The Riddle of the Room

Day 1

Roger held the note tightly in his shaking hand. How DARE she?! This was completely unacceptable. The moment he got out of here, he was going to have this woman arrested. For life. What a disgusting person.

He stood up, ripping the note in half. The nerve of some people these days. He looked around the room for a trash can.

As his eyes scanned the room, they took in details he hadn't noticed from the floor. The walls weren't completed covered with posters--just mostly. And half of them weren't even posters, but pictures, and some were drawings or paintings. Not that he cared.

All the furniture was white painted wood, as if it had come in a set. The bed, the desk, the bookshelf, the dresser, the side table. That was all. There wasn't room for much else. It wasn't a small room per se, but it wasn't big. It was smaller than his office, but then again, he had a sizable office.

He needed to get back to his office.

He found the trash can. It was simple, looking rather like a wicker basket, painted in different colors. It looked hand painted. He wrinkled his nose in disgust. He was much in favor of a sleek and shiny black one.

He sighed, turning back to the room. He might as well get started. He began to think of the fastest way he could get this done. He walked over to the pictures, taped up on the wall like a collage. Maybe he would recognize someone in the pictures.

He scanned over them quickly. It was mostly images of high school girls. He frowned. He hadn't expected this person to be in high school. The frivolities of the room would suggest someone much younger. He glanced at the rumpled bedspread. It was covered in flowers. He raised an eyebrow. He thought high school girls were more practical than this. Ah well.

He didn't recognize anyone in the pictures. He frowned. The person in the most pictures was a girl with raven black hair and bangs that covered most of her face. But she always wore dark clothing and looked a bit uncomfortable in the face of a camera. He looked at the flower covered bedspread and back to the girl. No, this wasn't her room.

He sighed as he realized that it was entirely possible the girl wasn't in any of these pictures at all; someone has to hold a camera. He growled in frustration. He didn't have time for this.

He walked around the room once, scanning for anything that suggested a name. He found a few things--a certificate of achievement, a notebook, some homework assignments left lying on her desk--but where the name should have been, there was a blank space. His eyes narrowed. That old woman had done something. Some form of magic.

He stopped and blinked as he realized the thoughts going through his own head. Had he just suggested that someone had performed magic? He didn't believe in magic. Yet there was no other explanation. He ran through the facts again, only to arrive at the same conclusion--magic.

He wasn't sure what to do.

He spent the next 2 hours looking at the various posters and pictures on the wall. He hadn't expected it to take two hours, but it did. He skipped over most of the hand drawn pictures, because they seemed to be drawn by different people--perhaps her friends. He decided to dwell on the posters, to see if any of them were signed with the girl's name.

There were so many posters. He didn't recognize half of them. Most were of musicals or dance shows, the ones where the girls stood on their toes. He had forgotten the word until he saw it on the "Nutcracker Ballet" poster. Ballet. He had never seen one before.

There was an entire section of wall dedicated to these ballet posters. There were five big ones, the "Nutcracker", "Sleeping Beauty", "Cinderella", "Dracula", and "Firebird". He hadn't even known there were that many ballets. He thought "Sleeping Beauty" and "Cinderella" were Disney movies.

In between the posters were smaller posters, the edges rough as if they had been torn. Playbill covers, perhaps? He knew what a playbill was. He saw at least seven "Nutcracker", three "Cinderella" and an assortment of others that weren't on a big poster. Many of them simply said fall or spring "Showcase".

At the end of the two hours, he sat down on the bed in frustration. It had been a harrowing day, and he deserved to rest. He slid off his shoes and laid on top of the girl's bed, which was far too soft, but he certainly wasn't sleeping on the floor.

And with that thought in mind, and still no ideas as to whose room it could be, he drifted off to sleep.