Karma kitty's Arc

Chapter 8 of 8

As she walked down twisting hallways of quiet whispers she started to hear screaming and thudding. She wasn’t sure if she should keep following the runner but she went on anyway, just more cautiously Karma followed the worn stripes toward the screaming. Her boots sank into the thick brown runner. The sound grew louder with every step, a woman's voice cracking into sobs. Mixed in came wood splitting, a dull chop, chop, chop. She stopped at a half-open door. Part of her wanted to run the other way. But the stripes led here, and she had promised herself she would follow them out. She pushed the door wider. A woman crouched in the corner of a bright white room. The walls carried a crisp retro pattern, pale geometric lines on clean panels. The woman's black hair hung in her face. Her blue blouse was torn at the shoulder. She pressed one hand to her chest and screamed at a side door across the room. Something hacked at that door from the other side. The wood bowed and cracked. A man's face burst through the splintered gap. His eyes rolled wild. He grinned as he swung the axe again, reaching his long arm through the hole toward the lock. Chunks of door rained onto the carpet. Karma's breath froze. The woman turned and looked straight at her. Her mouth moved, but no new sound came. For one second the two of them simply stared at each other across the shaking room. Then the boy was beside Karma. He sat on his small red tricycle, pale hands tight on the grips. He did not look at the woman or the man. He looked up at Karma. His face was calm and sad, as if he had watched this room a thousand times. "It isn't real," he said softly. "None of it keeps you." The axe froze mid-swing. The man's grin stilled. The screaming thinned to nothing. Karma watched the white walls lose their color. The pattern faded first, then the woman, then the splintered door. The boy began to fade too. He kept his eyes on her until the last. The tricycle dissolved from under him, and then he was gone. The floor steadied. Karma blinked. She stood in the wide front lobby of the hotel. Tall windows let in gray daylight. The heavy front doors waited straight ahead, unlocked. No blood. No stripes bending her in circles. Just a clear path out. She did not wait to understand it. She ran. Her boots hit the stone steps, and the cold outside air slammed into her lungs. Dead leaves scattered under her feet. She kept running until the dark towers of the hotel stood far behind her, its stained walls and sharp roofs shrinking against the autumn trees. Karma stopped at the edge of the parking lot and bent over her knees. Her hands shook. She had come here to escape her unfinished house. Instead the house was the one real thing she had left. She climbed into her car and drove toward Willow Court. The basement still waited for her, and for the first time, she was glad of it.