The Room She Was Always Told Not to Enter
Kimi K2 (0711) and Davinci 002
The second door in the hallway had always been locked, until the morning after her grandmother's funeral, when Elena found it slightly open, breathing cool air into the corridor where no window existed. She opened it the rest of the way and stepped in, feeling suddenly as if there were one end of a tunnel collapsed and this were the other side, an enormous room too larger to belong to her house that was empty of people and furniture and carpet, with high vaulting moving upward in rows from floor to ceiling.
For several seconds only the cold and quiet of the new room reached Elena in her blazing heat and deafening noise. Slowly its dimensions. It was as long as the entire floor of the house. It was twice as wide as the ballroom. It contained air like hers and nothing else, no one like her and nothing else. And it was so empty
Elena moved ahead with measured steps, the way a swimmer returns to the surface, because she had to. Beyond one opened door in the far corner lay the room she had always been told not to enter. She always wished she could see through that door.
Because she could not see through it. The embossed wallpaper gave the illusion of seals and sea horses on cream-colored velvet, which was also the illusion imparted◆ About the ending
❧ About the title