The house was a one-story bungalow with drab gray siding and a massive front porch. The lack of ambient light that night lent a dismally foreboding air to the house, which was only intensified by the front porch itself. The furniture looked as if it had come straight out of a Victorian mansion, and the colors were massively distorted by the yellow and red floodlights.

Then there was the window.

The window was fairly large, four feet by seven. The crepe-paper curtains behind it were a startling, gut-twisting hue somewhere in the pink/purple/mauve regime and were backlit, giving them a fuzzy, surreal feel. The window itself had shelves upon shelves of various children’s dolls mounted in front.

A transient had walked to this house from the local strip mall and plopped himself down onto the patio furniture when the homeowner stepped out. She looked like a four-year-old in the body of a twenty-year-old; the pigtails, colorful outfit, the doll-like makeup…

There were words. Heated words.

Grave words.