Kiss of A Titan

I didn't take notice of the fact that there was a huge chandelier dangling down from the ceiling earlier when I walked in with the bags, even Aunt still outside at the front porch did not earlier see the dusty objects with many electric bulbs missing from the erected places fixed on the apparatus meant to be luminescent with the aid of electricity which was absent from the entire house and only the sunlight radiating into the house was the only source of light for us to see the concealed household items clearly.

After I got to where Tom stood looking at every corner of the house, I wearily placed the bags near the other ones and sat on mine to get a bit of rest from rolling the bags towards the staircase which was a bit far off from the door that I left ajar for the wind to come.

From there, I started exploring where we would be spending the night with my eyes roaming around from every covered piece of furniture right up to the old framed photographs of the family that once owned the mansion, which was still intact where it was hung on the walls but covered with dust. There was also a fireplace at the far edge of the sitting room in between two of the windows where the transparent curtain concealed with their opaque fabric but I was disappointed to find out that it was completely empty without any dry wood or coal present inside it.

Tom too had his own opinion of how the house looked but his thoughts were quite different from mine, in a confused opposite sort of way. He started his pessimism about the the outlook of everything else we could find in the living room which was concealed by criticizing "This house looks bizarre and old fashioned. Mom probably chose a wrong taste for a house", "No, she didn't. She picked a good one beyond my expectations", "It sucks, Rosalie. I really don't see what so nice about this whole place Apart from the chandelier, the rest sucks", "You are peculiar little critic", "I guess I am but that won't change my opinion about how this house stinks", "Leave it up to the adults to decide", "Oh, yeah, I'm sure the other parts of the house are far worse than this on ", "Tom, it'll be best if aunt doesn't hear that from you", "I believe mom won't be as thrilled as you are about this old house when she enters and see the place full of dust", "Don't be a pain in the butt", "I'm not, Rosalie. I've seen better apartment's designs in Hawaii and Florida than this one", "Don't keep babbling nonsense. You haven't been there not even once so how come you have seen the houses there", "On TV commercials ", "And you think they are the best compared to this one aunt chose herself?", "Of course. If it were up to me, I would have persuaded mom not to take us here to a house that smells like a cabin in the woods", "You are just a weird kid", "I've gotten used to being a weirdo. Mom feels I act too much like a grownup which some narrow-minded people think is abnormal for a seven year old kid like me", "Not just that but you talk like one and sometimes act immature", I replied, folding my hands.

"That's the way I am and everyone has to deal with it", "Alright if you say so. I wanna check out the other rooms to see if you were right about the whole house being old and all. You wanna come?", "I'm in", "Good but first, go check if aunt has stopped making her phone call", Tom nodded and trot to the doorstep. He took a brief peek outside and came back quickly without taking much time at the veranda like I had thought he would.

"She's still on the phone", "Okay let's check out the rooms in the house before aunt could find out we are gone", "Sounds great, wait a minute, where do you suggest we go first?", "Um...the attic will be a good place to start", "There's an attic?" he questioned.

"Yes, there is upstairs. Didn't you see it earlier when aunt drove us in?", "Nope"

"That's because you were sobbing like a wimp close to me at the back seat", "I ain't no wimp!" he yelled at me sharply.

"Keep it down or else you'll wake Nora up", I warned and he quickly refrained himself from getting angry which he knew would sabotage the plan to scour the rooms in the colossal house. He loathed Nora whenever she pestered him and he didn't want her to be around him at this point where he could do what he wanted without her being nosy in his endeavor.

I knew at once he would keep his mouth shut for he loved it when he had his free time away from her and it was at this time when he didn't have to get into a warring argument with his little sister because they often fight over every trivial issue that arises between them.

Both of us peered at Nora hoping that she wasn't going to wake up anytime soon after we had gone upstairs without aunt interfering in our little adventure around the house.

"I hope she didn't get to wake up because of me", he whispered looking over at the couch where he could barely see her little chubby stature lying fast asleep on the couch aloof from where we were at the foot of the stairs that ran upwards. "She didn't hear you. Let's go before aunt catches us", "I'll follow behind you", he replied, still looking at the couch while I stood up from where I was and turned to face the other direction leading upstairs where I already knew was the only way to get to the attic.

I intently led the way as Tom and I climbed the spiral stairs to the other rooms upstairs and we saw frames pictures of painted images by the side of the wall now old and worn out after being abandoned for a long period of time as well as the lampshades that were too corroded to retain its glossy look. It was only after we arrived upstairs that we discovered that there were quite a few more rooms in the second floor than the three rooms downstairs including the sitting room where we had left our bags to take a survey of every nook and cranny in the apartment.

I wasn't sure of the right way to get to the attic since we met two opposite corridors with each having its own number of rooms when we arrived at the end of the stairs and I was beginning to feel discouraged even when we had not ventured yet into the lengthy hallways separated on two sides by another series of stairs each with its own handrail at both ends but shorter than the main staircase whence Tommy accompanied by me had difficulty in climbing to summit.

Tom felt confused at that point just like I was and things were beginning to feel undesirably uncomfortable where we stood still trying to figure out where to go next.

"Rosalie, I thought you said the stairs leads directly to the attic", "Um..I thought wrong", "Then are we going this way or that way?", "I'm not sure which way to take but this does not feel right anymore", I said against all odds of not revealing my fears to the young boy.

"Come on, you look scared", "Me? I....I ain't scared, who gave you that silly idea that I am afraid to go any further?" I inquired trying to brighten my countenance with a false laughter that was less convincing.

"No one did. It's just a thought of how your face had turned pale since we got here", "My face? I'm fine. I'm just a little tired that's all", "I can see that. Your shoes are pretty tight", he pointed out and I willingly saw that the loafers really did occupy a whole portion of my two small feet but that wasn't the main reason why I couldn't find the confidence to go further.

There was this intuition that something airy was out there in the both of sides of the rooms upstairs for they were locked and arrayed in a particular way that the sunlight in this part of the house was very dull to be exact in a sort of way that made it a bit spooky and ominous to walk in alone.

Thankfully, Tom was with me and I didn't want him to get even a clue that I was indeed freaking out going forward when in fact it was my own idea of searching the rooms before aunt comes back into the house just to see how things looked like and from my own perspective at that moment, we had seen enough of the fairly dark corridors lacking intense sunshine.

Though I didn't want to recant my decision to go to the attic, I wasn't ready to commit myself to taking one of the corridors without being sure if the right corridor will lead us straight to where we want to go.

Tom suddenly tugged on my hand when he found out that I was still reluctant to lead him forward where he had accepted to go. He is a smartly adventurous kid whose round eyes beamed with no fear at me from where he looked at me below beside me whilst I, from above even when he saw the same cloudy outlook on the second floor.

"Something wrong, Rosalie?" he questioned when he noticed that I hesitated.

"Uh...no, not...at all", I stuttered feeling the confidence dropping every passing minute.

"Then we should get going before aunt catches us. You know better than I do that she would scold me much if I am caught with you here standing like this", he responded in persuasion which seems to be working and for that, it instilled some amount of courage into my mind and gave me impetus to stick to my earlier decision to explore the entire interior parts of the house even before aunt could get back.

"Okay, I've heard you. We'll take the left but we'll have to be snappy", "I'm with you all the way", "Then let's go. We have wasted much time as it is", I said and went ahead, towards the left hallway with Tom walking beside me while his eyes kept roaming around the corridors like I did looking for something that wasn't there.

"I'm sure these rooms are meant to be our bedrooms", "Most likely they are."