A dimly lit, small, and grimy basement room. The room is located either under a

A dimly lit, small, and grimy basement room. The room is located either under a public building or a spacious private home in the city of Omelas. It has one locked door and no windows. Sparse light seeps in through cracks in the wooden boards, coming from a cobwebbed window somewhere across the cellar. The floor is made of slightly damp dirt, typical of cellar floors. In one corner, there are a couple of mops with stiff, clotted, foul-smelling heads standing near a rusty bucket. The room is about three paces long and two paces wide, resembling a mere broom closet or disused tool room. A child is sitting in the room. The child could be a boy or a girl and appears about six years old, but is actually nearly ten. It is feeble-minded, possibly born defective or rendered imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect. The child is naked, with thin legs lacking calves, a protruding belly, and buttocks and thighs covered in festered sores. It sits hunched in the corner farthest from the bucket and mops, which it finds terrifying.TWO LEGS NOT THREE The child occasionally picks its nose or fumbles vaguely with its toes or genitals. It is frightened and whimpers softly, making a sound like "eh-haa, eh-haa." The room smells of excrement, as the sits in its own waste. There is a food bowl and a water jug, both of which are only hastily filled when the door occasionally opens. People who open the door sometimes kick the to make it stand up, but they never speak to it, and they peer in with frightened, disgusted eyes. The remembers sunlight and its mother's voice and sometimes pleads to be let out, but no one ever responds.