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Elizabeth Rossi (11) | STAFF REPORTER
Deadbolts, check. Door chains, check. Peephole covered, check.
The buzz of a rerun Tuesday night sitcom filled the dank living room with a cyclical laugh track. In the dingy kitchen, painted by the acidic yellowed bulb of the ceiling light was a kettle upon the stove. The gaseous flames, indigo and abstract, licked wildly as they sparked beneath the griddle but hardly bathed the iron in heat, seemingly taking their time with the matter. Pinned against the decoloured wallpaper, its peels having curled forward from age, stood the grandfather clock, rigid and familiar. It’d been a week since the last incident when their security cameras had stopped working. Then the time before that, their garage doors had opened while they were away at work.