Do Not Enter, Part 3

Here’s another installment of the “Do Not Enter” story, a kiriban prize for one of the terrific watchers on my deviantART page.

I hope you enjoy it.  If you want to catch the whole thing, you can do so here.

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Rose scrabbled up the stone steps on her hands and knees. She tore her weight forward, ripped skin and broke fingernails to the quick. Her rasping breath dragged gulps of dust, dirt, grime. She felt tiny stones stab the soft flesh of her knees and palms. The top of the dark stairwell seemed so far away and her frantic efforts didn’t seem to close the distance.

She exploded through the opening and pulled herself away from it across the splintery subfloor. Daggers of ancient wood sank deep in her hands. She flipped onto her back and skittered away until she slipped and crashed down on the back of her head in the middle of the room.

A new wave of dust puffed motes drifted and glinted in the white, soft daylight. She heaved and panted, stared.

The hole sat innocent, innocuous. A hole in the floor; nothing more.

She inspected her hands. Tiny scrapes and nicks pooled with tiny drops of blood. The scabbing process already started. Her pants had a threadbare patch over the knees, a small frayed hole opened in one. She trembled like an October leaf on an autumn wind.

It took a few minutes for her to calm. When she composed, she stood, and again eyed the shaft askance.

And again it stared back, innocent, harmless.

She winced when she stood, her joints creaked and ached. She limped on a throbbing knee toward the shaft, and stood a safe distance away to gaze into the charcoal depths.

The darkness swallowed the door whole. She couldn’t make out any sign of it. Several steps into the stairwell the blackness engulfed all light.

She drew a jittering breath, ran her hand down the back of her head, smoothed her ruffled, dust-caked hair. She dug into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out the phone. She considered calling Butch back, then thought better of it. He’d been unenthusiastic about her last call. She thought of calling the realtor, but didn’t know what she’d ask. Maybe for her money back. She assumed that would be ludicrous without a lawyer and a lot of fighting. No sense stirring that pot. Not yet, anyway.

She checked her watch. Eleven-forty. Still plenty of time in the day to do some digging, perhaps see what she could learn about the tiny old building, in a neighborhood that struggled against going bad. But already the edges were roughening, and the seedier elements gained footholds. Part of her willingness to buy this old, quaint spinster amidst the crumbled hulks of apartments tipping toward tenements and shops bordering on roach motels was the city’s tax break. If she stayed and helped turn the neighborhood around, they offered her significant business tax and city tax reductions. They could use this as impetus to keep pushing nicer and nicer elements into the drug-and-crime infested Black Heart area of the city. Rose had been assured more than adequate police patrols and monitoring, since the city’s special pet project couldn’t fail.

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