Haunted House
folder
Drama › General
Rating:
Adult +
Chapters:
1
Views:
770
Reviews:
0
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Category:
Drama › General
Rating:
Adult +
Chapters:
1
Views:
770
Reviews:
0
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Disclaimer:
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The Author holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.
Haunted House
Title: Haunted House
Note: This was the first in a series of self-imposed writing prompts, and features original characters from my own comic/fiction series, Apostasy...Now?!
It is a funny world that we live in...
Once upon a time, you were a man, with your own life, and your own plans, but somehow, you have become a sort of ghost. You drift from room to hall to room in your own house, seeing everything and owning nothing...
There is the staircase that she fell down in the first year of your marriage. Lots of other things have happened on those steps, and are happening still, like the other day when there was a kite tangled around the banisters, and no one was forthcoming with an answer as to how it got there. However, you have always thought of that one moment as the defining moment of those stairs, if not your entire life...
She had been wearing the kind of heels that would have made your mother cry, and she had stumbled. Laundry had rained down, reds and purples, and a couple of your shirts that weren't either before the load went it, and then she had followed after with her perfect, glittering nails raking helplessly at the banister.
You had been passing into the kitchen to fetch the milk that the doctor had given you because her body was not forthcoming properly. It had been 3:48 in the afternoon. It had seemed so natural -- your arm around her waist as she slumped against you... At this angle, she had been a little shorter than you for a change, and seemed to have forgotten that she did not like to be touched.
She had tilted her head back towards you, and smiled. The smile had turned to a snort, which had eventually succumbed to laughter. You both stood there, intertwined, and laughing, at the foot of the stairs, seemingly forever. Then, the baby had wailed from somewhere upstairs, and she had pulled away.
Moment over.
Moment passed.
Your arms still feel cold and numb now, even after all of these years.
You ignore the staircase after that, and follow the trail of picture frames to the door at the end of the hall.
Your son is sitting on his bed, propped against the headboard and pillows, reading a book in his intense way. Everything he does is performed at an extreme of boredom or intensity, and sometimes, as is now, he seems to manage both. He is frowning like his mother, and chewing on a mouthful of his obscenely dyed hair.
Sometimes it hurts for you to look at this boy; to see your failings as a husband, as a father, and as a man; looking back at you through her face and eyes so similar to your own.
Across the room, his lover is sitting in the floor, with his legs folded beneath him, in a way that looks almost painful, like a girl in one of those comic books they both read. He is doing something with a pencil sharpener that requires the use of a screwdriver, and he is holding a penlight clenched between his teeth.
Neither one of them is speaking, and that bothers you. It reminds you of too many cold dinners and even more silent nights that would eventually become and empty table and a cold bed.
Suddenly, the young man in the floor curses and releases the flashlight. It hits the floor and the bulb shatters as blood wells up on the back of his hand. Concern draws your son's eyebrows together he slides off the end of the bed, the book falling forgotten on the bed. Kneeling between his legs, he takes his bleeding hand between his smaller ones. Tugging it out of the boy's reach, his lover holds it to his own lips, sucking a little to staunch the blood flow.
Inevitably, their lips gravitate towards one another, and the injured hand falls between them, completely forgotten. You watch with an unidentifiable feeling growing in your chest as your son gently presses his lover onto his back on the floor.
Unable to take any more of this, you turn away. Moving blindly down the darkened hall, you stop suddenly near its end. For a second, you can see her standing there, at the foot of the stairs, locked in your arms and laughing. When you blink, the illusion is dispelled, and all you see is your own reflection in the mirror near the front door.
When the phone rings, you turn to look at the receiver left sitting on the hall table. You stare at it a full seven rings before answering.
Her voice is quiet at the other end, subdued. She is crying, and she wants you to come and get her. She doesn’t have any money and her latest and greatest has left her on the corner near a shelter for run-away girls. You think this is interesting in a detached way, because didn’t' this one actually marry her for a change? And how fitting, because that's what she will always be, deep down inside: a run-away girl. She sniffles a little, and asks again for you to come and get her.
You haven't said a word yet, so she whispers your name. A long pause, and then she tries again, asking this time for your son.
Slowly, numbly, and deliberately, you hang up the phone.
Looking up, you see your son in the doorway.
"'Who was that?"
"...Wrong number."
You can feel your own eyes dissecting you from that face, can feel her mouth twitching into a frown. You don't look up as you drop the dead cordless onto the table.
"It was Mom, wasn't it?"
"...No one was home." You murmur, before carefully making your way up the stairs.
Note: This was the first in a series of self-imposed writing prompts, and features original characters from my own comic/fiction series, Apostasy...Now?!
It is a funny world that we live in...
Once upon a time, you were a man, with your own life, and your own plans, but somehow, you have become a sort of ghost. You drift from room to hall to room in your own house, seeing everything and owning nothing...
There is the staircase that she fell down in the first year of your marriage. Lots of other things have happened on those steps, and are happening still, like the other day when there was a kite tangled around the banisters, and no one was forthcoming with an answer as to how it got there. However, you have always thought of that one moment as the defining moment of those stairs, if not your entire life...
She had been wearing the kind of heels that would have made your mother cry, and she had stumbled. Laundry had rained down, reds and purples, and a couple of your shirts that weren't either before the load went it, and then she had followed after with her perfect, glittering nails raking helplessly at the banister.
You had been passing into the kitchen to fetch the milk that the doctor had given you because her body was not forthcoming properly. It had been 3:48 in the afternoon. It had seemed so natural -- your arm around her waist as she slumped against you... At this angle, she had been a little shorter than you for a change, and seemed to have forgotten that she did not like to be touched.
She had tilted her head back towards you, and smiled. The smile had turned to a snort, which had eventually succumbed to laughter. You both stood there, intertwined, and laughing, at the foot of the stairs, seemingly forever. Then, the baby had wailed from somewhere upstairs, and she had pulled away.
Moment over.
Moment passed.
Your arms still feel cold and numb now, even after all of these years.
You ignore the staircase after that, and follow the trail of picture frames to the door at the end of the hall.
Your son is sitting on his bed, propped against the headboard and pillows, reading a book in his intense way. Everything he does is performed at an extreme of boredom or intensity, and sometimes, as is now, he seems to manage both. He is frowning like his mother, and chewing on a mouthful of his obscenely dyed hair.
Sometimes it hurts for you to look at this boy; to see your failings as a husband, as a father, and as a man; looking back at you through her face and eyes so similar to your own.
Across the room, his lover is sitting in the floor, with his legs folded beneath him, in a way that looks almost painful, like a girl in one of those comic books they both read. He is doing something with a pencil sharpener that requires the use of a screwdriver, and he is holding a penlight clenched between his teeth.
Neither one of them is speaking, and that bothers you. It reminds you of too many cold dinners and even more silent nights that would eventually become and empty table and a cold bed.
Suddenly, the young man in the floor curses and releases the flashlight. It hits the floor and the bulb shatters as blood wells up on the back of his hand. Concern draws your son's eyebrows together he slides off the end of the bed, the book falling forgotten on the bed. Kneeling between his legs, he takes his bleeding hand between his smaller ones. Tugging it out of the boy's reach, his lover holds it to his own lips, sucking a little to staunch the blood flow.
Inevitably, their lips gravitate towards one another, and the injured hand falls between them, completely forgotten. You watch with an unidentifiable feeling growing in your chest as your son gently presses his lover onto his back on the floor.
Unable to take any more of this, you turn away. Moving blindly down the darkened hall, you stop suddenly near its end. For a second, you can see her standing there, at the foot of the stairs, locked in your arms and laughing. When you blink, the illusion is dispelled, and all you see is your own reflection in the mirror near the front door.
When the phone rings, you turn to look at the receiver left sitting on the hall table. You stare at it a full seven rings before answering.
Her voice is quiet at the other end, subdued. She is crying, and she wants you to come and get her. She doesn’t have any money and her latest and greatest has left her on the corner near a shelter for run-away girls. You think this is interesting in a detached way, because didn’t' this one actually marry her for a change? And how fitting, because that's what she will always be, deep down inside: a run-away girl. She sniffles a little, and asks again for you to come and get her.
You haven't said a word yet, so she whispers your name. A long pause, and then she tries again, asking this time for your son.
Slowly, numbly, and deliberately, you hang up the phone.
Looking up, you see your son in the doorway.
"'Who was that?"
"...Wrong number."
You can feel your own eyes dissecting you from that face, can feel her mouth twitching into a frown. You don't look up as you drop the dead cordless onto the table.
"It was Mom, wasn't it?"
"...No one was home." You murmur, before carefully making your way up the stairs.