Skeleton House

The frame of a house stands in front of other houses built on a charming residential street. It is a mere skeleton with flights of stairs reaching more than seven stories into the air. There are no walls and no floors, only the basic outline and those stairs.

My companion urges me to enter, and with another friend in front of him and myself taking up the rear we begin to ascend the flights of stairs. I can see the rectangles of green grass lined up beside the sidewalk below.

When I glance to my right I am looking at a complete house painted in a very regal eggplant hue. To my left is the street, more grass, sidewalk, and high end homes. Their front doors have brass knockers, their windows are arched rather than squared.

The structure we are in is out of place, practically in the front yard of the eggplant house. We are nearly to the third floor when it begins to sway unsteadily to and fro.

For a moment it leans on the house to the right. Then suddenly every beam gives way, the stairs fall into a line of planks, like toothpicks glued end to end set dangling in mid air.

I have managed to grip this. I am swinging on it, trying to reach my friends hanging from suspended beams before they fall.