Chapter 1: Loose Ends
Veronica
was vacuuming the living room when, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a
speck of something on the wall next to the bookshelf.
Turning
off the vacuum cleaner, Veronica grabbed her dust rag. Moving closer, she saw that it looked like
thread.
"Yes,
it's definitely thread," she thought, giving the bookshelf a perfunctory
wipe. Then she reached over and brushed
the thread away with the rag.
Except
that it was still there. The thread
appeared to be adhered to the wall.
Sighing,
Veronica dropped the dust rag on top of the top row of books and reached out to
remove it by hand.
She
tried to pick it off, but the thread resisted.
"That's
strange." Veronica thought. It
seemed to be solidly stuck to the wall.
Had someone super-glued it there?
It
was a piece of black thread, maybe two inches long, and its end was adhered to
the wall. Grasping its end between her fingers, Veronica pulled
determinedly. However, as she pulled,
instead of coming away from the wall, the thread just seemed to grow
longer.
It
was like pulling a loose thread on an old sweater, Veronica thought. You never get to its end; instead, the
garment just keeps unraveling.
Except,
of course, walls aren't supposed to unravel.
But this had become too weird for Veronica to stop; her curiosity was
piqued. She kept pulling. Soon several feet of the thread dangled from
the wall.
On
tip-toe, for she was short in stature, Veronica leaned in as closely as
possible, until her nose was almost touching the wall, peering intently at the
area where the thread appeared to be attached.
Upon examination, she could just make out that the wall around this
mysterious thread seemed to be beginning to unravel.
Veronica
leaned back. How could that be? A split
in the seam of the wall?
She
resumed tugging on the thread with renewed vigor.
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