My Fake Death Was The Punchline To His Cruel Joke Chapter 32
After the compensation was paid, I didn’t immediately expand the studio.
Instead, I went back to the women’s shelter I had designed.
The director gave me a tour of the now-occupied space.
Every door locked from the inside.
The emergency buttons were discreetly placed by each bed.
The exit signs glowed a soft, reassuring green in the dimly lit hallways.
One of the residents recognized me.
She hovered in her doorway, her voice quiet. “Did you… did you design all this?”
“I did.”
“Why are there exit signs behind the wardrobes?”
I thought of test seventeen, of being locked on that rain-slicked terrace.
The glass door to safety had been right there, but no matter how hard I pounded, no one came.
“Because when you’re terrified,” I said, “it’s easy to forget which way to run.”
She nodded, as if that made perfect sense.
Before I left, she pressed a folded piece of paper into my hand.
It was a child’s drawing of a small house.
The front door was wide open.