text: > Go downwards
  Winter light lies in anaemic strips upon the floor from where it has fallen through the glass panels in the front door. There is an awful painting hanging on the wall. The murmuring voices are more of a babble now; too many over-lapping conversations create an alien, baboonish gibberish.
  
  The outside world lurks to the west and the living room to the north. Or you could always just retreat upstairs.
  
  > listen
  There are too many voices for you to be able to make out much of any conversation. Besides, eavesdropping is the most foolish of vices.
  
  > examine the painting
  You painted this - in the loosest sense of the word - when you were about eighteen and nurturing an over-inflated sense of your own creativity. It is a black canvas with a heavily textured shape of reddish swirls in the middle and a speckling of white stars in one corner. Sometimes it looks like a wound, sometimes like a freshly forming galaxy. Your last housemate thought it was something obsence. So much for your aristic soul. Ho hum. So much for your artistic soul.
  
  > go north
  There are lots of people gathered in the living room. Stepping inside unfortunately catches the attention of the one you like least. Laurie clatters towards you and, before you can do anything to save yourself, captures you in a hug you feel vaguely socially obligated to endure. You hold yourself as rigid as a blade until she goes away again. The rush of hatred you feel towards her is positively intoxicating.
  
  There are so many people here. Have they come to ... what? Stare at the bereft? Why? Is this how other people grieve? En masse?
  
  Your housemate John is sitting cross-legged on the floor at the end of the coffee table, frowning over a game of a Go. His opponent, Twitch, sits opposite and appears much more laid-back about the whole business. Rick is slumped on the sofa, a bottle of port at his elbow; Elsie is sitting next to him, apparently watching the game. Jess is huddled in a cloak on the other sofa, Adrian beside her, looking almost as uncomfortable as you probably do. As for Laurie, she's leaning against the fireplace, and wearing an expression of infinite suffering like she's living her own little Victorian melodrama.
  
  And finally, in the far corner of the room by the open door to the kitchen, like a person in its own right, is the last piece of household furniture you bought in consultation with Celine: a wrought iron coat stand. So nouveau-gothic darling.
  
  > examine the stand
  You seem to own far more coats than four people living in a house could possibly need or want. The metal of the coatstand is almost entirely obscured beneath fabric. One of your own coats is just visible. There are two identical big brown dusters belonging to Dave. Celine's slightly shabby, soft velvet jacket. A zebra-striped hoodie of John's. His big military coat with the golden buttons. More beneath.
  
  > take the coat
  You unhook your coat with difficulty from the coatstand, nearly over-toppling the whole teetering structure. Folding it over your arm, you can feel the edge of something caught in the lining.
  
  Twitch steeples his fingers as he ponders the board in front of him.
  
  > search the coat
  Digging through your pockets, your fingers catch the edge of something that has fallen down into the depths of the lining. After an impressive display of digital dexterity, you fish out a 50p coin.
  
  Someone makes a desultory remark.
  
  > look at the coin
  This is exactly what it looks like, except it is relatively freshly minted and has a brightness to it that would have delighted you when you were a small child.
  
  Twitch steeples his fingers as he ponders the board in front of him.
  
  > look at John
  You remember the first time you invited John and Celine to come to dinner. You can see them now on the doorstep, John slightly behind, handsome and distinguished in a military-style coat with gold buttons and braiding, Celine, in black just like always, holding out to you a hand-tied bouquet of flowers the colour of her lipstick, and smiling.
  
  Somebody asks the Rick the time.
  
  > hug laurie
  Keep your mind on the game.
  
  Jess and Adrian converse in soft whispers.
  
  > look at Laurie
  Laurie is small and pretty, pale with apparent grief, and you despise her. She's only here because she's dating Twitch (although they are both fucking other people) and she must have met Celine all of twice. You suspect she is enjoying the enactment of tragedy.
  
  Laurie stands behind Twitch, combing her fingers through his lightly curling hair.
  
  > examine Twitch
  You only know Twitch by reputation. He is an old school friend of Celine's and your paths have never crossed. He looks like the clinically depressed stoner he is, which is not devoid of a certain glamour. He has restless fingers and idle eyes.
  
  Jess leans over and makes a show of being of interested in the progress of the game.
  
  > look at Jess
  You cannot look at Jess at the moment without remembering the drive the hospital, stars streaking overhead, the slow drip-drip-drip of time in the waiting room, and the hushed, awkward solemnity of a brief bedside visitation.
  
  Jess shifts on the sofa, sinking a little further into her jumper.
  
  > examine Rick
  Rick is a man not suited to inaction. On the sofa like this, he looks like a pile of himself. The port he is drinking is surely of excellent quality but it seems to afford him little pleasure at the moment.
  
  Somebody asks the Rick the time.
  
  > examine Elsie
  You don't know Elsie very well, but this mainly because there is not much overlap between your lives bar some friends in common. She has always struck you as a terribly nice person.
  
  Someone makes a desultory remark.
  
  > examine Adrian
  You find a flickering of kindred in Adrian's glance. You are sure he finds this gathering almost as unendurable as you do.
  
  Jess and Adrian converse in soft whispers.
  
  > smell john
  You smell nothing unexpected.
  
  Twitch steeples his fingers as he ponders the board in front of him.
  
  > Smell coat
  You smell nothing unexpected.
  
  Elsie smiles at you.
  
  > listen
  You hear nothing unexpected.
  
  Rick opens a new bottle of port.
  
  > talk to John
  "How's the game going," you ask. There is a pause as John considers. "I'm losing," he concludes finally. "Oh," you say.
  
  > talk to Laurie
  God no. You don't want to support her delusion that she has any place here. If you tried to talk to her, you might have to kill her.
  
  > talk to Twitch
  Like most comprehensively broken people there is a touch of the rockstar about Twitch, and he wears it well. You are conscious of an uncomfortable intermingling of attraction and disdain, and that makes you rather shy of talking to him.
  
  > talk to Elsie
  "Would you like a cup of a tea?" asks Elsie, the moment you step into her visual range. You shake your head and thank her. Elsie is a perpetual tea-maker. It might annoy you in somebody else but Elsie's tea is the sincerest tea you have ever drunk.
  
  > talk to Rick
  "Care for some port, m'dear?" offers Rick, with a valiant semblance of his usual bonhommie. "It's a very fine old tawny." You don't doubt it but you aren't sure inebriation would be the best addition to your mood right now.
  
  > ask Rick the the time
  (To communicate in Eurydice, TALK TO a character.)
  
  > talk to Adrian
  Under different circumstances you would actually quite like to talk to Adrian. Maybe you are deluding yourself with suspicions of kinship but you can more readily imagine yourself saying something that feels true to him than anyone else. But how can you speak of anything in this company, at this time. Better not to talk to him at all.
  
  > talk to yourself
  You soliloquise, because you're a bit of an arse:
  Full fathom five thy father lies;
  Of his bones are coral made;
  Those are pearls that were his eyes;
  Nothing of him that does fade,
  But doth suffer a sea-change
  Into something rich and strange.