“Child! Stop there! Let me read your palm!”

Houses lined the road which had a long crack running down the center with several branches splintering off onto the sidewalk. The road had four long light gray stripes running down it in contrast to the rest of the dark road. The strips ran along the road while each one faded into the black that seemed to suck everything in save for the small plastic chips. The cracks that ran through the strips were like a bolt of lightning through a dark and stormy sky- if the lightning was black and the dark sky was white. Each crack opened into a dark chasm that promised that if you fell in, you’d never hit bottom.

The sidewalks too, had cracks running through it as it exposed the mixture of plastic inside used to fill up space and cement used to hold it together. The colorful mixture had all colors, most notably hot pink, orange, purple and green. Under the bright sun however, each color was lightened such that the hot pink became only a light pink and so on. Small bits of cement were attached to the plastic still, hanging onto the crevices in the pieces of plastic. Scattered throughout were smooth holes formed from the air that hadn’t been able to escape while the concrete mixture dried. The cement itself was a light grey that seemed to match the clouds above that began to roll in.

What lay beyond the sidewalk was a perfectly green lawn, with blades of grass that hid the soil underneath. The soil itself was just as colorful as the sidewalk outside, except for the fact that the sidewalk had a thin layer of cement covering it, hiding the colors beneath. In this manner, the lawn was also like the sidewalk in the sense that the plastic grass, all uniform, formed a dense carpet which hid the bits of plastic that had fused to the rich dark brown below. Each blade of plastic grass was bent at the middle and although they all varied in angle, the angles were always obtuse.

The house towered above the roads filled with cracks down below. Really? No, just a simple two story house. The front looked immaculate with its beautiful and flawless lawn. The sidings on the wall were also a deep mahogany and matched the texture as well. Each of the houses here all varied in color, but they all shared the color of being wood colored. Occasional rectangular openings dotted the wall at an even height. The openings consisted of two squared stacked on one another. The very bottom of the lower square reached waist height and was extended out by a small platform on which rested a reddish brown pot and a flower sticking out of the same material the lawn had. The flower was purple with five petals with several thick veins of white running through each petal as if the feather of a swan was laid upon each purple petal. The lower square of the window consisted of two layers. One of a thin wire net that prevented all but wind and water from entering and a second layer of glass that prevented what the first layer couldn’t. The upper square had two perpendicular rods -- both vertical and horizontal, not diagonal -- embedded in it, supporting the single layer of glass. The window frame was a simple thin rectangular frame with a color that matched the surrounding colors. What made it different however was that the pieces were thinly cut and were flat against the wall, unlike each panel of the siding which slanted downwards and outwards to better let the rain flow off while not wearing away at the wall itself.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

To the left of the house was a driveway which joined the road perfectly as if it was just an extension of the road. The driveway only extended in until it lined up with the back of the house. Looming above the driveway was the entire side of the house which was rarely seen by passersby. The thin layer of plastic that was covered by the actual color of each panel of the siding began peeling off, revealing the multicolored plastic that had just been pressed together at random. The thin layer itself had begun falling off in chips, leaving behind small holes that looked like a spray of bullets had gone into the house. The contrast to the brown wood color by the kaleidoscope of plastic that was formed by simply gathering random pieces of plastic, chopping them up into fine pellets and finally blasting them at a temperature to fuse them together. The thin layer of plastic was attached through simply blowtorching the wood, leaving a few black marks where the torch had stayed for too long, but at other points, pockets of air formed because they had not been properly melted onto the siding panels. Slowly, these pockets of air burst under the expansion of air under the sun and contraction in the cold night, revealing the chaos of colors that were the panels underneath.

Obviously, the side was neglected as not many people even cared to look over the tall fence at the side of the wall. The short opening however, gave little opportunity to take note of all the flaws on the side and they would’ve only observed the front, which was well maintained with repeated layers of plastic torched on.

Blocking the lower half of the house which consisted of the door and pathway leading up to the door and cutting in right next to the driveway was a tall fence with pure white boards that were upright. The upper half of the house could only be seen on the other side of the road. The fence however, stood taller than an ordinary man, and blocked observation of the house, but the fence contained its own history. It may have looked like an ordinary white fence, but a closer observation revealed that each vertical fence board had expanded out sideways to close off the gaps that normally existed in a fence, but had left random gaps scattered along. As a result of this stretching however, there were several indents into each board scattered about that were almost imperceptible.

The fence actually had several light stains that were hard to see from a distance -- for example, the light yellow stain that disappeared entirely under the bright sun. Under a black light however, the entire fence would light up like paint had been splashed across the entire fence in all sorts of patterns. A child’s mind is delightful and they drew all sorts of shapes from simple words that cursed the owner to satanic ritual symbols. One such symbol however, was messily drawn at first but was missing the entire symbol. Where the symbol should’ve been, there was a dark abyss… Or just that the child drew the symbol in paint before pissing on it and the owner erased the paint afterwards.