Indecision
January 2023 | by Dani
Fiction | Ittoril
There was no response when she knocked on the door, but shortly after, the sound whirring from up above clicked and then stopped.
A few moments passed, and Abigail considered turning back, but she felt those same eyes on the back of her neck. If she stopped now, she'd look silly. She tried the handle. It was unlocked.
The door swung slowly open, allowing the sun to cast light around Abigail's shadow into the grey room in front of her. The building was quite a mess. Floorboards were rotten or torn up, and spider webs wrapped themselves across the walls of the room. She was right; it probably was abandoned, but that didn't ease her anxiety. It was too late to turn back.
Abigail stepped into the building. On her left stood what might have once been an ornate desk, but the inside had rotted out, and it had collapsed in on itself. Against the back wall was a door frame without a door, but it was too dark to see inside. On the right, however, there was a spiral stairwell — really just a pole with a series of carpeted steps wrapping around it. Several of them were missing, strewn about the floor, and the ones that remained didn't look good either.
She began clambering her way up the stairs, careful with her weight on every step. She hated stairs — her body just wasn't built for vertical movement. No-one could see her, she knew, but she was still embarrassed by the slow and awkward display.
The stairwell opened out into the corner of the second floor. The room here was packed — empty shelves and crates stacked three or four high took up most of the floor space. A corrugated sheet of metal leaned against the far wall. On her left was a large window, through which yellow light illuminated the room. She leaned out over the dusty sill, and saw the slanted street below her.
She looked back around the room, and coughed. It was musty in here. She couldn't see anything that might've been making the sound. The shelves were empty but for a layer of dust, so she went to investigate the crates instead. She pulled the lid up off of a large one near the window, expecting to see the empty inside of a box.
Abigail was instead greeted by a pair of wide, pale eyes looking up at her.
She jumped back with a surprised squeal, landing on the hard floor with a heavy thud. Slowly, she rubbed the back of her head, pulling herself up. Her vision was blurred, but she heard in front of her a timid voice speaking rapidly.
"Oh, I- Oh gosh... I- I am so, so sorry, I- I... Uh..." The voice stammered. "Um. Are- Are you okay?"
The man standing in front of Abigail wouldn't seem to come into focus. He looked to be young, and his skin was pale — not in the way that a southerner might be pale, but in the way that ash from a fire is pale. Maybe it was her still-blurry vision but, to Abigail's eyes, his skin seemed to be slightly translucent. His clothes and hair were similarly grey, and the last thing she noticed about him, though she was unsure of what she was actually seeing, was that it looked like his feet floated slightly off the ground.
Uncertainly, Abigail looked up at the man. "...Hi."