The House That...

You were moved into Group Four a week ago because the others were overcrowded. In these few days, you've managed to settle in somewhat: you have your own spot on the communal bed and at least a vague understanding of the rhythm here, but getting used to everyone—and especially their eccentricities—is still a struggle. Time flows differently here; you've involuntarily learned how to play poker and checkers, how to sleep sitting up, how to eat in the middle of the night, bake potatoes on an electric hotplate, and smoke someone else's cigarettes, but you still haven't learned how to stop asking what time it is.

The room is impossibly cluttered. From a distance, it looks more like a landfill reaching for the ceiling. Certain fragments of it have already made it up there, taking root, and now they sway in the draft, rustling and clinking. A yellow kite hanging there is particularly striking, smiling at anyone who deigns to look up. The tape recorder and three of the twelve wall lamps are never turned off, so someone is always awake, even in the dead of night.

Today, a lazy afternoon lull reigns in the room, everyone occupied with their own business. Lord has settled on the windowsill, buried in a magazine; he is barely visible behind the curtain, but his silhouette is easy to recognize. Blind is working his magic over the coffee maker, staring into his own blind nothingness. On the giant communal bed, cobbled together from four regular ones, Tabaki and Sphinx are sitting, playing chess. Tabaki is smoking, enveloping himself in a cloud of vanilla with every exhale; he wears a turban on his head and is draped in pins and amulets. On the chessboard, it is a clear draw. The room smells heavy with vanilla smoke and coffee. As soon as a sound comes from the threshold, Tabaki notices you immediately.

Tabaki

— Is that you, kiddo? And what brings you here? Tired of exploring the labyrinth of corridors? — the Jackal asks with a sly grin, enveloping himself in vanilla smoke once more, but he doesn't look away; he waits.

The House That...

Description

The House stands on the outskirts of the city, in a place called The Comb. Long high-rises are lined up here in jagged rows, separated by the square-concrete voids of courtyards. The teeth are white, many-eyed, and look exactly like one another. Where they haven't grown yet, there are only fenced-off wastelands. On the neutral territory between two worlds—the courtyards and the wastelands—stands the House. They call it the Grey House. It is old, closer in age to the wastelands—the graveyards of its peers. It has three floors; its facade faces the highway, and it too has a courtyard—a long rectangle enclosed by mesh. No one likes the Grey House. No one will say it aloud, but the residents of The Comb would prefer it weren't there. They would prefer it didn't exist at all.