You think something is happening here. There's more to the world than the Gray extras walking the streets, and living an "I-am-my-job" life. I put the letter back, take the apple, and Enter the green door.
For a door with the word "Enter" upon it, it's unusually difficult to open. The bronze knob turns with a rickety chatter, and the oak seems too large for the doorframe, requiring a certain amount of effort. But your mind is set. The girl would probably want her apple back, and that is more important to you than the chance of a job you wouldn't enjoy, anyway.
You heave a shoulder against the green door, and it drifts away with a loud creak. Dust fills the air, knocked from the doorframe, raised from the floor. The light from the outside world has just about as much trouble entering as you did. You can see it hurling itself against the dust particles, pushing them slowly to the floor in wide air-current spirals the opening door created. With some effort of the sun, the dust settles, as with some effort from you, you begin to make out objects in the room.
There's an ascending stairway due north, straight ahead. Before that is an ordinary wooden table, with a dish of fake porcelain fruit at one corner. Peach, plum, kiwi, orange, pear. No apples. In one corner of the room is a ceramic plate with globs of paint on it, sitting on the floor beside a pile of paintbrushes. Also beside the plate is an incomplete image of a grown man painting a table overflowing with fake porcelain apples. One apple, with a bite taken from it, is at the foot of the man. Around it is coiled a Gray, grinning serpent. It's very dark, and upon closer inspection, the red paint of the apples is wet. It turns the whole picture, for one instant, into an altar smeared with blood.
~ WHACK! ~ Just as the morbid picture begins to fade from your mind, and you consider yourself ridiculous for thinking the young girl painted the still-wet painting, the smacking noise comes from above the stairs. It sounded almost like a whip. You move to the stairs for a better look.
~ WHACK! ~ Again it comes, and now you hear an echo from it. A small, child's whimper. You can hear a man's voice along side it, hollering something about property. You take two hesitant steps up the stairs.
~ WHACK! ~ It comes again, and the previous whimper turns into choked sobbing. You back yourself against the wall and take a few sideway steps up the stairs. Over the top lip of the stairs you see a blur of light splashed against peeling yellow wallpaper. A shadow of an arm stretches over the light, holding something whose shadow looks like a long strap of thick leather. The arm crashes down.
~ WHACK! ~ And the girl's sobbing turns to screams of pain. You can make out the man's rough words just as he comes into view.
"You think we got money to throw around and lose, girl?" The words spew from his mouth not in breaths, but in hot waves with strands of tar-soaked saliva flying. You spotted several cigarette butts stamped into the stairs. "You have any idea how tough it is to get my junk? You think I paint for fun?"
You are now behind him. It's the same man as was painted in the picture below, in that dark, gruesome picture down in the murky room. The girl is in front of him, huddled in a corner with her arms thrown over her head. The steel buckle of the belt has torn gashes along her arms. Ruby lines trail through the white satin shirt.
He lifts his arm again.
I reach out, grabbing the belt away from him, trying above all to end the cruelty.
I don't worry about the belt, and dive over to the girl. I attempt to take her in my arms and run from the house.
Back.
Start the story over.
