A Question of

I'm sitting in a long, low room that is dark, inside a dark mansion with brown walls located in a place that I can only describe as resembling North Carolina. The bad part of North Carolina. And a third person has just barged noisily into this room.

Alarmed, I stand bolt upright. Someone knocks my chair down. An empty wrapper rolls across the floor, and I stoop to pick it up. A shadow engulfs me on the way down. In the darkness, I vaguely make out beads, tattered silk, and a pale, beautiful face.

Hope twitters into my head, then the sharp prick of a new idea, but the rest of my head is so far away, it won't be here for some time.