Once upon a time, there was a man who was hired as a janitor for a castle.

Well, I call it a castle. In truth, it was far past its heyday, and more of it was crumbling than wasn’t.

Why John had been hired as a janitor for this place, he didn’t know, but if the rich old coot wanted to throw away his money by keeping this old ruin clean, that was his business. If John was getting paid, he wasn’t complaining. Actually, that’s not entirely true, either. He complained about the job a good deal—just not to his employer. Suffice it to say, if the old coot and John’s wife ever sat down for lunch and compared notes, they’d determine they clearly had two different Johns and what were they doing here, anyway?

One day, as John was making his rounds, sweeping the old stones and trying not to turn an ankle on any loose ones, he came to a door that looked like it hadn’t been opened for centuries. The locks were rusted and the paint was far past “chipped”. The wood was gouged out here and there in bits and slivers, whether from some long forgotten battle, or the simple wear and tear of time.

John reflected that he had been hired to clean the castle, and this was part of the castle. As much as he dreaded the state of a room that hadn’t been opened for centuries, he hauled on the surprisingly unlocked door.

The room wasn’t nearly as dusty or musty as it should’ve been–that’s the first thing he realized. The second was that the room had one lone inhabitant—and a weird one, at that.