The room

They filed in. Slowly. Solemnly. Into a room deep under the house.

It was not a dark room. There was a glass block window high up on the back wall and a large rectangular shape in the middle of the floor.

Circling the rectangle, no one said a word, but slowly the solid shape began to blur and then move. It almost bubbled. Almost, but not quite. 

One at a time each person lifted their two hands and allowed little crystal looking shards of light to flutter down into the rectangle.

It was a slow and careful process, done completely in silence.

The viscous liquid in the rectangle began swirling and the light shards twinkled in its depth, but still no one uttered a word. 

Then there was a whooshing and from nowhere something swooped through the liquid, stirring it, never rising above the rectangle until out of the depths they came.

The very people who had been standing around the edge now rose from the goo below and only one of them spoke. "I am the lord and master."

Then they all turned and walked single file out the door and back up into the house. Most of them thinking how fortunate the Lord and master was because he would lead them all. He would make sure they were safe and they would wait on him hand and foot, but these thoughts disintegrated seconds after stepping foot out of the room. They were, each of them, a particular person in the household with a particular job, or use and it was not who they had been before they walked into the room.

Time passed and the ritual was repeated. 

They walked into the room, surrounded the rectangle and dropped their light crystals in silence, The power swooped through the liquid, but this time it resurrected one of them and for a moment he felt the envy of the others as he became the Lord and master.

This time was different. He knew what was happening. He had done it before and he wasn't honored to be the Lord and master. He only felt the weight of it. He tried to tell the others, but seconds after they left the room they were once more transformed into different family members, different people, all with a task or use to fulfill and they had no memory of the room at all.