Down a hallway from a locked door, toward the front of the house is a frosted bay window. Yellow light filters in through the grime, blocking a view of the world beyond the house. It feels like I'm on the 2nd story of a home, given the dim horizon in the distance viewable through cracks in the glass. I turn left and walk down a connected hallway. To my immediate right is a washroom that is slanted toward the back of the house. The room is old, with the slanted floor implying the house foundations are sinking, or rotten. I use the sink and move on. From the hallway opens into a living room with a kitchen along one wall. My younger brother walks along beside me, having always been there quietly. We search the room, looking for some clue as to where we are. Along the left wall are a kitchen sink, an old fridge, and a small 4-panel window at the end of the hall/side of the kitchen-living room. An old sofa sits in the middle of the room, with an old chair near the window. Outside the window, it looks out onto a yard that slopes up to meet the window.
Through the window, we see a man chase a boy out of the back of his house, down a set of porch steps and out on to his back yard. There's a deranged looking elderly woman near the door who emerges as well. The old man chases the boy down mid-yard and viciously beats him to death. I instruct my brother to hide, and I crawl under the sofa, behind the flaps of the furniture's skirt. Surrounded by dust and the smell of aged floorboards, I hear the noise of violence outside, then silence.
The old man enters the house through our window and discover us. We run, but are caught. I try to struggle, but the man and woman are insubstantial, like ghosts.
* * *
Everything resets, and I'm back standing next to the glassed off pristine area as I was before. However, the house is filled with people. I search for an exit at the front of the house, and then for a weapon and find neither. I confront the man as he enters the room this time, but my efforts pass through him ineffectively.
Everything rests. Time and time again. I lose track of the number of times I try to escape this loop. In desperation, I run straight out of the side of the house, through the window the moment I reset. I run up the deck past the crazy woman, past the murderous man and the running, filthy child. Into their house I run, and to their locked front door. I open it, and a younger woman - perhaps the boy's mother - runs in with a hammer and strikes both of the older, crazed people. As she approaches the boy, they all disappear.
I'm left in an empty house. I follow the hallway down the left side into a makeshift prison area that once housed the boy. It appears that he had a bare carpeted room, a washroom, and a barred 'lookout' tower with a ladder all within the left side of this old person's house. I try to exit the front door, but it's locked. I can see the aged ruins of suburbs outside, but I'm like the ghosts I see trapped inside. The loop broken, I wander. Everyone's gone.
I try walking around the side of the old man's house but I'm hit with vertigo. Time slows down, pushing me back toward the backyard. I feel that I'm not allowed to go this way, but I push through. Once I make it to the street, the sensation clears. I walk past the decaying mansion and suburban home, looking for meaning before I wake.
