Everything was only black for a second. When the young man
came to, he was no longer in the crater. The old man was no longer standing
next to him. Instead he now sat in a plush leather recliner in the living room
of a house that seemed vaguely familiar to him. Why, though, he wasn’t sure.
The living room seemed fairly big. He looked around; next
to his recliner was a matching plush leather sofa and love seat on the other
side of that. On either side of the sofa stood end tables with coasters and
lamps with wrought iron bases standing on them. A coffee table with tinted
glass for its surface took up the center of the room. Across the room sat a
large television with a wood paneled exterior. The TV sat in the middle of a
bookshelf that seemed to double as an entertainment center. The bookshelf was
expansive and filled with many leather bound books. The young man wondered if
the owner could have actually read all of the books on the shelf. The floors
were all dark hardwood.
He went to stand up and found that his equilibrium was off
balance again. He fell back into the chair feeling a little dizzy. Slowly he
sat up placing his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. The spinning
of the room around him started to slow as a dull ache started to form in the
center of his brain. As the spinning subsided, he tried to stand up once again
while holding on to the arm of the recliner. The room wobbled but began to come
back to a halt as he released his grip on the recliner.
For a moment he stood in a crouched position after releasing
the recliner letting the room balance out. As the room evened out he walked
over to the bookshelf and viewed some of the titles that sat there. Early
editions and leather-bound copies of various types of literature sat on the
shelves. He identified authors from JRR Tolkien to CS Lewis to Mark Twain and
more.
Just to the right of the bookshelf there was a hutch built
into the wall of the living room. Behind glass doors on shelves at the top of
the hutch stood various keepsakes and figurines, most likely the possessions of
the lady of the house he considered. Just underneath these cabinets there were
mirrors set into the wall leading down to a counter where family pictures
stood. The pictures each portrayed an older couple, a man and a woman, and two
boys. One of the boys appeared to be in his early teens and the other was
around five or six. He picked up one of the pictures and stared at it for a
moment; the picture sat in a wooden frame and showed the family sitting in an
empty field. I think I know these people, he thought, but how?
He set the picture back down and looked up the stairs that
ascended to the second floor of the house that stood to the right of the hutch.
There was also another doorway that led to a dining room and a kitchen beyond
that off to the right. The young man considered which route to take, even
considering the possibility of walking out. The last option was quickly tossed
from his mind. There had to be some reason why he was here and he was
determined to figure it out.
With that logic he decided to move up the stairs instead of
to the kitchen. He didn’t think he could learn anything from the kitchen, at
least not as much as he could learn from the second floor of this massive
house.
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