short stories

Walls

1103 words - loosely inspired by 'You' (Netflix) and 'Cask of Amontillado' (Edgar Allan Poe)

When I was a child I used to play in the basement. It was huge, plenty of room to run around, it always made me uneasy though. The solid concrete floors and brickwork which got damp and cold in the winter always made it seem like a strange sort of warehouse. However, being a small and naive child I made do with it and played all the same.

As I got older my dad started to ban me from going down there, he said that black mould started to grow between bricks and he didn't think it was safe. I listened and played outside instead, as all naive children would. 

School was starting back one summer, I'd asked my dad if he'd seen my bag. He said he hadn't but I couldn't find it anywhere. I decided I'd check the basement, maybe he'd thrown it down there by mistake or our dog had taken it down. 

I guess he heard the wooden steps creak, they weren't exactly stable. But before I'd even gotten down all of the creaky, unstable stairs he'd grabbed my arm and was pulling me back up. He yelled at me that it was dangerous and I was never to go down there again. 

I never understood why he was so mad, after all it was only a black mould. Surely a few seconds of searching around wouldn't kill me? But, he was my father. I would obey him. I never did go back down, until he died. 

I was seventeen by that point, I had to take care of my mother and my sister who were grieving much more than I. My sister had been close with my dad, never questioned him. I rarely did when I was young, but as I grew I became curious. One day I asked him why he still went into the basement, that he might get hurt by the mould. 

He said that he was safe, that the mould didn't want to hurt him. I didn't understand but he seemed almost angry, so I left, knowing if he did get angry it would be bad news for me. Once when he was out I tried to peer down, I creaked open the door and looked down to the dark room. 

I heard strange sounds, muffled noises. I closed the door straight away and ran up to my room, after a few sleepless nights I decided it was rats, or I'd imagined it. Maybe it was just kids outside and I mistook it for coming from the basement. Yes, that must be it. 

My mother came in to my room about three months after my dads death, saying we were moving. That the house was too big for just three of us and that it held too many memories. I blindly accepted it, knowing I was going to university far away soon anyway. 

As we started to pack up the house my sister, who was now around ten, looked uneasy at the sight of the basement. My mother had told her to gather the things from down there but her face which was a mixture of nausea, disgust and fear told us both she didn't want to. 

I volunteered, saying I used to play down there all the time anyway. It was just like revisiting an old playhouse, surely. 

I creaked open the door as I had many years prior, and I stared down into the infinite darkness. Feeling around the wall I found the light switch and flipped it, the flickering white lights showed the dull colours of brick and concrete and I made my way down. 

It was smaller than I had remembered, or perhaps I'd just grown. I didn't hear the strange muffled moans I had before, convincing me finally I had just been paranoid. I saw a couple of cardboard boxes in the corner and walked over, they were behind the stairs in what was the darkest corner of the room. 

I peered inside and saw the same bricks as the ones which made up the walls of the basement, my stomach churned but I wasn't sure why. I was unsettled, and as I looked around the basement was definitely smaller. I used to have room to ride my bike around, now it was just bigger than a garage.

I looked at the far wall and saw a crack in one of the bricks, hesitantly I made my way over. 

I pushed half of the cracked brick, and as I hoped it wouldn't, it fell back revealing a hole. A smell I could only describe as an unholy mix of long rotted meat and sewage drifted out of the small hole I'd created. I gagged and leaned away, wondering what the hell could create an odour so horrific. 

I covered my mouth and nose with my arm and pushed the other half of the brick through, grabbing a nearby torch to look inside, what I saw was more vile than any smell. 

A pile of bones and rotted body parts, eyes and fluids on the floor, hair and teeth scattered around the red bodies, stains and splatters of blood, strange gunk and fluids which had leaked from the bodies were all I could see. There had to be at least four, probably five or six.

Everything I knew about biology told me these were only a few years old, some more recent than others. I knew after ten days the bodies turned to red as blood began to decompose, then they started to break apart. Some had clearly been there for longer as more bones were showing, some looked dismembered and I had to ask, had my father done this? 

I already knew the answer. Of course he had, he'd been the one stopping me from coming down here, he'd been the one telling me lies about the black mould. He was a murderer, a psycho. 

But why had he done it? why so many? who was it all for or was he just crazy? So many questions that I'd now never know, because he was just like them now. Decomposing, smelling like a butchers fridge which had been left off for a year and not emptied. 

They say seeing a corpse changes you, I never understood because surely it would just be like a human but without life. I know what they mean now. But I don't think it's the corpse that's changed me, I think it's the realisation that my dad was one of them. All the death and suffering was for nothing, because now they were the exact same.