Life After Death

Chapter 3

During the first week, I really thought one of us was going to kill the other. We both somehow managed to get right on each other's nerves.

"Why are you such a bitch?"

"Aren't you the one who chose to stay with me!?"

"Yeah, though i'm starting to realise why you were alone."

That was basically how the majority of our conversations went. Yet, neither one of us actually made an effort to leave. I guess we just liked there being someone to talk to, even if that meant yelling at each other to no end.

But, gradually his yelling turned into trickery. He suddenly seemed to find humour in hiding my things all over the place and then acting clueless when I confronted him about it. Like a toddler who needed an outlet for his mischief.

Somewhere along our travels, the days and days lf wandering we took, which probably soured the mood even more, we had come across what looked like some stately mansion. The kind a big politician, or old timey lord would have lived. I had been reluctant to go in and explore, assuming something as big and grand as that would be a magnet for people or Infected's. But he was insistent, so insistent he grabbed my arm and started pulling me along with him.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?"

"No. But I don't wanna sleep under a tree anymore."

His point was fair, and so I agreed we may as well check it out. Shrugging my arm out from his grasp.

The inside was beautiful, well it would have been more so if it wasn't so... abandoned. Whoever it was that had lived here before, was definitely rich, I'd never seen hallways so long, let alone scattered with so many rooms on one floor. The furniture, all be it starting to rot away, had definitely been expensive, probably made of the finest oak trees or something stupid, even the fireplaces had specific details carved into the stone. On the ceilings, there were chandeliers, but having gone so long with no use or care, some of the chains were beginning to dangle, and they were shrouded in spiders webs.

Upstairs was no different. Mainly, you had bedrooms up there, and many of them too. Each bed was either a king or queen size, and I gathered that the size depended on the age of the resident. You could tell what rooms were for the children, there was an entire playroom that seemed untouched. Plastic cars were strewn across the floor, barbies and antique dolls with dusty and dirty hair sat atop the shelves that decorated the colourful walls- even though the wallpaper was ripping, you could still see the bold colours that once belonged there. All of which frozen in position, as though waiting to be played with again.

"Those dolls are creepy," Nathaniel said, practically looking at them with disgust.

"It's an abandoned house, everything is creepy."

We decided to split up for the rest of the floor, just to double check that there wasn't anyone hiding and waiting to greet us in the dead of night, but sure enough it was empty. The biggest threat was the occasional mouse I saw scutter along the floorboards and disappear into the wall again.

"Well, it's empty, but there's no candles."

"Check the kids rooms for crayons. They'll work," he brightly suggested.

I let him choose which room we resided in, he seemed to have more demands than I did, and all I really cared for was a bed - since he put the idea in my head I had to admit I craved a nice pillow. There had to be no dolls, paintings, mirrors and clocks for some reason. Everything I volunteered to move out of the rooms myself, but he said no.

"Why no clocks?" I all but laughed as he finally picked a room and settled in it.

"I don't know, there's something morbid about the time they died just being frozen onto it forever. Never to be repaired again."