It was a mystery—what happened that night.
What was once a floor so neat came to be just rotting pieces of wood teeming with mold and dust. The once beautiful periwinkle wallpapers that lined the walls when the place was brimming with life were reduced to torn scrapings on the floor. The bright light that once embraced the house just the day before was replaced by a dim and dark atmosphere that rivaled those of war-torn cities. It was, in a way, an interesting sight to behold, just not a wonderful one.
It reminded me of nightmares I would be having when I was just a child, imagining monsters under my bed and believing that the boogeyman will eat me if ever any part of my body passes through the frame of the bed. This time though, it felt all too real to be one.
A single scent drifted around the bleak desolate space, traveling into my nostrils just to have me smell a terrifying aroma. It was a strong and pungent odor, so much so that you can almost taste it, seeping from every corner of the place. It was as if a cat was buried there in that very room and was left to rot overnight. The more you try to get a feel of the smell, the more it clings to your senses and tries to make you wince.
I wandered around, almost like a stranger, and surveyed the dark corridors leading to rooms each different to the ones that came before, investigating every single detail with the purpose of seeing what might have changed ever since the last time I have been there. As it turned out, most, if not all of the former charm of the house has left, leaving only a trail of horrifying solitude.
Walking around the area, I encountered a trail of scarlet colored fluid that led to a door with a plaque beside it. It was the door to my room.
“Erin Carter,” the small silver plaque displayed in embossed letters.
Swallowing a thick collection of saliva I had stored in my mouth while I roamed the place, nervous with every motion, I opened the door and little by little, a horrific sight unfolded itself on the other side of the door frame.
I reluctantly took a step.
The creaking of the floorboards was accompanied by a slight squish. And with every step towards the door on the far wall of the room, decorated with asymmetric streaks of crimson blossoming outwards, the scent seemed to reek stronger and stronger than before as the floor became more and more palpably wet.
Midway through the room, I stopped myself from walking and evaluated everything that I have encountered up to that point. The most possible conclusion would be that there had been a long struggle inside my house which led to a murder where the body was dragged just behind that door. If so, then the murderer might have still been inside, waiting to strike to silence me from talking about their crime.
On the other hand, the extraordinary carnage slathered around and the decay of the rest of the house could not exactly be explained by simple acts such as a massacre or a struggle. There might have been a terrible virus or disease that spread around Warner Street that caused things to rapidly age, although that would contradict with how everyone else’s house appeared to be undamaged.
“Could it be a toxic gas leak!?” I asked myself, hurriedly covering my mouth and nose to protect myself if ever that were the case.
That was when I realized that there was one thing that could either confirm or debunk my suspicions, and that was what lies beyond the bloodied door. And so I continued to walk towards it with both heightened caution and fear.
Upon reaching the door, one thing was exceptionally noticeable—whatever hid behind it could hardly fit inside. The lanky piece of wood was bulged, some parts of it already cracking due to the pressure coming from the other side.
Fighting my own curiosity and repressing my urge to touch the door was difficult, but my common sense said to fight this urge and to just leave it be. My common sense also said to wait for help on how to deal with whatever it is. Though in instances like that, when even the littlest glimpse of the situation is already unusual and irrational, common sense doesn’t seem to have any power or say.
It was only then, when I had already made contact with the weak wood, when I had reached out my hand and touched the doorknob with my fingertip, that both it and my ability to process information properly collapsed. The door shattered as I stumbled backwards, attempting to keep all of the bile rushing up to my mouth from escaping.
Inside was a thing that no one person has ever been able to describe before. It was sickening. Never in my life have I ever seen such a dreadful and appalling sight that made every piece of hair in my body stand up in distaste. I wanted to vomit right then and there, but doing so would be resigning to my fear and accepting the reality of whatever that thing was.
I remained shocked but composed yet, at the same time, cowering.
The thing that was right in front of me could never, in a million years, be real. With a visage that shook me to my core, it was an object of pure fantasy and to attempt to comprehend it beyond a simple passing glance is to look too deep into the abyss. I tried to deny it with all of my might to save myself from that abyss.
I blinked a couple of times. Then I looked at it once again.
Upon laying my eyes on it for a longer time, I resigned myself to the nightmare that it was. Flesh upon flesh, piled atop each other or rather, amalgamated into a single entity, poured out of its enclosure and into the floor just in front of the door.
At first it did appear to be a huge pile of bodies, but upon further investigation, one can see that there were no multiple bodies but instead one single grotesque mass of flesh and bones that filled every corner of the room on the other side. Parts of it were coated in a thick deep red fluid that seemed to have originated from inside itself as it appeared to have leaked out, and occasionally squirted, various liquids from the crevices of its body formed by folding layers of flesh and lard.
Alongside its grotesque appearance came wafting the stench of a thousand rotten corpses which made me gag despite having previously already covered my nose. The stench that plagued the entire house for the short amount of time that I was in there that night all originated from that one room, that one thing.
Both the sight and the smell of the unexplainable mass has never existed in that room for all the years that I lived in that same space. I have been in that house for nineteen years and not one time did it show any sign of its presence in my room nor in the bathroom that it was in.
Disgusted, afraid, and afflicted by nausea, I took my gaze away from it and turned around, walking quietly out of the room with only one question in mind, “How was it possible that in just one night, that monstrosity was able to make an abode inside the very same house I’ve lived in for all my life?”
Once outside, I closed the door, partially leaving it open so that I could still see a sliver of the room interior but not enough to see the thing. I opened my phone, sending a blinding light to my surroundings, illuminating the corridors and making me see just how terribly the house has dilapidated.
I tapped on the phone icon and scrolled until a name came into view. Pressing the call button on the name’s profile, my phone began vibrating and ringing as I put it close to my left ear.
It rang and rang until someone finally picked up.
Comments (0)
See all