Chapter Two – The Professor and the Machine
The door creaked as it swung slowly open, showing a kitchen in vast disarray. Dirty dishes sat in the murky water in the sink as a small leak from the faucet drip-drip-dripped into the pool. The door to a small closet-sized pantry stood partly ajar. Flies buzzed around what looked like a small chicken dinner still on the dining table, drumsticks spread upward with small dried meat still on them. The twins gingerly stepped into the filthy room.
“See, I told you he would be dead,” Alberto whispered into the gloomy mess. “No way he would let it get this dirty – just like the yard.”
“Actually, I think the yard looked better,” Rosie replied distastefully as she surveyed the horror around her. “You know, Mom always says the kitchen should be the cleanest room in the whole house.”
Alberto snorted, “If that’s true here, I don’t think I want to see the rest.”
The twins slowly walked around the kitchen area, neither one really prepared to venture further. The kitchen seemed both very familiar and completely strange at the same time. The same oak cabinets, the Maytag refrigerator, and the door to the pantry were all in the same places as in their home and the homes of several of their friends in the neighborhood. “The paint is different,” Alberto remarked, “and our house smells much better, too. What in the world is that stench? Boiled cabbage flavored with skunk?”
The room was silent except for their soft footfalls and the clicking of an archaic clock on the wall, which looked like a cartoon cat whose eyes and tail flicked back and forth with the ticking of the second hand. Rosie thought she had seen one just like it in some old movie, but couldn’t remember which one. As they crept closer to the doorway leading to the rest of the house, they heard more and more ticking clocks, and even a few soft alarms ringing, presumably from the upstairs bedrooms.
“You first.”
Rosie shook her head vehemently. “No, you go first. It was your idea to come inside anyway. You wanted to explore, not me.”
“I just thought, … you know, … ‘Ladies first.’” Alberto smiled mischeviously.
“Last time you let me go first on anything, I found a ‘Kick Me’ sign on my back and chewing gum in my hair. No thanks.”
“That was such a long time ago. I’ve grown since then.”
“That was only this past summer. The only growing you’ve done since then was that fuzz you keep trying to call a mustache.”
“Now just wait a minute!” Alberto’s voice was getting louder, and Rosie could tell she struck a nerve. “You’re the one who –“
The sound of a large piece of metal clattering against a hard surface, maybe concrete, interrupted their squabble. They looked at each other, eyes widening to the size of the creepy eyes on the cat clock still ticking away. They both turned to run for the door still opening to the overgrown back yard, but rammed into each other instead, and fell against the small dining table hard enough to make the table legs stutter loudly across the floor and the plate with the dessicated chicken crash to the floor.
“Who’s there!” bellowed a loud, very angry voice. Heavy footsteps pounded on wooden steps, coming closer.
“In there!” Rosie shoved her brother to the open pantry door. They scrambled into the tiny dark space and pulled the door nearly shut behind them just as the door to the kitchen flew open.
