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Ragatha had gotten into an argument with her mom a few days prior and had been getting the silent treatment ever since.
It was probably some stupid little thing, she couldn’t even remember it. Surely it was just another one of her mother’s long lists of expectations and Ragatha had to have done immeasurably wrong that day. It was as if she wasn’t a 30 year old grown woman but someone who was a child, stuck under their mother’s thumb for the rest of time. Ragatha craves the day she no longer feels the crack in her heart where her mother’s approval should be. instead she feels the thick stake shoved into her chest that bores deeper each time she sees the distaste in the eyes of her own mother. How the one person she is meant to rely on for comfort and warmth - the one person who is supposed to hold her hand and guide her through the big scary world. Not just hold it against her every time she breathes.
Breathing.
She needed to do some deep breathing before she commits to getting out of the car and being a presentable human being today. Breathing and grounding herself. Everything is going to be fine. Today you will score a great deal on this building, and you will have enough for a first and last payment on that apartment downtown! The one with the cute circle window in the bathroom. Eyes on the window, you got this girl.
Upon first glance, the office building seemed smaller than she remembered. Everything seems bigger in the sunlight when it hurts too much to look up for too long - that was a good line, she would have to remember that if the client mentions the size.
She unlocked her back trunk with a quiet pop and pulled out a broom. If she wanted to make the front area look appealing, she had to start now. If the state of the front walkway is this dirty and nasty, who knows what the inside would look too. Surely there will be time to tidy later, she had to complete the walkthrough first - what if there was an infestation? That would certainly be terrible, she would have to postpone the showing… or just hide the signs of infestation until the client left?
There is probably nothing inside anyways. It all seemed really tightly locked up...
Ragatha grabbed the front door handle only to let go just as fast with a slight hiss. Of course the metal would be hot after baking in the sun, this is why her mother calls her ditzy and absentminded. A long and rugged sigh left her nose and she used the sleeve of her suit jacket as protection to open the hot handle.
After the doors closed behind her, she realized the whole floor was truly dark and empty.
With the windows boarded up the sunlight wasn’t coming through. There wasn’t even any loose wires or garbage, no signs of trespassing or squatters either… With a building that had been abandoned for this long there’s usually always signs of unruly teenagers breaking in to burn garbage and spray paint on the walls.
The knot in Ragatha’s stomach started to wind tighter and tighter the further up the stairs she walked. The air felt wrong, like she had walked onto the set of a horror movie and wouldn’t realize it until she had a knife sticking out of her forehead. Despite her own hesitation and gut instinct to run like hell, she pushed past the fire door on the top level of the building.
The top level seemed more alike an abandoned building than the rest of the empty floors. This one was full of abandoned cubicles, desks with chairs and the occasional pen that was completely bare of any logo or design. Just a bunch blank ballpoint pens thrown about the room like someone haphazardly tossed a box of them into the air.
The furthest wall from the door sat another door, the same shade of firetruck red but blank.
The final part of her walk through and then she can get back to sweeping up decaying leaves off the front walkway, and more importantly she can get the hell out of this building.
She crossed the room quickly, moving with more and more urgency as the feeling that someone was watching her grew more intense. By the time she got to the door, the hairs on her arms were standing straight up and the back of her blouse was starting to stick to her back with sweat. Her hand grasped the doorknob and it felt warm, not cold like everything else in this building - in fact the whole building was chilly despite it being the height of summer and 35 degrees outside. But not the doorknob, the knob felt as warm as the metal handles from outside, being cooked by the morning sun. Not only was Ragatha’s gut practically doing flips, her mind was blaring alarm bells.
Every single thing about this entire place screamed bad news and she wanted to get out as fast as possible.
Remember the bathroom window. It’s just a doorknob, maybe there was sun hitting it earlier and now it’s moved. There are scientific reasons behind all of this. She turned the warm knob open.
The room was just as dark and damp-smelling as the rest of the building. It had the same grey-brown carpeted floor that looked matted with dust. Atop this carpet sat a wooden, regal-looking desk. Something her dad would have had in his study before he passed away and her mom sold all his belongings. It had golden accents on the corners and drawer handles and it almost looked pristine, like the dust hadn’t touched any part of it, not even the bottom where it sat against the dust-ridden carpet. The varnish on the wood seemed to shine brighter than any other wood piece she had seen, even though there was no light - save for Ragatha’s phone flashlight.
The wooden desk was absolutely gorgeous, so it made no sense for some hunk of computer junk to be sitting on top of it. The computer looked like it had absorbed every single piece of dirt in the entire world. It was falling apart at the seems, and was just downright ugly. Boxy and brown and textured with something awful. There was something serene about this room, Ragatha felt the most at peace she's been in years. She was feeling so overwhelmed and stressed with everything for so long and the fight with her mother made her just crumble to pieces - she’s been out of the house for days, either sleeping in her car or when her back started aching. She only just found a motel that didn’t have any mentions of bugs in the reviews.
After everything, feeling so at peace was like a weight off her shoulders. So much so that she stumbled, and found herself falling into a chair. She slumped forwards, elbows on the desk and hands against her forehead. She most likely only had less than an hour left before the buyer shows up and she’s at least got to make it look like she tried to clean up in here.
When Ragatha put her hands on the desk to put herself up, she noticed the monitor of the computer turned on. Which definitely shouldn’t be happening, this building has been disconnected to any power for years. But despite her better judgement, she taps the keyboard and attempts to bypass the password, only there is no prompt to enter a password, only a small window that says to put on the VR headset to activate the program.
She’s never really played video games ever…it’s hard when you’re homeschooled and can’t really ever go out to make friends. Not that she never wanted to! She’s seen some videos online of people playing games and they seem so much fun sometimes, just her mother would never approve.
But she’s not here right now, and I can do whatever I want.
The knot in her stomach unfurled into a feeling of unabashed excitement, her hands almost even starting to shake as she gripped the headset. Ragatha was afraid it would crumble into dust, or disappear like a hologram and this would all just be another cruel test by her mother to prove she can’t do anything right. Anger was started to build inside of her, it felt like waves splashing higher and higher until she felt bile in the back of her throat. Screw my mom, and screw everyone else.
Ragatha gripped the headset tighter and fastened it against her head. Her stomach swooped with nausea as the black darkness that temporarily engulfed her eyes was now lit up with bright colours that made her mind swim. The graphics were moving faster than any animated movie she had seen.
There was music playing from a distance and it was getting louder the more she saw red get bigger and bigger until she was thrown against something hard.
When she hit the ground, she expected to land with a hard thud but instead she landed gently as if she was on a plush mattress and there was a loud voice in her ears.