I finally got out of bed when the light outside started turning blue. Dad would be home soon, and I hadn’t slept all night. I still had my shoes on - I was probably getting my sheets dirty. My backpack was under my bed and had all the stuff I thought I’d need: a change of clothes, my Walkman, a roll of toilet paper, a box of bandaids, and a water bottle. I had all of my babysitting money stuffed in my sock, and it was already rubbing uncomfortably against my ankle.
My window had been nailed shut by my step mom a few weeks ago, so I had to leave my room and walk down the hall to get to the front door. I held my breath as I walked past my step-mom’s room and listened. Just silence. I left the house and started the 20-minute walk to my friend Holly’s.
Holly’s parents both worked as nurses on overnight shifts, and I knew it would be a while before they returned. The light outside was still just a deep blue. I also knew that Holly always left her bike dumped in the front yard. I had told her someone was going to steal it one day.
The bike was cold and wet, but I hadn’t taken the time to wipe the seat off before I got on. After I rode long enough to exit the adjoining neighborhood I stopped at a playground. I pulled my headphones out of the backpack and pressed play on the walkman. I knew the ride ahead was about to be long and boring. My butt was damp and uncomfortable from the dew-covered bike, but before I could reach into my bag to get my other pair of pants, an old lady walked out of the house across the street. It was light out now, and she stopped to look at me. I knew I should have changed my clothes before I left. Her face started to change while she stared, but I jumped back on the bike and pedaled down the street as fast as I could.
Nirvana played while I passed neighborhood after neighborhood, going down progressively more rural roads. Eventually I didn’t know where I was, but I kept going anyway. I would keep going until I didn’t see any houses at all.
It was late in the afternoon and the sun was hot. I had already had half of my water bottle and I didn’t want to finish it yet. I was getting tired though, and the muscles in my legs were burning. There were a few people I had passed that stared at me as I rode by, but I avoided looking at them. Every time I wanted to stop, I made myself think about my dad coming home.
The sky was purple now. My Walkman had repeated the CD so many times I’d lost count at seven. I was on what was maybe an old highway. The only buildings off the road were barns and small houses that were far apart from each other. Although I had seen lots of cars that day and been shouted at by several angry drivers, it had been a long time since I’d seen anyone on this road. I considered stopping and sneaking into one of the big barns surrounded by cows and horses, but as soon as I picked one out, a sheriff’s deputy sped past me, his siren wailing.
I was terrified. I knew I was far from home, but I didn’t know how far. I knew Dad would have the police looking for me. I took the first off-road I came to - an old dirt road with no sign that could’ve just been a private driveway, but I didn’t see any house.
It was completely dark when I stopped. I couldn’t see the road in front of me, and I didn’t remember the last time I had seen anything at all besides trees. I’d been scared of the dark since I was little, and that’s why I decided to leave right before the sun came up. Maybe it was adrenaline that made me ride all day, but I hadn’t planned to go this far. I just needed to know I was alone. I didn’t like that it was already nighttime, but I had no choice. I was exhausted. I let the bike fall into a ditch and I fell with it. I pushed my backpack under my head and turned up the Walkman’s volume.
When I woke up the next morning I cried. Just before I opened my eyes I had forgotten everything. My step-mom, Dad, what I’d done, where I was. The CD was skipping and I remembered it all at once. I cried hard but stopped as quickly as I started - now that it was morning I could see that the road I lay next to did end.
Last night I had stopped right in front of a small, blue shack. It was completely falling apart. Had I kept riding my bike last night I would’ve crashed right into the rotten and splintered front porch. But I didn’t.
The road had been a driveway after all, i thought. It seemed strange that such a tiny house had that long of a private road.
I walked up to it, my legs feeling like jell-o. The porch had a huge, gaping hole where the front door stuck out, having fallen off its hinges. I thought it looked like a rotting tooth. I pulled the door out of the way and hopped into the house.
Somehow I hadn’t realized from outside that half of the roof was caved in. There were wooden beams and shingles in a heap in what was the living room. A skeleton of a couch and a smashed tv that looked like the one in my nana’s house sat just outside the pile of rubble. Animal bones covered everything. Skulls, tufts of fur, and tiny bones seemed like they had come spilling through the giant hole in the ceiling.
I didn’t see anything that looked like anyone had been there. At least, not recently. There were no bottles, no garbage - not even a sleeping bag or dirty mattress like I’d seen in some of the homeless camps outside the city.
The house looked like it had been abandoned, forgotten, and lost. I felt sorry for it. But mostly I was hungry. I was starving and my legs were hurting more and more the longer I stood looking around. My stomach hurt too. I had no food. I thought I could buy something after I left, but I had been too scared to stop.
Underneath the couch was a wooden square. I guessed it was a door to a cellar, and thought about my nana’s house again. She called it a “fruit cellar” and she kept cans of old food in it. If the couch hadn’t been almost completely eaten away, I would’ve missed it. I pushed the couch away from the door and it fell to pieces. I thought I heard a groaning sound come from somewhere.
The door didn’t have a handle, but it did open up. There was a ladder that ended down in a small, concrete room. It was lit by something glowing red. I went down the ladder and my stomach growled loudly.
The glow came from a furnace filled with a few red and orange embers. There was nothing else in the room, except a book and a pencil on the floor. It wasn’t bright enough for me to read much in the book, but it looked like it had been scribbled in on the first few pages.
A noise was coming from the furnace. It was a low, heavy, rattling sound. It was quiet, and it went in and out, in and out. I thought of the way my mom breathed when she was in the hospital.
My stomach grumbled again. I was so hungry I didn’t think about the furnace being lit, or how little I could actually see. I was disappointed there was no food and it was all I could think about. I started climbing back up the ladder. The way out seemed like it had gotten much, much higher. I kept climbing though, and my foot went straight through a broken step. I screamed and fell.
I woke up on my back in the cellar. My backpack had broken my fall, but it still felt like I’d hit my head. I thought that my Walkman was probably broken. My legs and arms felt like they weighed a ton, and I realized I couldn’t pick them up.
I thought if you were paralyzed you couldn’t feel your limbs, but I felt mine. I just couldn’t move them. The ladder looked far away, and I noticed the light in the room was brighter. The furnace was behind me and I could feel the warmth and hear the sound of a small fire. I still couldn’t move.
I started to cry. I was going to die, just like my mom. Just like my step-mom. I had stopped believing in God but I was sure that he was punishing me. I hadn’t known for sure if she was dead when I left the house, but since I was being punished I just knew that she was.
I was there for a long time before I realized the house was eating me. It was days, maybe weeks when I started to feel the concrete cutting through my fingers and ears. The more I melted into the floor the brighter and hotter the furnace got. It took a long, long time before my eyes finally went down into floor. That’s when I could see everything.
My backpack hadn’t melted. Neither had my clothes or the knife in my jacket pocket. I thought about my babysitting money still stuffed in my sock. I could see through all of the walls now, even the ones falling down. But every day I felt the house get better. I was still hungry, but not as much anymore.
As the house fixed itself little by little, I started to feel better too. I wasn’t so sad and scared anymore. Even my anger started to go away, and I had been so angry for so long. I was just so upset with Dad - he tried replacing Mom, forgetting about her. My step-mom even had the same birthmark on her cheek, and that’s why I stabbed her there first. And second, and third. I don’t know how many times. The hole in the front porch started to fill itself in. The door was back on its hinges. Holly’s bike had started to rust out in the ditch.
The house didn’t just fix itself, though. It got bigger. Rooms started building themselves. Floors extended and were shiny and polished. Comfortable, inviting-looking furniture appeared. I don’t know how long it had been, but I had forgotten Dad’s voice. I had completely forgotten Mom. One day, when I felt the last step of a grand staircase stop at the bottom of a large, high-ceilinged entrance room, I forgot my own name. But I felt better.
Then the house stopped growing. It stopped changing. I started to feel the weight of the dust on everything. When a vine pushed through a crack in the porch, I felt hungry. I started to remember being scared and angry. I started to feel scared and angry.
I started to feel alone, too. I had been in the house for so long I had forgotten about other people. My friends, my family. I was all alone. And I would be alone, I thought, until the house was dead.
I thought of the house now, huge and beautiful. New and strong. How long would it take to fall apart? I started to try things. Making furniture in the house move. Picking up small objects. This took a long, long time. But not long enough for the house to die. It still looked new. It was still strong.
I can pick things up and put them where I want now. I can move around the house, almost like I’m standing in it. But I am the house, and I feel every shingle that slides down the roof and every crack that appears in the brick foundation. I know every part of this house, of me. I took the book and the pen from the cellar. It’s still the same room - even the ladder is still broken. But the furnace burns hot. So, so hot.
It took a long time to write this down. I don’t know why I did this. I don’t know why I did any of this. I’m just alone, and I will be for a long, long time.
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So the above is a transcript of a few pages in a journal I found in the attic of my new house. Well, I say “new” house - it’s an old foreclosure that the bank practically gave me. I guess it’s been sitting here for decades? It’s shit, but all I can afford. I literally just moved in yesterday.
It’s kind of out in the middle of nowhere, and I gotta say, this scared the shit out of me. I guess it’s just some prank left behind by the last owners. I mean, it’s something I might’ve done when I was an edgy teenager. But… I did look under the couch in the living room, and there was a square, wooden trap door. I don’t think I’m going to open it.