If there was ever a sorrier place to live, Chloe couldn't imagine it. The walls of this house, which was once a home, curved inward, as if swelling from a mysterious edema, and the plaster was chipped and broken, and missing in so many places it looked as if it were some kind of cockeyed design. Still, it wasn't the house itself that hit Chloe so hard. It was the sense of hopelessness and desperation and the complete lack of dignity or even morality that permeated her surroundings and lent an air of something she couldn't quite name that threatened way down in her soul.
Bottles and utensils and pans with blackened bottoms and vials and crystals and scattered pills were strewn around the kitchen. In the living room, a couch and a ripped ottoman sat atop a worn gray carpet smeared with mud
