Kristina Marie Darling & John Gallaher

THERE WAS NOTHING STRANGE ABOUT THE EXTRA ROOM


Still you seemed startled when I told you about it, as though someone had placed a cold
hand on your wrist.  

I tried to explain that it was only for certain occasions, like an ice storm.  Or, if the need for
silence ever arose in the middle of a dinner party.  Everyone else on our street had already
furnished theirs, and lined each of the drawers with silk.  

Even now, you don't trust me.  Here, let me unlock the cabinets and show you the silver. 
The pierced tablespoons are so real, you'd never know they're a distraction.

DRIVE-THRU AMERICANA WITH THE CHATTY GHOSTS


You use it like a hammer.  


And if we make it to New Orleans, we can stay in a haunted mansion, where the victims of
criminal Delphine LaLaurie are said to still scream and wail at night.  We can stay there if we
want.  There’s a little yard and gift shop.  


Things may yet turn out happy.

INSIDE A HAUNTED MANSION, A DIMLY LIT CORRIDOR IS USUALLY THE
FIRST THING YOU'LL SEE


Actually, I used it more like an axe.  

When we drove through New Orleans, you mentioned the abandoned house, but you didn't
realize I'd already reserved us rooms.  At first, it looked like everything was cordoned off: 
the marble staircase, the anteroom, even the lavishly decorated parlor we'd heard so much
about.  

It goes without saying there were a few more things you didn't know.  Because it only
seemed like we were traveling, always en route to some other coast.  Really, we had just
arrived, only you had no idea as you stood there in the elevator with all of your things.  

And there's a reason the rooms were locked.  But before I get to that, let me show you the
where they keep the food.  I have a feeling that you're afraid to ask.

CHAPTER TWO


The past reveals itself as a series of rooms opening inside a single room. At first, it looks like
something we can navigate, even though you misplaced the champagne flutes on the night of
the dinner party.

But this was before a seemingly endless series of housefires.  Most of the guests had already
commented on the baroque style of the architecture, its magnificent impracticality. Soon the
dark green curtains are smoldering beside a beveled mirror, the broken statuettes.  

This is always the problem with large houses.  No, this is the problem with guests, the way
they find their way into the wine cellar you forgot you ever built.  

Now the sound of footsteps, a key turning in the lock--



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Kristina Marie Darling & John Gallaher  were born in Portland and Tulsa. Their collaborations appear in OmniVerse, Requited, diode, and elsewhere. They currently live and write in rural Missouri while also taking frequent trips on the bullet train from Paris to Agen. ­­