The Bedroom
You cautiously enter the bedroom, conscious that there may potentially be someone else here.
There isn’t.
You give the room a once-over. Part of you expected to see some gothic bedroom with tapestries and heavy drapes, a four-poster canopy bed, a vanity table with ornate carvings, a thick carpet covering the floor.
None of that exists in this room, and you feel almost foolish at thinking it would be otherwise. The room is simple, almost to a fault, with plain, colorless walls and a bare bed. It almost feels clinical, like a hospital room, because of how little personal artifacts or sense of design seem to exist in the space. Linens are piled on the floor by the corner of the bed as though someone had just stripped them, intending to launder them. The only thing of note in the bedroom is a bedside table upon which is a singular, five by seven picture frame. Drawing nearer to it, you see it’s filled with a photograph of a woman standing in front of the house. Something’s familiar about the photograph, so you let curiosity get the better of you and pluck it from the nightstand.
Examining the photograph you notice it seems to morph. Not the figure, however, the woman. She remains the same, roughly speaking. No, what changes in the photograph as you watch on is that the house looms. It seems to grow, lurching forward, pressing towards the glass. It absorbs the woman into it as it practically rolls over her, inching ever closer to you. Some primal part of you screams, put it down, put it down, get out! But some other part of you, perhaps the more rational side, wants to continue watching it, to see what happens. As you stare onward in clueless curiosity, the front door of the house pushes into the glass from behind until it shatters.
You jump back, startled, dropping the frame into the heap of linens on the floor. A hot prick in your arm catches your attention and you look down to see a sizeable piece of glass lodged into your wrist. Blood seeps from the wound, oil-slick, lugubrious. You try to lower your head, get a better glimpse, when you realize that there’s something sharp preventing your neck from moving correctly. With trembling fingers, you raise your uninjured hand, run your fingertips along your throat. You find another shard of glass lodged into your neck and your fingers come away bloodied.
In haste, you turn stiffly to the door only to find it closed. There is no door knob. In desperation you pound on the door with your good hand, throw yourself against it, scream, beg, plead. You don’t know if it’s the blood loss affecting your senses, but as you throw yourself against the door, you swear the seam of the door jamb disappears, melting into the wall. You take a wobbly step back as your vision turns to vignettes and blink at the door. It’s no longer there, just a blank wall.
You crumple to your knees and sputter blood into your lap, losing consciousness before falling forward and hitting the floor.