Work Text:
At the present, Helen’s corridors look like Michael’s old ones: bright, spiralling, an eye-sore to say the least. But they didn’t always look this way.
At first, her corridors looked like showhomes. The entrance: like any regular door to a house on show, prepared for sale. Too clean, too prepared, too put together. Too easy. She’d show potential clients not around the house they had booked to purchase, but around her corridors, all the while playing the part she’d been playing for the past eight years - the continually smiling, affable estate agent; all while pouring lies out of her teeth. The hallways were a shade of white, which changed almost imperceptibly each time they would look at the walls; if asked about this, she’d always respond:
“Changed? No, no, no, they haven’t. They’ve always been that colour.” Then she’d laugh. A spiralling laugh, rising and falling, never seeming to reach an end. She never seemed to need to breathe. They’d swear they had seen the same fern 12 times as she showed off the house, on the same set of dressers, in the same corridor, with the same framed pictures. And yet, she’d reassure the (increasingly more confused & unsettled) prospective buyers that:
“Seen them before? No, no, no. You haven’t.” She’d then ask them “Are you sure you’re feeling well? Do you wish to continue?” They’d nod assent, that they did wish to continue, and then she’d laugh again and continue with the tour, and they would be reassured.
But not entirely.
They’d still be nervous that something was wrong.
Helen continues with the tour, not a hair out of place, opening all the cupboards and doors and drawers with a practiced repetition, perfectly closing them so that the noise was not too loud nor too quiet, but the most normal sound possible. Then one sounds different. A semitone flat or sharp, the guests wouldn’t know, but they’d know that it was wrong, that it wasn’t normal. Then they’d notice more. Cupboard doors not sitting correctly on their hinges, not closing properly, all the handles being a shade off from each other. Fridge shelves being slightly tilted, so that anything placed on them would slant towards the right and fall, the drawers not opening fully, the light being either slightly too bright or slightly too dim. Light fixtures that were perpetually slightly loose, but were unable to be tightened in any way, with lights that were all different makes and kinds. When asked about this, Helen would just smile and shake her head,
“No, no, no. I don’t see any of that, it looks perfect. Are you sure you’re feeling well? Do you wish to continue?” The buyers would find themselves nodding yes, giving the estate agent reason to continue, when they internally wanted nothing more than to stop. The one thing that Helen acknowledged was the yellow door.
When it appeared, it was the thing that looked most out of place. Just a bright yellow eye-sore on the wall in the middle of a hallway, with a bronze handle, and multicoloured light seeming to spill out of the sides of and underneath it. The light seemed to spiral and fluctuate, never quite settling on a decided hue. When Helen saw this, she smiled even wider - which the buyers didn’t think was possible. To them, this was the most normal looking thing of the whole house. It was just a door. It was the right way up, with the correct number of hinges and on the correct side. It didn’t matter that it was yellow, or that it was, to an external observer, the strangest thing in the house. It was normal.
They asked to go inside. She obliged, pulling the door open with the air of a chauffeur and a slight bow. It creaked as it opened slowly.
Inside, a mess of spiralling colours and fabrics greeted them, overwhelming the brain. As the poor buyers realised what was happening, they each felt a hand on the small of their backs, giving them a small push inside. Before the door closed, they turned around, and saw Helen. She was still smiling widely, her eyes glinting, small spirals in her irises. But her hands. Oh, her hands. The fingers were long and sharp, sharp enough to draw blood if she wished. They were - undoubtedly - wrong. She was wrong. How had they not noticed?
Before they could ruminate on this any further, they heard the door shut with a click behind them. And then it was gone. What had they done? What could they do now? Best look around, try to find an exit. There had to be one. And so they set off, deeper into the corridors that stretched out in front of them, an identical multi-coloured hellscape of endless choices.
At the front of the house, Helen opened the door to a new set of prospective buyers, greeting them with “Do you wish to come in?”
And she would begin again.