ABANDON

Chapter 14 -- The Office

The room was filled with all things fluffy, cute, and pink. Ibber stood unmoving, Jane watched him look from the fluffy pink chair, to the sparkling pink computer, to the jewel encrusted jar holding assorted writing utensils with puff balls on their ends. Dangling from the ceiling were glitter covered butterflies, the only shelf in the room was lined with small crocheted animals, and every inch of space on the walls was covered with pictures. Cut from magazines and held up by chunks of yellowed masking tape, the pictures were of Victorian style flower bouquets, pastel coloured cupcakes, baskets of kittens,and a hundred other items Jane wanted to rip down from the walls. She felt embarrassed. Even the clutter of old masking tape marks would be better than this.

"What kind of person was this relative of yours?" the tone of Harris's voice was a mixture of shock and disgust.

"I really don't know." Jane was overwhelmed by the spectacle before her.

"Why would all the other rooms be empty and this one not?" Harris asked.

Ibber didn't have an answer. Neither did Jane.

Harris shook his head. "I don't know whether to report this or not."

Jane tried to stop him, but before she could say anything, he was reporting.

"So far every room we've been in has been empty. But we just found one that'snot." Harris paused, thinking of how to put what he saw before him into words.

"So what's in it?" Faringoth asked impatiently.

"I'm sorry, you're just going to have to see it to believe it."

Jane wished she could hide. She wished they had never found this room. She wished she had never mentioned these buildings or crashed on this planet. She wished she had never set foot on the Holiday. And for the first time since she left, she wished she was back on Earth.

"Every room empty, except this." Harris activated visual.

Jane closed her eyes. She could barely handle the original, there was no way she was going to see double. But cutting out the visual stimuli to her brain only made her hearing more acute. And it wasn't speech that she picked up, it was the sharp intakes of breath, the subtle tones of disgust. Jane knew they were passing judgement.

"Check through all that to see if you can find something useful." Faringoth said. "To make this work, to get off this planet, we are going to have to use equipment from here."

"Understood." Harris turned to Ibber. "Useful, he says, useful? Could someone please define useful," Harris looked around the room, "because I'm suddenly confused as to what useful could be."

"Can anyone smell that?" It was Callivar's voice. Jane welcomed any distraction. Up to this point she hadn't given much thought to smell, there was too much - else.  And when she tried to identify anything for Callivar, her senses failed her. They wanted as little to do with this place as much as she did. She expected to smell dampness, that kind of musty odour that accompanies old places, but there was nothing.

"Yeah, we smell it." Faringoth replied. "Rotten. Probably food. Just ignore it." Then Faringoth spoke in a different tone, one less commanding, more friendly. "We've almost got it. Yes! Bingo!"

A clicking sound could be heard from far away, rolling through the building like a giant wave of water, growing louder as it approached. Suddenly the light above them clicked on. Harris looked from the light to Jane. "You left your light on. And I had such high hopes for your environmentality."  The lights on their helmets blinked out.

Above them, the light began to grow in intensity causing all three to watch it. The light became shockingly bright and then the room was plunged into darkness. A ripple effect could be heard through the hallways as every light lost power.