded appropriately when required. I knew there wasn’t a ghost of a chance I could now stop our descent into house-flipping hell.

Image credit Pobble365

mlmm mélange: wordle #254 (mellifluous; era; tin can; smuggle; Sunday; phlegethon; archway; hint; fickle; knuckles; flip; triangle); Saturday mix double take (sent/scent; sale/sail); photo challenge #379

by the by: mellifluous  means sweetly or smoothly flowing; flowing with honey; sweetened with or as if with honey, and a phlegethon is a stream of fire or fiery light.

“behind door #1” is a reference to the game show Let’s Make A Deal

I grew up with the Monty Hall version