A Glimpse of Home

/ooc this came out a little darker then I intended, but I'm gonna post it anyways

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Svetlana sat at the dining room table while everyone else moved into the kitchen to search for food. She picked up a fork and began to trace the edge of what appeared to be a very expensive dinner plate. It remained empty. Filling her stomach was the last thing on her mind; especially since, if the night progressed as it had been, she would more then likely be emptying it soon. She preferred dry heaves to wet.

“So far from home, do you miss it?” the painting asked her.

“You would be liking this too much,” she said, not bothering to look up. “So, I am thinking no.”

“A shame, I had a gift for you.“

“I am being sorry for your disappointment,” she snapped dryly, continuing to move the fork in endless circles on the empty dinnerware. It surprised her how quickly her mind had adapted to what most would consider unnerving. The supernatural now seemed no more strange to her then going to the store for a quart of milk. She thought it might be a survival instinct of some kind. The alternative to going insane.

“You do me a disservice,” the painting said, feigning injury. She looked up to see it smiling down at her, its mouth filled with black, rotting teeth. “You must believe me when I say that I wish you nothing save an eternity of bliss. Please, accept this humble token.”

Svetlana jumped as her translator let out an earsplitting screech, followed by hissing static and sharp popping noises. She glanced back to the kitchen door, but apparently no one heard what had just happened. After a short time, the hissing subsided, and Svetlana thought she heard a faint murmur coming from the speaker. The murmur slowly grew into a voice, and she was startled to find it was a voice she recognized.

“Please, take me. Let the girls go, I won’t fight you,” her mother begged from within the machine. Svetlana stared into the speaker in disbelief. She had heard those words before... “Please,” her mother repeated, “let them go!”

“No one goes,” a masculine voice responded. “Not yet, at least”

The speaker filled the room with malicious, drunken laughter. Soldiers. Three of them. They had stayed behind after her father had been arrested for spreading propaganda against the state. She knew what was coming, and frantically turned a large knob on the machine to the off position. The scene, however, continued to play out. She heard her mother scream, then a door slam, and then the rhythmic screech of rusty box springs.

“No,” Svetlana whispered to herself. “Please.”

“How old are you?” she heard one of the other soldiers ask. There was no response, only a soft weeping sound that she recognized as her own. It was happening just as it had twenty-two years ago; she was nine then, though she hadn’t said so.

“Hey,” the third soldier shouted, “he asked you a question!”

Svetlana closed her eyes and prayed that she would hear a different answer this time, but the thrum of the box springs stopped right on schedule, and the question was met with the muffled sound of a nearby gunshot. A door opened, and the soldiers began to argue as the speaker erupted into static. The fork fell from her hand, and onto the lush carpet below.

“What means this??” Svetlana demanded, tears streaming down her face. The painting just grinned through cracked lips, apparently quite pleased with itself.

“Just a glimpse, shall we say, of home”