Alice pushed the door open just a hair and peeked through. She couldn't see or hear anything moving on the other side, so she slowly widened the gap between the door and the frame, pausing every time the rusted hinges or rotting wood made a sound, however slight. She'd hold her breath and listen, straining to hear any change in the silence. Eventually though, the door was open wide enough to let her thin form slip through.
The room she stepped into was a kitchen. Beaten, run down, but refreshingly clean of any splatters of blood. The thick cobwebs above and around the wall-mounted cupboards, as well as the thin coating of dust on the oven and counter surfaces, indicated that this place had been abandoned as well. A door on the left wall was open slightly. No sound came from the other side.
Alice stepped across the black and white checkerboard tiling to the oven. Some of the dials on its face were cracked. The temperature was set to 850 degrees, but the oven itself wasn't on. She glanced to the door on her left. She couldn't see much of the room beyond.
She kneeled and hesitantly opened one of the cabinets beneath the counters. There were bare, dusty shelves inside. She moved to the next one. There was an empty box of baking soda here, but nothing else. She checked the two other cabinets and the refrigerator. All she found was an empty egg carton and a barbecue fork. The rusted, vaguely malicious look of the latter kept her from picking it up to use as a viable weapon. The thing looked like it had already seen its share of blood. Besides, she preferred running away to fighting, and if running didn't work, she still had six bullets left in her father's gun.
With nowhere else left to look, Alice turned to the door on the left wall. She blinked; was it open just a bit wider than it had been? She nervously glanced around her, including up at the ceiling. She didn't see anything else out of the ordinary. She went to the door and looked through the crack. As she held her face to it, an aroma most strange wound its way to her nose. But what she saw was a dining table, and on it, charred meat of some kind.
'A roast?!' She thought, belly trembling in hunger. She stepped back and pulled the door open, going faster than she had with the first door, but staying behind the thick wood as the door opened wider and wider. Behind the door, Alice scrunched her eyes shut and listened.
Nothing.
She breathed out a sigh and peeked around the door, into the new room. She nearly gagged.
On the table was a dead, cooked animal. It had four legs, and an angular head that still held black, protruding marble eyes that reminded Alice of a lobster. It was arranged so that it seemed to be staring at her as she looked around the door at it. Tearing her gaze from its eyes, Alice managed to take stock of the rest of it. Its flanks were slightly charred in some places, completely blackened in others. The four legs it had were inexpertly hacked off at the first joint, the ragged bone and gristle still on display.
Alice felt her throat catch and her jaw work. Her stomach turned over, but still, somehow, demanded food.
'There's just no way.' She thought, an edge of hysteria coloring her mental voice. 'There's no way I'm that hungry.'
The meat continued to stare at her. She waited a long moment.
'Maybe there's something else in there?' But she really didn't want to go into the room. The animal on the table was as big as a child; she didn't want to walk past it.
'I can't go back.' She thought. She stepped around the door. Nothing changed. She walked forward, then slid along the wall in the dining room, glancing around. There was an empty door frame on the far wall. It seemed that a hallway ran adjacent to this room. The light out there was dimmer than it was in here.
The wallpaper was printed with tiny yellow flowers and thin, wire-like vines. The pattern seemed to bulge in places that had nothing to do with how the wallpaper was hung. On the ceiling was a motorized fan with a light bulb at its center. The blades of the fan drifted inexplicably from side to side, making no noise.
Alice circled to the right side of the dining table. On the far side from her, against the wall, was an end table. A red phone was on it. Alice could see plainly from where she stood that the phone cord had been ripped out of the wall. The red phone kept drawing her eye though. It looked clean, shiny even. A bright, fire-engine red.
She drew even with the back end of the dining table. The animal's innards had been ripped out of it through its posterior, leaving a gaping hole there, like a Thanksgiving turkey.
That strange smell, the smell of the dead animal, was still tickling Alice's nose. It simultaneously made her mouth water and her stomach lurch.
'I'll be too weak to go on if I don't eat anything. But what if I'm not supposed to? What if this place is like Hades, where if you eat or drink anything you'll be stuck there forever? What if I become like those creatures outside?'
A dry sob escaped her through as she edged forward, left hand half extending towards the animal's flank, fingers curved. 'I can't go on without something to eat. I'll just...' She shut her eyes and kept edging forward.
She whispered, barely audible, "I wouldn't... I'm sorry... I'm so hungry. Please.."
Her hand touched something warm. Something trembling. She jerked herself back and felt her hand contact with a small object and send it flying. She opened her eyes.
The animal hadn't moved, and didn't appear to be shaking. She looked at her hand. Her fingers were what were trembling. A hoarse laugh choked out of her. She breathed deeply and tried to slow her racing heartbeat. 'I can't believe I almost did that. That was so stupid... It's only been a few hours, I can do without food for days at least, I know... other people do it all the time.' Her mind kept rationalizing, kept coming up with reasons for why she wouldn't have to touch the meat again.
'Wait... there was something else.' She looked around for the thing her hand had hit. About four feet from the end of the table, a small object had appeared on the ground. She walked over and knelt to pick it up.
It was a key, small enough to fit into the palm of her hand, but hefty enough to make her think it went to a door, not something smaller. It was stained brown. With her other hand she wiped some of the stain off. Underneath, the key was bright silver.
The phone rang.
Alice jerked and at the last second closed both hands around the key before she could send it flying again. She looked at the shiny red phone, and her eyes traveled down the cord. It was plugged into the wall, all damaged that had previously been there (that she thought had been there) was gone.
It rang again.
She walked over to it. The red phone was brand new, of the old-fashioned rotating dial kind Alice had seen on the phones in her grandmother's house.
Another shrill ring sounded.
Alice picked up the receiver and held it to her ear, the silver key clasped loosely in her other hand. After a moment of silence, she said, "Hello?"
"It's very dark in here." said a child's voice, very matter-of-fact.
Alice tried to draw breath to reply, to ask, but failed. She dry coughed and tried again.
"Who are you?" Compared to the child's voice, her own sounded frail and terrified.
There was silence on the other end of the phone.
"Hello?"
No reply.
Alice looked down. Quite plainly visible, the phone cord was hanging out of the wall, a dry plaster hole indicative of where it had once been.
She put the receiver down. It had all been in her head. She was talking on the phone with no one. Just the part of her that was scared and alone.
'But I've never heard a child speak like that.'
There was a sudden, loud bang. It came from the kitchen. Alice whipped her head to the door that still stood wide open.
A strange part of Alice mused, 'It's running thick now.'
She swallowed and didn't move.
There was a smaller, weaker bang. Same place as the first one.
Alice's chin began to tremble, but her eyes stayed wide and dry. She drifted towards the kitchen. On her third step she thought, 'What am I doing? I don't need to know. I don't care; I've got to get out of here.' She turned on her heel and headed for the other end of the dining room, and the hallway beyond.
"Miss?"
Alice stopped in her tracks. The voice was muffled, but sounded like the child that had been in her imaginary phone call.
"Miss, I'm in the oven. Please open the door."
'I don't want to. I've never wanted to do anything less than I want to do that.' Alice thought. She licked her dry lips and swallowed.
"Please? I hid in here and now I'm stuck. My phone's battery died. Please get me out of here."
Alice turned and walked to the kitchen. 'That's so reasonable! Of course! If it's a child they would've hidden when they saw the- the- the thing on the table, or maybe it was a monster that was chasing it, and then they called me on the phone with their cell phone because maybe they heard me and they knew the number because they lived here and- '
She very carefully didn't look at the red phone's cord as she passed it.
'and now I won't be alone!'
She went into the kitchen. Several small bangs emitted from the oven. "I'm in here!" There was a note of urgency to the voice now. "Please hurry!"
Alice grabbed onto the oven door and tried to pry it open. Its rusted hinges emitted a shrill squeal but hardly budged.
"Hurry! Hurry!" The child's voice kept getting louder.
"I'm trying! Don't panic!" Alice kept a death drip on the handle to the oven door and dug her heels into the tile floor, trying with all her might to rip the door open.
Through eyes squinted in exertion, Alice saw one of the dials on the oven's face begin to turn.
Her hands slipped in her own sweat and she went sprawling onto the floor. The oven emitted a small click.
"What are you doing? Where did you go?" The child's voice sounded even younger, more frightened.
Alice began to scramble to her feet.
"Ow... Ow OWOW! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"
As Alice stood, she saw from the gauges on the oven that it had turned on. It was still set to 850 degrees.
"STOP IT! STOP IT! PLEASE!" The child began to scream.
"No!" Alice leapt to the door and tugged, redoubled her grip and tugged again.
The screamer inside the oven began to claw at the gap that Alice had managed to open between the oven and its door. The small fingers were red and blistering. A sizzling sound came from inside.
"Oh God!" Alice began to scream too.
Somewhere in both their incoherent babblings and screams, the two began to sound exactly alike.
Suddenly, the door simply opened. Alice was flung backwards by her own suddenly released energy and crashed into the opposite wall.
She stared ahead of her, into the oven.
It was empty.