14

Inside it was inhumanly silver-white except for a set of muddy footprints smeared across the corner.  Myra wondered who had made them, and why hadn’t he cleaned them up, and wasn’t he embarrassed at the dark vividness of them, the way they streaked and dripped and blurred like a bad watercolor painting?

    They walked over the marble to a small dusty counter that didn’t work and behind it an empty cyan leather chair.  Down the halls she caught glimpses of small enchanting antechambers with sofas and armchairs and what bits of board games left by the bugs.  Leaning to see further, she saw a table with a chess game still at check.  

    “Door?” He spoke like a ventriloquist, mouth barely moving.  

    “What?”

    “Choose a door.”

    And she fully noticed the doors, so many of them, identical except for the numbers-- 1 to the right of the desk, 1250 to the left.  Her mouth was dry, and her heart kicked like a child.

    “5’s my favorite number,” so they went through door 5.

    Number 5 was soft, almost swampy.

“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow…” she recited mezza voce.  He didn’t like that.  It was too familiar.  

    “Where’s that from?” he asked casually.

    “An old book…” she awkwardly muttered, and looked around for a change of subject.  “I never thought I’d come anywhere like here.  It must cost a fortune.”

    He shrugged.

    “I have a fortune.”

    But he didn’t poke at her any more.  He stepped back just beside the off-white door frame and watched her explore till the path curved and took her out of eye’s reach.

It was beautiful-- so beautiful, too beautiful.  She would die here, among the reeds and flowers and contrived brooks with watersmoothed stepping stones across its surface.  The roof was reinforced glass, and when she closed her eyes there was a tantalizing sliver of sun-warmth brushing her back, and so she was so afraid to look up.  

    Emmet had known what she meant, about the beautiful, from this place--

    “Have you been here before?” but he was gone, she’d left him behind in her ramblings.  It didn’t matter.  She was star-struck, mad with the colours, the fragrance, the light and the silence.

Reviews

[writ rajat]

very wonderful plot as well as motive