The Storage Space was appalled, simply appalled. It had heard, and had tried to avoid hearing, a lot of voices in its day:
Her, the most precious of all, the one the ghost of Edmund would forever mourn, the one Amelia was descended from.
And the lovely old adjoining tea room that was no more. Yet even still it somehow managed to linger, grieving for the sensual yin and yang in the kaleidoscopic, ever-changing mix of lemon and sugar spilled across its porous old floors.
Le Grand Rat…
That Frank.
And, of those still living, the lovely Karen who loved that Frank.
And, going back to the days of grand old theatre, that firefighter who’d staggered in that awful night The Brooklyn Theatre burned, already burnt so badly he couldn’t survive, whose body beneath a grand old staircase was never discovered…and never removed.
But what was this new voice, so weak and small? Yet with the cadence of Shakespeare, pleading for another chance to fret and strut another hour upon the stage? Clinging, desperately clinging…to what?
A huge, bloody rope attached to its teeny belly, connecting to something liver-like attached to a living, pulsing wall that kept quivering with insane laughter and bleeding…partially separated now from that wall…the blood spilling out to puddle on the floor of the poor, long-suffering Storage Space.
The Storage Space heard. The Storage Space knew. This new voice, so weak and small? With her feeble kicking unheeded? It was none other. It was her.
