Content warning: >!Mentions of graphic body horror.!<
When I moved to Oklahoma from Nevada, all I wanted was a cheaper, quieter place to live. After 34 years, I began to loathe Las Vegas. I hated my neighborhood on XXth Street and XXXXXX. It was always loud, with either the sound of Metro’s sirens coming around my block or my neighbors piss drunk screaming and yelling. I can’t count how many times I woke up to hearing beer bottles hitting the apartment’s stone staircases or someone’s window getting shattered. Every day when I would leave my shitty studio, I tip-toed around the shards of Modelo bottles or puddles of vomit. Before work one morning, I saw a couple of bullet casings in the gutter. I hated the tourists and their entitled behavior. They crossed the street with little concern that a casino shuttle SUV might wipe them out on the pavement with ease. I hated how so many people from the neighboring state of California had moved here because it was “cheaper” to live here.
On the other side of the same coin, Las Vegas had been my home. I remember when they built certain malls, housing developments, and casinos. I got drunk on the neon lights—even though, technically, they are no longer neon—every time I walked up and down Fremont Street or in the Arts District. They discarded using neon, argan, or mercury long ago, and now they are combinations of RGB or RGBW LED lights. They told us this on a tour I took at the Neon Museum. The signs of the old age, the golden era, and the atomic times were retired and out of practice living in that boneyard. I had spent my 20s with former classmates, drinking yard-long booze-infused slushies, and crying about my architecture classes. The University of Nevada Las Vegas had been my sanctuary, as had my tired shared dorm. All was sacred and holy in the religious practices of my daily routine.
There was an abrupt change in tone after my parents died and left their two children behind—me and my brother. Mason had the pleasure of taking off when he wanted. That included when it came to the funeral and the arrangements, which I ended up handling. I was 24, and he was 20. Now, he lives in California with his wife and three kids. I was still stuck in Las Vegas up until two years ago.
Three weeks after I turned 32, I put in my two weeks at the county and packed up all of my shit. Not that there was much. I took out my retirement and rolled it into an IRA. I had a decent chunk of change in my savings, so I took $5,000 and used it as a downpayment on a little house. XXXX Tall Grass Circle, in Stow, Oklahoma. It was two floors, with two bedrooms—one guest, one master. 2.5 bathrooms, a roomy living room/hosting space, and a basement. There were beautiful French doors to the backyard. It left little to be desired back there, as it was mostly a lot of dead grass and a tree that had shed its leaves for the season. It had probably been on this Earth longer than I had been alive. I had put in an application for Deputy Director of Building and Planning for the city, similar to what I did in Clark County.
When I pulled up to the curb in the small Uhaul I had driven all by my lonesome, I was just as moonstruck as when I visited the house before. The way the sun glinted off of the windows illuminated the peeling cream eggshell exterior paint of the Victorian-era home. It was complimented by what was probably an ivory-white ornamental trim and rusted iron gating that lined the roof. The roof itself was a nice, coffee brown color. My real estate agent, Monk, warned me that, as alluring as the house was, it changed ownership frequently in the last twenty years. Like a revolving door. Unphased, I, of course, asked why. In architecture and socially, people harbor a strange sympathy and adoration for their homes, as they do hatred and loathing. Spending several years in a structure to echo the families’ laughter, love, and growing together—or, alternatively,reverberations of shrill criticisms, caterwauls of wicked reflections from parent to child. He informed me that people had passed away via freak accidents and safety precautions that were not well thought out. Terrible occurrences include falling out of the tree or down the main flight of steps. To me, it was nothing that didn’t have a solution. Install stairway railings and have professionals come cut the tree instead of trying to trim a blackjack oak’s branches myself. Unfortunate follies on everyone else’s part. I said okay. I bought the house.
It didn’t take long to get settled. All of my furniture and things of the sort found their places. It was still really empty since you can’t really spread a 400-square-foot studio apartment across a 2000-square-foot home. Three weeks here quickly became two months, then three. Three and a half. By the time I reached this mark, I had outsmarted my antecedents and hired a local company to trim the trees in the front and back yards. I installed an oak stair rail. My floors were a pristine, polished ivory-white tile. You wouldn’t even know the previous attempted owner split their skull on the edge of the last step, and the blood was dirtying the floor, pooling around their head and hair. while waiting for their partner to come home to their stiff corpse several hours later.
More time passed. All of the bare spaces in my home came to be filled in some capacity. The significance of a house cannot be overstated enough—it’s our way of symbolizing an achievement in adulthood; it’s what we count on for our survival in this big, bad world. Everyone knows that permanent shelter is what separates us from our primordial ancestors. No other creature among us on earth puts in the effort. Birds and their fragile nests can be destroyed with a breeze. Bears and their comfortable caverns get demolished by humanity. Whereas we have houses that have been around for 30, 40, 50, or 100 years. We look upon them with reverence and pride. We have such sympathy for our homes in the way the exterior and interior are reflections of ourselves.
I considered myself well adjusted by month 6. I was pleased by the way I had settled into my new job so fluidly. My office was properly decorated with photos of my family, despite our estranged nature. Family cards and old photos of the Sarkisians before my parents, Rose and Hayk, left the mortal realm. My house was a home. I needed a new coat of paint to fix the chipping problem on the outside. My fireplace burned with the renewed energy that I had felt since abandoning Las Vegas for Stow, Oklahoma. Art on the walls and all of the small things that were neglected by others had received the love the house so desperately longed for. Plumbing, lighting, and deep cleaning regularly. I never knew I could have been so extraordinarily happy about being a homeowner despite the stress. I spent my afternoons curled up on my L-shaped heather grey couch that sat in front of the fire, absentmindedly zoning out while Survivor marathons played.
When I was in college, I had a tendency to fixate on how similar a house was to a human cadaver. The relationship between the house’s rooms and functions and our own is remarkable. Like the living room. It tends to be a bigger room in the house, housing all of our social activities or even just us for some quiet time. It’s in the name—mostly akin to a beating heart. It’s also where fireplaces are kept, a horribly destructive force we corral behind metal gates—a force that we as people have dubbed a living thing that breathes and consumes. Hallways, walkways, and corridors functioned as its veins and arteries, carrying us from one room and organ to the next. The kitchen and dining room represent a stomach due to the nature of their functions. Bathrooms, of course, are self-explanatory.
Windows are like eyes peering out into the streets and cul-de-sacs. The staircase bears a resemblance to the vertebrae of our spine: cervical, thoracic, and lumbar. It’s like when you read an R.L. Stine book about the tall, brooding house at the end of a fabled, haunted street. There’s no light inside, but instead a dim glow behind the glassy eyeballs and curtains. Suddenly, in our imagination, there is a large sentient creature. It has vision and a level of intelligence unbeknownst to the onlooker. It’s uncomprehensible to us.
It leads us to the bedroom. It reflects our mind—where we rest mentally and physically, experience epiphanies in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, or have strange dreams. One’s bedroom reflects their mental state. If we’re depressed, they’re a mess, so on and so forth. It’s where we experience love and passion. We spend 33% of our lives in it.
I walked into my empty home with respect, caring for it as if it were my own child. I didn’t know how anyone could have bared to leave it. The six months became a year. I adopted a bonded pair of cats named Baloo and Bagheera. The former cat was a toothless grey tabby, and the latter was a black cat missing an eye. They’re so sweet and gentle—the loves of my life. They were 8 years old when I got them. At night, I can hear their mewls, meows, and scurrying. But I started to hear creaking. A creaking that a pair of 10-pound felines cannot make. At that point, I had been in the house for about a year and three months.
I have always had trouble sleeping as a result of being diagnosed with anxiety at the ripe age of 15. Chronically high stress. I noticed the footsteps a few weeks before the incident I’m going to describe. I had gotten up to pee and was able to, or tried to, chalk up the footsteps to the house being old. But as I left the bathroom, the creaking was trailing behind my own as I walked. My own sleepy stupor was quickly sobered by my brain, which registered how close the sound was behind me. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I froze in place. The room was pitch black, and I had at least 10 steps left to get back into bed. My eyes had already adjusted to the dark. I searched rapidly around the room, as if another person had entered without my knowledge. Acid rose in my throat, anticipating some stranger to take the painted lamp base beside my bed and take it out to bash my skull in. No one would know of my corpse until one of my neighbors reported the smell. My long, black curls would rest on my detached scalp while flies and maggots made a feast out of my pink, fleshy brain matter sprawled across the rug. I would’ve laid there, for God knows how long, and waited for someone to find me.
My breath hitched, preparing for the best, but no one came at me. I did not get attacked. I made it back to my bed after a few minutes and crawled under the covers. I hid under them like a little kid. My heart beat against my ribcage; I could swear I was going to crack a rib. I brought the blankets up to my head, and the blood rushed to my head and gave me an instant headache. I can feel it, and I am describing it now. I listen to the dead silence. The horrible, eerie sound that followed my path now left my room and went down my stairs. Once it descended completely, it crept across my living room and dining room. My basement door opens, hinges squeaking. Then it slammed shut.
If the bedroom represented higher thinking, then, as above, so below. The basement is our innermost buried dreadful thoughts and feelings. Dark perceptions and visages are cradled in its murkiness. Memories are covered in dust and cobwebs, along with trauma that we bury deep. So deep, we don’t want to see the bottom. We face the discomfort ourselves as we stare down the concrete or wooden staircase. You envision the inky room full of monsters and great fears and phobias that filled your childhood; now you find yourself facing them as an adult. They lie in wait for us once we reach the bottom. Somehow, there’s always something that beckons us down to its depths, but we seldom want to answer that call.
But that can be a metaphor that’s heavy-handed.
The day after that, I went down my stairs, comforted by the safety of both natural and artificial light. I felt nauseated. Nothing looked out of place or broken, and I gripped a shitty wooden bat I had bought from Big 5—the sports store—for self-defense. All my doors were locked. It was an overcast day out that day, and I could hear the droplets sprinkling against my windows and watched as they gathered, rolling down the glass. I approached my basement, and on autopilot, my fingers gripped around the metal handle and slowly opened the door. I flicked on the light. It sparks a few times before illuminating the space.
We store things in our basements, too. As I put one foot in front of the other, it felt like I was wearing brickstone boots. Still, nothing was out of place. Just my holiday decorations in their plastic storage bins, collecting dust until it’s their turn to see the light of day again. I can’t describe to you the relief I felt when I saw that nothing was displaced, distressed, or destroyed. But soon after, it was replaced with unease. I didn’t believe in haunted houses or ghosts.
Baloo and Bagheera were constantly by my side, with me more often than not. They are needy cats, yes, but when I went to bed, they no longer wished to adventure around the house all by themselves. For days, I would wake up to the vile stench of cat urine and feces. They ruined my rug. But my cats were happily curled up on the edge of my bed, secured with one another. This happened for four days in a row. After three nights, I moved their litter box to my bathroom. I figured it would keep happening. I took them to the vet, and they were okay. No UTIs, no illnesses. I didn’t know what was bothering them. When I would come home from work, they’d trot down to greet me. We followed our nighttime routine: our dinners, TV time, reading books, or painting. Then, as a trio, we went to bed. Things went back to normal; I just now adjusted to my cats and their reluctance to do anything without me home.
I was still uncomfortable at this point. See, while we talk about the horrors of the night occupying the basements or dark spots in our homes, I neglect the master bedrooms. When I got into bed at night, at the end of the day, it felt like I was swallowing sand. We are at our most vulnerable when we lay in that bed or in that room. Lying in the dark, in those easily missed spaces by our eyes, is where danger lurks. It preys on us. In turn, we pray. We pray in this room that the house will please protect us. In those moments, the bedroom is less of a mind and more of a mouth.
My routine was altered with these feelings. A year and a half came fast. At the end of the cul-de-sac was XXXX Tall Grass Circle, and it watched over me. I woke up, went to work, and came home. On occasion, I would go out just to get some things—my groceries or a little treat for myself. We came to a mutual understanding, the house and I. I cared for it, I painted it, and I made it pretty. I made sure all aspects of it were taken care of. I never failed to get routine care done. With each visit from the gardeners, HVAC workers, and plumbers, my pride was almost parental in nature. Baloo and Bagheera are my babies, yes, but this house had become my child by that point. All the work I put into restoring it made it magnificent. It was beautiful. The restored Victorian frame, ornamental trim, and iron gating lined the roof. If I were anymore self-centered as the Deputy Director of Buildings and Plans, I would try to register it as a historic landmark. With time at my job, I grew closer to coworkers. I hosted parties, and the compliments brought a smile to my face. At the same time, I felt like the house was happy too. It was jubilant as strangers’s hands grazed its walls, cooing about the art that adorned the halls or how beautiful the space was itself. I had even finally figured out what to do with the backyard. I put in a small succulent garden and a koi pond. I had someone come build a white gazebo. Edison bulbs, about a half-dollar in size, were hung around the structure. My cohorts clamored about the small details that I relayed back to the house, as if it could hear me. I had become another year older.
The house and I were on the same page. I kept hearing the groans and grinds against some unknown pressure that was not of this plane. The cats and I remained in the master bedroom each night, and I had accepted that these sounds were the house breathing, murmuring, and sighing in contentment. The house is a creature, and when I step inside its mouth, each night I am at its mercy. With said mercy, I would wake up each day. Weeks and months passed after this revelation. Our relationship is symbiotic in nature. I cared not really for anything else except my cats and the house. After taking care of my parents in their dying stages and my brother for so many years, no one ever took care of me. At the end of the day, I came home. In exchange for my tender love and care for it, the house made me feel—made it known—that it would protect me.
I began to have vivid dreams about three months ago, where I was in a room of flesh and tissue and my body felt feverish in the humid environment. Sweaty, it was moist with a liquid that felt like it resembled water. It smelled like a decomposing carcass on someone’s breath. My body was covered in these bumps that ached, as if they were bone spurs or painful cysts pressing up against my olive skin. They itched, but I couldn’t scratch them enough in a way that mattered. I scratched so hard that my skin broke and came up underneath my fingernails. The blood trickled down and stuck under my nails too. The metallic smell intertwined itself with the rancid stench of garbage that has had the pleasure of rotting out in 120-F heat. They happen about 3–4 times a week. They’re so vivid, I woke up gasping for air and gagging. I didn’t understand why I had these dreams. I shook them off every day, though, as I had to keep going. I greet my house and bid it goodbye each day. When I came home, I swore I could hear it tell me ‘welcome home’. I had become comfortable.
Exactly 20 days ago, I began to see a 1980s Ford truck with maroon paint and a black accent park down my street. I paid no mind to it, as it was parked near another house where all they did was work on trucks and cars. But it began to park closer to my home. It was there when I got off work. Ten days ago, I passed by it again—still far enough—parked in front of a neighbor’s house. The occupant had the window rolled down. He looked to be some greasy 20-year-old. His face was covered in disgusting, awful, blistering pustules. Dark, purplish scarring lined his cheeks under the severe acne that plagued him. His hair was a strawberry blonde, and every time he looked at me, he didn’t smile. I figured he squinted because the sun was blinding at that time. I tried to be friendly and said hi a few times. The house he was parked in front of was one of a nice family, and I know there was a set of parents and a girl who just turned 22. She was sweet. I wondered if he was her boyfriend or some kind of helper. I tried to clock what was in his trunk to figure out what he did. It looked like some tools and rope, and I presumed he was some handyman or an apprentice of the sort.
He didn’t ever smile back at me or respond when I talked. It felt like every day, the truck grew closer. We’re approaching 5 days ago now. Two days. One.
Yesterday - I came home and pulled my car in. He was sitting across the street, and his driver’s side door was in line with my own front door. I would have preferred if he remained unfriendly; I had come to ignore his presence because he was so offputting. As I got out of the car, I looked back and caught his stare from across the street. It was the only day he had ever stared at me and grinned from ear to ear. I felt sick to my stomach. He looked so pleased with himself, and I had no idea why. He looked at me as if I were going to be a sacrificial rabbit to some unknown god or group. From across the street, his awful, beady hazel eyes tracked mine. I felt them trail down my body. A sickening chill shot down my spine, and my hair stood up. It matched the primal fear I had felt before. I felt viciously ill and intimidated. The way his eyes bore into me made me break out in a cold sweat. I rushed and got my keys out, fumbling with my purse. I got to the garage door to enter my house, and I slammed it shut. I threw my things onto the kitchen counter and locked the door as fast as I could. He felt like the boogeyman, and if I turned around, somehow he would be behind me.
I think the house could feel it. We were in sync. I double-checked all my locks around the house, and after pulling the curtains and blinds closed, I felt too sick to eat or even think about doing anything to distract myself. Instead, I hid in my room and turned out all the lights. Baloo and Bagheera lay in their usual places, and I cradled the wooden bat with me in bed. I laid in bed the way I had before, with the covers pulled up over my face.
The adrenaline rush passed, and I had fallen asleep. I had that dream again. The one where I was enveloped in viscera. Instead of that feeling where I was soaked in saliva, dribble, and drool, it was ichor. The brassy redolence was overwhelming to my nostrils. This time, instead of sitting in place and scratching my body until it bled, I got up. I walked through the soft innards with my bare feet and approached a white door. There was no rhyme or reason why it was in there, but I approached it. With a blood-soaked hand, I reached towards the door and opened it.
I woke up to a truck door slamming shut.
I got up, panted, and went to my bedroom window. Even though it was nighttime, under the streetlights and moonlight, the dark inflection of the truck’s coloration was unmistakable. That deep red. The man stepped out, and I watched him walk up to my house until the structure of the house blocked my view. He walked right up to my front door. My heart got caught in my throat, and I heard my front door lock become undone. The lights lift. My eyes dart around. My cats look at me to ask some kind of question I can’t answer. I hear heavy, clunky boots trudge into my beautiful home. My feet were firmly planted, trying not to make the floor squeal under my weight.
I heard a sickening laugh, a cackle, and the disgusting phlegmy inhale, followed by clearing of the throat, before I heard the spit hitting my carpet and partially on the tile. Heavy breathing, I could hear him evading my first floor. I heard glass shattering and him breaking my belongings and upsetting things. Through the discord, I strategically walked toward the threshold of my bedroom door to approach the stairs. I didn’t grab the bat.
“Nice fuckin’ house. Too bad you’re home.” He huffed, his voice gravelly, with the other mucus stuck in his throat. Something else is thrown and breaks. The unmistakable sound of a fist hitting my television screen made me jump.
The color in my face drained, and I slowly crawled down my steps. He transitioned from the living room to the dining room. I heard the basement door hinge struggle as it opened. From the dining room to the kitchen. I looked in horror at the destruction and havoc he left in the wake of my home. Broken print frames with art, my broken TV, and family photos thrown on my floor. The house makes a noise as if it were grinding its nonexistent teeth in frustration. Knick-knacks that had been placed on shelves were everywhere, and there was no glass top on my coffee table that was in the middle of my living room. I heard the crisp, clear sound of a knife being pulled from the knife block and a chuckle as the boots made their way to the door that had just opened. They stopped at the doorway, and I could barely see him around the corner of my living room wall. I heard another door unlock, but I don’t think he heard it.
“Nice corner you backed yourself into. You been fun to watch. Makin’ it fun for me.” His voice was low, and he slurred. He was drunk. I couldn’t imagine what horrible things were on his mind as my eyes welled up in fearful tears. I hid in the shadows, and he stepped into the doorway of the basement. A seething rage came over me and filled my veins. Adrenaline pushed the blood to my head so hard and so fast that I was blind. I moved like a woman possessed. So overcome by a fit of pique, fury, and frenzied rampage, I walked to the basement with the staggered, breathing intruder looking down. I went behind him and slammed the door as hard as I could. I heard a yelp as he fell down the stairs. I felt the aches and pains of the house as if they were my own. I could feel his bones snapping as his body made contact with the steep stairs. A sharp crack with each edge he hits, and the lights flicker off in the basement as I hold the door closed. I could hear the bulb crackling. After a minute, I opened the door. Red marks and brain matter were flecked on the door. A breeze passed through the house from the cracked open backyard doors, flowing against my skin and the silk 2-piece pajamas I was about to ruin. I look down, and behind me are bloody footprints.
I lifted my feet to look at the bottoms of them, and they were embedded with glass. I didn’t feel it. I walked down the stairs, and my fingers extended to the light switch. No longer concealed by the darkness, the light illuminated the black ink of his blood. The soreness I typically felt in my dreams returned. The teeth and the spurs rising underneath my skin and growing on my bones and muscles pushed and poked as I looked at his disfigured corpse. I looked at the life force congealing on the dark, poured grey stone floor. I reached down, and I pulled the truck keys from his brown suede jacket pocket. I went to my front door, crossed my grassy front yard, and walked on the asphalt. I got into the truck and backed it into my garage next to my own pomegranate red compact car. I dragged myself out of the truck’s front seat and back through the connecting door that goes to my kitchen. I closed the door, and it locked behind me. I heard my front door lock next. I closed the basement door for the night. The feeling of throbbing, rock-solid cysts persisted as I forced myself up the stairs and collapsed into my bed to attempt to sleep. The teeth kept growing on me, pressing down. I could feel the hot breath, gums, and sinew. It wasn’t a dream. The basement is dark.
Today, I called out of work early in the morning. I really couldn’t sleep. I plucked the glass shards off of my bed and stain-treated the blood on my sage green sheets. Loading them into the washer in my basement, I stepped around the body. I extracted the pieces I left in my feet overnight while I sat in the shower and put them in a Dixie cup. I washed myself, although I would need to shower again later. I went downstairs and dragged the stiff cadaver up my basement stairs and to my backyard. I don’t feel like I slept at all. The house’s tension had melted away. I needed to get flowers anyway to really complete my garden. I dug up the lifeless soil that needed to be tilled and made a 4 ft deep, 6 ft wide hole in the ground. I rolled him tiredly into the grave and covered him in soil and compost. Through deception, faux welcoming, and the unlocked door, the stranger had pried and prodded into the house on XXXX Tall Grass Circle. Somehow, the dead organism laid to rest in my dirt would not think his intrusion would be felt or acknowledged when he entered my home. Like the clueless fly that lands in the maws of a Venus fly trap witlessly, prey in the mouth of its predator, resting on the tongue, would be swallowed.
Up the stairs again and in the sanctity of my bathroom, I groaned in disgust at being covered in sweat again. The fabric I wore stuck to my skin. Hot water ran over my scalp, and my fingertips worked the shampoo through my water-pressure-flattened curls.
My house is awake and hungry, and every room is not an organ. I have come to realize that they are mouths. An open trap. The day had proceeded with ease. I went to the home improvement store around 6 in the morning. I picked out pretty perennials, pansies, cosmos, and chrysanthemum bushes. The underneath of my long fingernails are crusted with soil I tucked them into as the flowers were given their new home in my yard. I decorated the flower bed with stones and a pathway, leading up to the garden table I had finally put together earlier this week.
I don’t know how anyone could ever abandon this house. We leave our homes—these structures that we built that we are meant to inhabit until we die. What happens when we leave them? They age, the paint peels, and sometimes the foundation sinks. The house grows worn and weary. Too long unlived in, too long untouched.
Does it think? Dream? How does it feel about those who built it and passed it on or left it so abruptly with no notice? There is no time to grieve. It’s brought into existence like a birth, only to be abandoned and orphaned? When its usefulness is no longer relevant and it no longer serves a purpose for its occupants. The windowed eyes peer at other homes full of happy families inside, into the darkness at night of the streets and cul-de-sac. It looks inward into its own empty halls. When someone does come along, it must be overjoyed—someone is here, and I’m not alone. Each time they leave, the cycle starts over, and so does the pain and the hurt. The house creates creatures, figures, and shadows to walk its halls and rooms. Ghosts fill the silence with echoes of conversations, laughter, and whispers. The house’s body grinds as if it were its teeth, clenching its jaw. It asks what it did wrong, and it feels bitterness and anger.
So hungry and so protective of its current occupant that the doors unlock themselves. It may hunger, but the home will not starve. It is so empty that it desperately wishes to be loved the way it was loved before. It will sit. It will lie in wait. Doors open. Shades drawn.
Waiting to welcome me home.