11. These candles are wanted
Heartless. Heartless. Everywhere. Heaping up to the ceiling, where they nudged chandeliers like prisoners grasping for untainted air in gas chambers. They swung their miniature swords and staffs and shields, the pitifully-elaborate things, and some tumbled out the windows in the squeeze. They slid through cracks and zapped doorknobs. They exploded out of the receptionist's desk like firecrackers. They never left you alone. But soon enough you and your companions littered the unfortunate lobby carpet with carcasses (or was it corpses? you could never decide).
And all the while, the telephone kept on ringing.
In room 287, one of the Blues, you found a couple caught unawares in the middle of a rendezvous. You blushed while putting an end to the enemies there and directed the lovers to the icorrect/i exit – the one that led to the finally-emptied hallway. For they had been ready to totter out and over the balcony in their fright – a man and a woman wrapped in white sheets like two pillars of salt.
In room 304, one of the Greens, your team delivered a decrepit old man whose knees could barely support him as he hunched precariously over an overturned drawer, fishing with uncanny strength the remains of his possessions. You realized he was deaf to the world - literally or metaphorically, it didn't matter; there was a whole crowd of Heartless behind him, ready to swoop in for the attack.
In room 317, one of the Reds, you saw her. Returning a large lamp to its rightful position on the dresser beside a tiny-lettered book whose pages fluttered in the wind. One hand smoothed down her dress, the other was still shaking… There was a broken staff on the floor and a handful of dead Heartless. "When I was young, very young, I was punished and put into a red room like this one. How could anyone know the effect it would have had on me? I shouted. I cried. I must have had a fit… and then I fainted."
She paused. "I come here often. To remind myself of what died that day, and how to face it." Her misty smile reached her eyes, like always.
You closed the door carefully behind you. Flowers pressed into your hands. And somewhere at the end of the lobby, the telephone began ringing again.
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Note: Challenge prompt - Room 317.