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     Star-shaped paper lights illuminated the ceiling in soft halos of light. It diffused down the walls, contrasting harshly against the black and white checkered tiles of the floor. The white appeared nearly like marble in the dim orange light, the black like deep obsidian. They were beautiful on their own but their perfect pattern together disconcerted the simple harmony of the room.
     A girl leaned into the doorway, hunched over, eyes studying the floor as if it were a face she was trying desperately to recognize. Repeated notes of a piano drifted up the spiral staircase, lingering along the hallway. A bathroom sat across from the room, and a dead rat was lying behind the toilet. Maybe that was the source of the underlying stench of rot or the chunk of tomato living in the sink.

     The girl had memories of lying outside the door to her parent’s bathroom. She had used the sliver of light from below the door to play with a small toy rabbit. She would wait for her father to get out of the shower so that she could see him before he left early for work. She must have been young, she was never awake that early anymore. She’d be alone, waiting and waiting; maybe her young mind had only stretched time that way.
     All the hours she’d spent by herself had molded and compacted. When she looked at the framed pictures of herself as a child, all she could see was the still house, vast and empty, the colors dampened like a painted dollhouse left in the rain. She could see it reflected in her young eyes. They stared back at her as if they knew something that they shouldn’t.
     Her room was cold, the shadows from the window stretched and contorted along the wall.

     Her mother was just down the hall, yet her eyes were far and small cracks began to snake their way from her mother's door frame, where the door had been slammed shut.
     How could death be any different than this?
     She hated her room but she could hardly get out of bed.
     She hadn't eaten, but she would today. And she'd clamber down the stairs before it was cold. So that she'd find a bit of warmth as her mother coldly enfolded her in her arms.
     The sky was an ugly shade of grey.

     She could hear the wind picking up, whistling through the swaying trees, making its way through the crevices of her dilapidated home, barely holding itself together.
     Her legs were numb but she stayed crouched in her doorway.