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The Tear-Drowned Playroom

Everything felt sluggish. Owen threw out a hand to brace himself against the doorjamb so he didn’t fall forward into the room ahead of him—a playroom. A playroom that was not his father’s bedroom. A playroom with a dead Christmas tree but not his two friends, Lore and Hamish.

He shut his eyes so hard it hurt. He thrust his free hand toward his mouth. He bit down hard on his pinky, yanking a crescent of fingernail free—like a vine pulled loose from under the dirt, it unzipped down the side of the nail, freeing fresh blood. He tasted that blood, dark and coppery. He suckled the finger and tried not to bite it clean off.

“The fuck did you do that for?” Nick growled at him.

“I—it was my father’s bedroom.”

“What? So what?”

“He—” Owen had to bite back bile. “He was in it. My dad. I saw him. I smelled him. He had cancer and…” His voice died on the vine.

“You really fucking did it now, Zuikas.” Nick grunted. “You’re bleeding, by the way.”

Owen looked down at the pinky finger. Fresh blood oozed toward the crook of his fingers. Over his knuckles. “I know.” And it feels good. It feels right .

“Lore! Hamish!” he called suddenly. A desperate plea.

No one answered. Because they were somewhere else now.

The rooms had shifted. He’d closed the door and that was that.

“Do we go through?” Owen asked Nick.

“What are you asking me for?” Nick said, sounding defensive. “I’ve never been here. I don’t know shit from shit, Nailbiter.”

“I think we go through. Maybe…maybe the door will reset then. Maybe the rooms will shift and, and, I dunno, and they’ll be there. In the next room. This place can’t be infinite. We’re going to see them again, right?”

Nick didn’t say anything.

“Nick. Right? We’ll see them again?”

All Nick did then was shrug, then step through the door.

Owen cursed, and followed after.

He stepped into the playroom—

Then turned, closed the door behind him, and opened it again.

The Greige Room was gone.

In its place waited a crowded attic space full of boxes and bins and the detritus of domestic life: a rack of bagged clothes, a leaning stack of framed paintings, a crooked tower of National Geographic magazines, a beat-up-looking tricycle. And at the far end, under a gable vent and small wooden door, there was a disheveled futon mattress. On that mattress was something else, a body-shaped thing swaddled in filthy bedsheets, bedsheets the color of rust and old chocolate.

The body-shaped thing on the lumpy mattress sat straight up.

Owen let slip a small cry of alarm, then slammed the door.

What the fuck was that thing. What the fuck.

He fumbled with the doorknob as he turned the lock.

“What was that thing?” he asked Nick.

“I don’t know, and I don’t want to find out.”

Owen backed away from the door. He nearly tripped on a toy—a stuffed plushie, a fuzzy blue dog with floppy ears. The stuffed dog started barking. A garbled sound, as if through a tinny speaker. It started off fast, too fast, ruffruffruffruff, but then began to slow and dissolve— rufffff ruuuuuuffff gggkkkkrrrhhhhkffff— before the sound died out. Owen, heart now hammering against his breastbone like it was a punching bag, kicked the dog and it thumped against the wall. “Fuck. Fuck.” Finally, he said, “So they’re really gone. Lore and Hamish.”

“Yeah,” Nick said quietly. “They’re gone. And we’re gone.”

“Yeah. Yeah .” Owen pushed the heels of his hands so hard into his eyes, he saw the universe exploding into greasy streaks of white light. He staggered over to the chair and sat in it, pulling his knees up to his chest and hugging them. “I don’t know what we’re going to do now. How are we going to find them again? There’s only one door out of this room, and it…it doesn’t go where we need it to go. This was your idea. Your idea to find those steps, to get us there, to go up them. So you tell me, Nick. What do we do now? Nick. Nick .”

But it was easy to see in the way that Nick searched the middle distance with his stare that he had no answers.

“I don’t know, Zuikas. I honestly don’t know.”