The New Family, the New Owners, the New Victims...
Fear. A cold and numb dread builds up within my feeble frame, the wave of alarm shakes me from my trance as I stand there by the windowsill admiring the autumn lust. My bare feet planted to the worn dusty floorboards and plan on not moving, the floorboards forcible enough to hold the various antiquated furniture scattered around the living room like headstones in a graveyard. Looking around, I recognize some of these ornaments from the time whenI lived here, all the smallest of furniture are wearing with paper-white sheets and a warm layer of dust except that will have no effect in this cold house. The sixties sofas sat still almost as though they haven’t been sat on since the first family who visited-that is a long time. The tea table stood wooden and tranquil. As its surface consistency draws you in with its deep creamy texture decorated with shades of murky coffee rings at its corners. Colonies of dirt and dust formed on the benighted bookshelf holding the books together and like soldiers, the filth guards keeps the books locked in their cage, unable to escape. The living room hasn’t been my favourite of rooms mostly due to its lingering stench of moss. If you take in the smell carefully you’d be able to smell a blowpipe, the smog so thick you could almost taste it. My mind still hanging around the thought of fear I return my vision to the window, the same view I had before I left. Lowering my head, I allow my drained fingers to trace the wood windowsill. An autumn breeze seeps through the cracks on the glass of the aged window, its framework deteriorating, the once egg shell paint to now what seems to be mouldy scrambled flakes of tint, ending their everlasting grip they release and drift away with the gust. The walls look as though they have not aged at all, looking the same as it was when I returned dull, tarnished and paralyzed. A stronger breeze shakes the fractured window emitting tremors throughout my obscure body.
The uneven rhythm of my shallow breathes echo in this dreary room. From outside I can hear them, their arrival is welcoming, with the racket from their colossal 21st century death trap on wheels as it starts compressing the pebbles of my driveway causing them to pile up against their wheels. They are here. The second the modern day wagon stopped and the visitors set foot onto the porch and the house regained its life brightening ten times the shade of grey as before. What? Why would it do that? Is it to lure them even more? Does the house want them to come in? Almost as though the house wants to look presentable for its new guests, to please them, to reach their standards in the “perfect” house but above all to warn me, to warn me of trespassers. They put the key in the key whole, the locks sure have gotten used to the new silver metal piece and spreads open the mahogany doors. They are here, the NEW owners of MY house.
Why? Why would anyone choose this house? It’s the closest option to hell itself here they are walking into a death trap after all they have triggered the curse. My Curse. They stand in awe as they take their first look of my home; they lift their fancy shoes, taking their first steps. DONT! They are dear, taking shallow steps to avoid being attacked. Gliding rigidly I slyly make my way to the kitchen before they see me, I can’t watch them take any more steps.
I fade into my surrounding, close to the kitchen door frame, at a reasonable distance.It’s too late, if I were alive my skin would drain in colour, is now pallid and pasty allowing my dark pumping veins to be seen. Blood rushes through the dark threads on my arm fuelling my dress, the once prom dress now moist and dripping with the blood of many years of murder. My hair changes tone from chocolate to ebony from serene and delicate to fierce and vibrant flowing upwards into waving tendrils within seconds. My honey dew eyes glaze to dark olives. This “family” laughed and praised my house, smouldering my ears with cheers, do they actually like this satanic house. Do they want to die?
A middle-aged lady whom I suppose is the mother makes her way towards me, she sees me? But doesn’t utter a word, her facial expression frozen to a beaming smile as she strolls through, the feel of warmth passes through my limbs a strange tingling sensation soon switches to unwanted heat. She triggered the demon within me to pounce; my teeth sharpen to fangs as I now have a reported copper taste of blood pour into my mouth, the taste of my last victim. Making myself visible I attract all gazes, gazes filled with something that ironically hurts when I take a life, gazes filled with a cold, numb and heart wrenching dread. Fear.
