Room

They’d been given little context, the five of them, upon arrival. This was the room of a seventeen-year-old-girl. That was it. They had five minutes to investigate, come to a conclusions, finish the test. Nadia was the first to enter.

The door was in the right hand corner of the room, the closet protruded from the wall blocking her view to the left when she first walked in. A tall wooden dresser was directly in front of her, with a twin bed shoved up against the wall parallel to the entrance. She stepped in further, her eyes glancing around the room in a counterclockwise motion. There was a white desk at the foot of the bed, with a bookshelf angled into the corner next to it, then a eight cube organizer shelf, and a built in desk left on the other side of the closet. There were two windows, one on the wall with the bed and desk, the other was just above the organizer shelf. The middle of the room was empty.

Nadia slowly paced around the room with her hands behind her back. She examined the wall right of the door. It was plastered with a layer of posters, most seemed to be artist renditions of characters from books, movies, and tv shows. They all seemed to be regular sized posters, except for a small postcard picture of Buttercup from the Princess Bride. The card covered, what seemed like, an empty space on the wall.

She continued, going in a clockwise motion. The closet doors were covered similar to the wall, but instead of posters they were small quotes with a couple of pictures scattered throughout. It looked just like what her little sister had done on her closet door. It wasn’t important.

The windows, on the other hand, drew her attention. Only one had a curtain, the one on west wall. It was a blue curtain, pulled back to let the light in. The blinds had been pulled all the way open, so they were only a sliver of plastic at the top of the window. There was a large windowsill, the organizer shelf acted as an extension to that. Both surfaces were covered with small glass and plastic figurines, most of them she didn’t recognize, except for the action figure of Captain America. The wall surrounding the window was painted yellow, contrasting the blue of the other two walls.

She turned back to the built-in-desk that she skipped. There were also three built-in-shelves which were filled with dust covered books. Paint streaks and blobs littered the desk surface but besides that, it was empty. There wasn’t a chair. Underneath the desk there was a silver tub. She didn’t open it.

“One more minute.” Nadia heard the trainer call out from behind the door. She looked away from the desk and at the wall space between the window and the desk. There was thin strings of lights strung in a zigzag pattern, all off, and a couple of the bulbs were missing. Printed selfies were clipped to the cord.

She stepped closer to examine the pictures. There was one that had been ripped in half, carefully torn down the middle but it was barely hanging on by its corner.

“Time’s up!”

Nadia swore, stepping out of the room. She passed her peers as she was herded into the next room. They gave her a piece of paper and pencil to write down her answer. She sat there tapping pencil against her leg. Eventually she put down her answer: nothing happened, everyone was overreacting.

“Lucas, your next.” Lucas jerked up and strided into the room. The door shut behind him. He went to the bed first, it had a bookshelf for a headboard and there was two mattresses instead of one.

Blankets were clumped together in a pile at the foot of the bed, the sheets were peeling off at a corner. Four pillows had been tossed on the bed. He lifted up the blankets and shook them. A heart shaped necklace came tumbling out. He picked it up and opened it, there wasn’t any pictures tucked away inside. He grabbed a pillow and stuck his hand down the pillow case, pulling out a wad of cash. He raised an eyebrow as he put the money back.

“Interesting.” He turned to the dresser. The old wooden surface had been tortured by marker, it was covered in black ink. He went digging through the drawers, most of it was clothes, but in the bottom drawer had a pile of books. He picked up the top book, leafed through it, a picture floated out. A roughly torn picture of a boy, with a red heart drawn onto it with devil horns and x’s through the eyes.

“One more minute.”

“Shoot.” Lucas went to the headboard. A unplugged lamp was on top of the mini bookshelf, with a missing lightbulb. A open letter rested next to it. He picked it up. The handwriting was sloppy and eligible except for a couple of words. It started with I’m sorry and ended with please forgive me.

“Time’s up.” Lucas stared at the letter, trying to make out more of the words. The door slammed open. “Lucas,” the trainer growled.

“Okay, okay. There’s no need to freak out.” Lucas went to the next room. While they reset the room, he wrote down his answer. Suicide.

“Ebony.” She nodded before shakingly stand up, giving Ryker a high five before going into the room. Breathe, she said to herself as the door closed behind her. Her legs felt like they were made of bouncy balls that had been crammed together into a fragile plastic container tub. She hesitantly went to the bed first, finding the necklace but not the money.

She lifted up the top mattress, blood stains were on the mattress beneath. Her body froze, eyes wide, followed by uneven breaths. The mattress fell back down as she lowered herself to the ground and looked underneath the bed. Reaching into the darkness, she pulled out shattered pieces of a figurine. They looked like rementes of a piggy bank.

She went to both windows. The one next to the bed didn’t have a curtain like the other and the blinds were down. She peeked through them, the screen was missing.The other window was just the same as Ebony had seen it. The one action figure was out of place. Leaning in closer, she saw a thin layer of dust covering the windowsill. She lifted up the one of the figurines, the clean space beneath matched the figurine. The space underneath the action figure was larger than the figure.

“One-minute.”

She quickly searched through the desk, her hands shaking. There were small light bulbs inside along with writing supplies. A diary. Ebony opened it to the most recent recording, and read the last lines. “I hate them so much. I can’t stand this house anymore. I want to leave.”

“Time’s up.” She put the diary away before leaving. As she passed Ryker, she gave him another high five, then went into the next room. She concluded that the girl ranaway.

Ryker got up and went into the room without them even calling his name. He dropped to the ground and checked underneath all the furniture. He found the broken figurine, also a neatly ripped picture of a girl amongst the pile of sketchbooks and journals underneath the desk. He flipped through a couple of them. A few entries were about her hanging out with her boyfriend, and there was a some drawings of the same boy along with sketches of nature. A invitation for a party that weekend had been glued into one of her sketchbooks.

He glanced at the windowsill, the pictures pinned to the lights, and the built-in-bookshelf and desk. The silver tub drew his eyes. He tugged it out, popping it open, only to find a bunch of books. Just as he was about to close it, he realized that some of the books had blood on the corners. The blood was dark, and dry.

“One more minute.”

He closed the tub and slide it back into place, then glanced quickly around the rom. A couple of dents were scattered across the room’s walls. He moved across the room to get closer to the posters.

“Princess Bride,” he whispered to himself. He slowly peeled the mini poster off the wall, behind it was a fist sized hole. “Dang.”

“Time’s up.”

Ryker sighed. He left giving the last trainee a glance before moving into the next room. He gave the same answer as Ebony.

Aviva was the last to go. She entered the room going through as much as she could. She started with the closet, it was empty. Passed the desk, the window with the curtain, but stopped at the bookshelf in the corner. She thumped through a couple books but continued onto the bed. She ripped off the sheets and found drops of blood, then lifted the top mattress and found the blood underneath.

She set down the mattress and looked at the window right there. Pulling up the blinds, she saw the missing screen and the lock was broken.

Aviva left the room, having her answer.

“Time’s not …” She glared at the trainer as she entered the next room. All the other trainees where there, watching, as she wrote down her answer. Murder.

They wouldn’t know the results of the test until the end of the week.