Rating: PG-13-Language, Mild Violence

'-thinking

"-speaking

Italics represent vocal emphasis or memories.


She couldn't believe it. She didn't even remember being in this place at all, and here was her picture.

It must have been taken years ago, because she was very young in it. There was no date on the back, which only made her feel more shaken about it. She dropped the picture back on the floor and walked out, her chest trembling with each shaky breath.

Deciding it was enough for today, she went out of the decayed mansion and to her car. But before she could do so, a stranger approached her. An elderly woman with glasses that hung around her neck on a necklace walked her frail form up to Bulma, sincere curiosity in her eyes.

"Hello. You must be a relative. It's been a long time."

"Uh, yeah," She wasn't sure what to say as she shook the woman's frail, wrinkled hand.

"They were such good people. As rich as he was, would constantly donate around here. And his wife was such a great hostess. It's a shame they went so fast."

"Yeah, it is", Bulma looked down at the debris-covered ground, her fingers playing distracting games with each other.

"So, how are you dealing with this?" The woman blurted, pulling Bulma out of her awkward trance.

"Oh, fine. I didn't really know them that well. I was living in..." She stopped mid-sentence. She had no idea where she lived when they supposedly died.

"Oh, of course. I wouldn't want to recall such a bad event anyways, dear."

"But the weird thing is, I don't even remember them. Or this place," She gave a nervous laugh that died when she caught the lady's grim expression.

"Listen...I don't believe in the paranormal. But, if I were you, I'd be careful in this place. There's a lot of history in this building."

Bulma's eyes filled with surprise, and then question,"What? What happened?"

"Just know...to be careful."

"Look, I need to know. I can't even remember being here, and I need your help!"

The lady began walking away. Bulma sighed and put her hand on her head, looking again to the ground for comfort. When she looked up, the lady was gone.


The drive home was more self-questioning than self-answering to Bulma. All that filled her train of thought was the mirror, the portrait, and that eerie shadow that lurked around her every time she went to that house.

She got to her condo an hour later, her boyfriend's car parked beside hers. When she walked in, she put her coat on the rack and pecked his cheek, a ritualistic greeting for both of them.

"So, how's the house?"

"The same as it was yesterday. Dark, gloomy, and shady. It's gonna take the entire sun to fix it up."

"It will be fine," His favorite expression to use at every drop of the hat.

He exited the kitchen and went to the living room where a game was on the television. She automatically went to her office and typed up a story for her newspaper. It was about houses, and what to do with them when "inherited".

She typed for hours. By the time she was finished, it was already eleven at night. Yawning, she walked to their bedroom, where he was already sleeping. She went to her bathroom first, somehow avoided looking for wrinkles, and then went to bed herself.


The next trip to the house that morning was a rocky one due to the treacherous rain pouring down on her undeserving windshield, but she got there in an hour, right on time. Once out of the car, she raised her umbrella over her head and shuffled up the small but steep hill to the mansion's weak stairs. She vaguely wondered how long it would take before she fell through them.

A flash shot through her mind at the image of her falling through the stairs, as if she had thought of it before.

Her eyebrows burrowed in confusion,"But that is impossible. I've never even been here before to think about such things."

She shook her head to erase the imposing thoughts and practically threw herself through the doors, as if they would mend her confusion. They didn't.

She fixed her umbrella and put it under the arm of her coat. Her eyes automatically darted around the ceiling and the stairs, how shady they were. As strange as it was for such a luxurious house to be so gloomy, she actually found this eery comfort every time she walked in.

A sense of home.

She walked up the creaking stairs up to the right hallway, where that door was the first thing her eyes caught sight of. Bulma was a very curious person, question always driving her into obstacles that her mind could articulately create insightful visions of. That was being a journalist to her. And in being such an artifact, seeing this attic door closed was something she didn't find as permanent.

In fact, finding the door alone was a wondrous intrigue to her, the question echoed in her mind one by one, like the travelling raindrops outside. Her entire existence was one big question, as everyone's really was, but she had a problem in particular. She didn't have a question to direct her existence to.

Her feet absent-midedly got themselves to the door before she even realized it. And her hand gripped the rusty ring for a knob so gently she felt like a newborn finally grasping for its mother for the first time. She couldn't explain the purposeful feeling that had ballooned inside her in that moment, but it was real and she felt it. It excited her.

The agent's words of warning echoed in her mind as, but which was more demanding of her? Boundaries or risks?

With that liberating argument in her head like a spinning record, she pulled the doorknob to find stairs. Cold, solid stairs spiralling upward, just as the smirk on her face was doing then.

The room really looked nothing special. The opposite side of the room was a window instead of a wall, covered and fogged by the grey outside and the sad trails of cascading raindrops. The glass felt cold, as if it had never been touched by the warmth of a human hand. She didn't even remember walking to it and touching it, however she knew. Inside, she just knew.

Suddenly there was a chill in the room, another presence. Her head snapped up, and she tried to look out the corner of her eye, where she only saw that same shadow that had stalked her for the past two days in that gruesome house. She spun around to face it.

"Hey! What are you doing in my house? Why are you following me like some maniac?" Her eyes demanded answers at the man, who looked at her with a stoic expression that sent tingles down her spine.

"Your home, you say?" he asked in a scratchy low voice of cold amusement, almost a whisper, before striding to her, inches from her face. She flinched at the suddenly small distance, the musky aroma rising from him.

"Y-Yes...I inherited it. It's mine," She argued in a shaky voice, her head tilting defensively.

"Hm. Guess what?" He asked slowly, a smirk flashing over his lips before disappearing again.

She waited.

He got even closer,"You don't live here anymore."

Then, as quickly as he got to her, he backed away to return to his spot against the wall, a few feet from the door, where her eyes were targeting,"I-I'm just gonna leave now."

With his eyes closed, his arm shot out with ease against the open door, shutting it so that its slam ebbed away into the high ceiling of the dark attic, despite the bright gray flowing in from the window. She just stood there, her face questioning and nervous at the same time.

"Why did you do that?" She asked him, still trembling softly.

He chuckled sardonically as he lit a cigarette, eyes still closed,"Why are you here?"

"This is my house. I may not reside here, but it's mine."

He said nothing after that, silence and smoke filling the still air between them as Bulma's mind went anxious over what the man could do to her in there. No one would hear her scream either, being a mile away from the nearest mansion.

With fear as her only source of energy, she quickly strode to the door, but he blocked it in lightening speed. That's when she took out the umbrella and swung at him, a swift thud echoed in the attic.

But the thud was not from where it hit him, it was from the umbrella hitting the inside of his hand, where he caught it. Her breath disappeared as he snatched it out of her grip, broke it in two, and threw it out towards the window. The umbrella fell only a few feet short of it, however. She just gave him a blank stare afterwards, speechless.

He sighed as he shook his head, taking a whiff of his cigarette. She decided that if he would do anything, he would have to get to her first. So she went to the opposite side of the room,where there were boxes and such stacked along the wall. She took off her coat, all the while not taking her cautious eyes off him.

There was another silence, but not awkward as she expected it to be,"So what are you doing here?"

His eyes opened to hers at the question.

"Were you implying that you live here?"

He took in a breath,"I've been here since childhood. Taking care of the house."

She scoffed, slightly smiling,"Yeah. It looks really taken care of."

His eyes flashed at the remark, causing her smile to fade.

"Uh, I meant, it's pretty old so it must be difficult...?"

"Hm. I manage."

She nodded, her eyes falling to the wooden floor.

"Tell me, do you remember living here at all?"

She took in a deep breath,"Well, I must say... I don't. I thought I had the wrong house. One, it looked too old for my parents to have just died. And two, I've never seen it in my life. But since I got here, there have been these stupid flashes."

"Flashes," He repeated in a wistful voice with a child-like fascination as he smirked, "Of what? Memories?"

"Well not exactly. Among feelings of familiarity. They just strike my head when I think or touch something here. Like an object."

"Mirror."

"...Excuse me?"

He peered into her for a frightening second,"You're Bulma. Correct?"

She gave him a suspicious eye,"Yes..."

"Hm. I'm surprised you don't remember this place. Then again, I could understand why."

"What?"

"Have you spoken with any of the citizens yet?"

"Um, this one lady came up yesterday."

He nodded,"What did she tell you?"

"I don't recall. She just...After some small talk she gave me this weird look when I told her I didn't remember a thing about this house. Then she said something about ghosts and that I should be careful."

The stranger chuckled darkly again, flicking the butt of his finished cigarette to a dark corner of the attic.

"And the agent, he said to never come up here. I just don't see why."

He cleared his throat,"This isn't the attic he was speaking of, woman. This is the first attic. It's only used for storage."

"Really?"

"Precisely. You see, every big house like this has two attics. One that is obvious and boring, and then a hidden one that harbors the family's most valuable and secret items. But he doesn't know everything just because he's an agent."

"Do you know where it is?"

He gave her an amused and mischievous glance,"Do you?"

She shook her head.

"There you go."

Bulma proceeded to look in some of the boxes. All she found were jovial pictures of her parents, sometimes there were glimpses of her in the background but nothing else like the picture downstairs. When she decided that was enough past-glancing for the day she turned to ask the stranger to let her leave.

He was already gone, the door wide open, welcoming her exit.

Shaking her head she walked down the rusty stairs and out of the mansion's door. She felt a sense of deja'vu spread over her in a wave that nearly brought her to sleep. She shook it off and got to her car.

When finally home, she walked into the all too familiar setting; her boyfriend was cooking with the television on. This time it was the news. After the ritualistic peck on the cheek, she got to her office and typed on her house report. But not three hours later, she heard an imposing knock on the sacred door.

"Bulma," he called before opening the door.

"Yes," She almost hissed, not liking how he could just walk into her private surroundings like that.

"Uh...could you have dinner with me tonight?"

Her tense fingers immediately rested, her head falling a bit in surprise,"...Yes, I'll be there. In a few minutes, Yamcha."

She could sense his sincere smile from behind,"Great. And thanks."

"Sure," She replied in a shaky voice, not knowing why he was thanking her.

Was this her life? A dead, monotone procedure with only mere sparks of difference like this that kept her going? Maybe this mansion was more of a good thing than she had thought.

The dinner was good and she felt safe. She felt secure looking in his soft eyes that she could never forget or grow tired of. He had always been her shelter, but she wondered if it was too safe from the storms that really brought people together.

The conversations had been mostly about the house and her recent subject in writing. Yamcha, being a retired baseball player, did have a hard time understanding what she could find in such materials, but he nodded along anyway. Supporting her was something he could never forget to do.

They went to bed early, a decision based on a hefty amount of alcohol in their systems, which was drained out by a good session of stimuli that Yamcha concluded out loud was "too rarely done". Afterwards, as he was sleeping, Bulma thought back on how they could keep it alive without killing it. When they had started, it was all bliss and glitter. But that was it. Soon, it turned into glue, stuck and solid and could not be changed without it breaking.

That was what she was afraid of. Bruising it, having it leave just because she wanted it to stay. It was their relationship, a relationship that even she as a journalist couldn't begin to dazzle with words.

So she stopped trying. Right then in bed, she stopped completely, her fear choking her efforts.

And when she woke, the rain had started again.


Hee hee. Not exactly a cliffhanger but yea. Good enough for me. Review and tell me if there's any hope for this thing.

~Jckash03