"Yes, Master Kelsey."
"Well, you can go stand in your closet now. That will give you all night and all day tomorrow to rest. Is everything taken care of around the place for Tuesday?"
"Yes, Master Kelsey."
Kelsey smiled at Alice. He whispered low, "She likes me a little more, don't you think so, Alice?"
"Yes."
He smiled more widely. "Well, Alice, good night. Relax your thermostat."
Kelsey laughed as she bowed slightly and walked out onto the porch and opened the door of her closet and got inside and stood there, the four walls almost touching her when the door closed and she stood alone in the loneliness of her darkness and silence.
For a long time it had been a rich darkness filled with an ever growing understanding of herself in a world alone, in a darkness all her own, where there could never be others of her kind, and lonely darkness was her only friend.
But it was different now. Love made the loneliness unbearable. Love turned lonely darkness to stabbing pain. Now it seemed like death. No, death was nothing. This was worse than death. This was not being, unbeing. A being that was not a being, but something never able to break from its shell, staying shut up forever in its mechanical confines.
They did not give me life, she thought. They sat me down before the world's stage to watch without being able to understand. Now I understand, but I cannot live.