Memory House

Adult

The Adult was dead. My future. I didn't understand.

She was hanging from the ceiling, rope around her neck, and a kitchen stool fallen below her feet. She looked long dead and... dried, like a mummy hung up for Halloween. She didn't resemble me in the slightest. Her skin was pulled taught against her skull, and her clothing and hair had rotted off her body. Strangely enough, there was no smell.

The entire atrium was covered in a thick layer of dust. Although the sky outside was green, golden light streamed in through the narrow window next to the door. The hall-tree, once hung with scarves and coats, lay bare, with a pile of dirt and dust around it.

The entire room looked old. As if this suicide had taken place centuries before.

I took a step. Around my feet rose a cloud of dust. I walked up to the corpse and turned it around, looking for anything that could point to the cause of her death, a reason. Or a letter. Cuts, bruises, anything that could help.

My search proved fruitless. Just a woman in a noose. Something must have happened, either in real life, or here.

I had been so preoccupied with the body, I failed to look in the living room, which was equally as peculiar. The atrium connects with the family room, no doors, just a small step down.

The entire room was covered in plastic. I could see the lumps of furniture beneath, the red of my mother's couches, my father's black leather reading chair. But floor to ceiling it was covered in plastic. Sitting on one of the aforementioned couches was a little girl. Me. Aged 12, still skinny and bony and not at all feminine. She wasn't looking at me, but at the floor, to her warped refection on the plastic. I didn't remember her.

When she looked up, I saw her face was covered in bruises. Her hair was messed up, and she looked lonely and lost.