Normally, after a person walked into an apartment through its front door they would usually end up in the hallway of the lowest floor, but for Elmer it was different. He was in an empty space, a small room that was home to anyone but himself.
The walls were cracked and worn out, and as well the beams which were spread out across the ceiling. It almost seemed as though the wooden structures would come crumbling down any second, and it gave that feeling so much that it would have made Elmer fear standing beneath it if he was not just here in the spirit.
This is a very bad place to live in, thankfully it's empty… But if that's the case, then what am I doing here…? Did the divination go wrong and I was led to another place…? Or am I to be expecting another supernatural door to suddenly come open…? Ah, I really don't have the time for all these… Why's a divination taking such roundabout processes to show me what I seek…?
All of a sudden, as Elmer was still arranging his confused thoughts, hushed words flew into his ears. They were each quietly becoming clearer though—far more clearer than the indistinct chatters the streets below had offered him.
He let his eyebrows furrow and his eyes wander across the room. Then, the unhurried appearance of figures he had believed to be alien to this space a second ago slowly came into his sight.
First, to his right at the end of the room, emerged the view of a two-layered bunk frame along with shabby beds. Next was a table filled with match sticks and their boxes, and following them up were two chairs diagonal to the table as well as two children who were seated upon them.
A boy and a girl they were, both very young, perhaps of the ages between six to ten, and they looked frail and underfed and weak. But despite their exhausted countenance they still went on diligently with filling up the match boxes with their sticks while exchanging a bit of small talk between themselves.
"What do you think we'll get to eat tonight, Anna, if we sell all these?" Elmer heard the boy's voice first, calm and quiet. He coughed immediately after his talk.
"If?" The girl had a stronger tone than the boy's, but her's as well was quiet. "We have to sell all these, Olly. And we can't spend all the money on food, you know. We'll just get bread like we usually do. We also need to save up money for Sunday's offering. More reasons to not think too much about food."
Elmer's face squeezed at her words without delay.
Sunday's offering…? Really…? You guys are barely getting by, you look like you'll drop dead any moment, and can you see the state of where you're living…? Why would you even be thinking about Sunday's offering as you are…?
Elmer could not see the reasoning.
He would have loved to talk to them, tell them to just get the food they wanted to eat and not bother about offering their hard earned money up to Chronos, the God who was already getting enough from the bribes he was receiving.
But he was here as a spectator.
He could not interact with this world as his real self was still at Tooth and Nails, so he just watched, listening to the words of the children as he grew to have an understanding of what exactly was happening here.
Suddenly, Olly coughed harder and mistakenly spilled a few of the matchsticks on the table onto the floor. He instantly jumped down from his chair to gather it up, and it was then that a tone gentle but cautioning appeared, along with the figure of the person who owned it.
"Be careful, Olly. We can't lose even a stick."
Elmer saw him then, the boy in dungaree.
There was no exact way to find out if he was really the one he sought out since he'd seen no features on that night, but he chose to believe the results of his divination.
The boy looked to be in his sixteens. He had rough untrimmed blonde hair with narrow eyes smeared by exhaustion, and unlike the children he had little to no brightness on his face.
Further ahead of him where he was crouched with a wooden bowl in one hand and an outstretched spoon in the other, materialized another figure.
This time it was the one of a man, pale and thinned so much that his bones were showing through his oversized singlet.
He was seated on a chair just before the window of the room, his arms gently placed on its rest, while the lower part of his body ended where his knees were. He had no legs.
A sudden heavy feeling stormed Elmer's stomach at the sight, causing his breathing to seize for a moment. But soon after, he settled down with a momentary pinch of his eyes and a deep exhale.
For two weeks he had kept that bag of money away from the boy—from a kid who was burdened with such huge responsibilities and living in such a manner.
Elmer could not even begin to imagine what the boy and these children had had to go through just because of his decision.
Yes, the boy had probably stolen that money, but Elmer could not fault his resolution for having taken such an action. He would have done the same as well.
And now seeing the boy's condition and also the one of where he was living, Elmer had a bit of guilt tugging at him.
What if the ceiling had come crashing down on them in those two weeks he'd been with the money? He would have been responsible for their deaths, the deaths of three children who were barely getting by and somewhat situated in a worse condition than he was.
Their state of living was far too cruel, it reminded him of the bread-boy he'd met some time ago. If he was given a chance to cross paths with that child one more time he'd really try to be of help.
Though, right now he had the opportunity to siphon away the suffering of these children by simply giving back the bag of money. And it was what he had already set his mind to do. That was his next course of action.
Only, how was he going to sever this—
Out of the blue, and canceling his thoughts, the room abruptly stretched out in an instant as though it was sliding further away from Elmer, and it took its inhabitants along with it.
Their voices also disappeared at once even though he could still see their figures way down away from him.
The unexpected sensation that had come from this sudden incident left Elmer disconnected from the scenery, and filled him with a sense of imbalance and unease with an inability to put his brain to work.
He was almost upon falling down on his buttocks as he was unable to find his footing, but it was then that thick wisps of smoke blew out from the ground and engulfed him.
They filled up his nose gradually, although quickly as well, until he was forced to shut his eyes due to the suffocation that had befallen him.
But then, just as they had appeared, the sensations vanished.
Elmer opened his eyes instantly with pacing breaths, and his eyes immediately caught sight of what little wax remained of the red candles he had lit for the ritual.
What in the—
He quickly jumped to his feet and rushed to the window to drag away the makeshift curtain he had put over it.
The tender light of day that spilled in as a result of his actions did little to worsen his eye problem, seeing as he quickly adjusted to it, though they did a lot to calm him down.
Due to how much wax the candles had burnt he had thought he'd spent a very long time in the divination world, but the sky now told him otherwise, and that was good.
He could not even begin to imagine the sort of fit he would have thrown if it had become night. It would have definitely not been a good one.
Elmer slowly shuffled back to his table and brought his view onto the once pristine white paper to have now taken on the color of black, rumpled and unusable.
Well, the supernatural would obviously never let me use such expendable materials more than once…
He shrugged then put off the rest of the candles before uprooting them and dumping them, along with the paper, in the bin he had made from paper bags to the edge of his room beside the door.
After he was done with that, he went ahead to pick up the bag of money and patted it.
"Let's go change some lives, shall we?"