Do you remember when... #012
... there was something in your empty house? Tiny second-person horror in 500 words!
Welcome to your weekly freaky, your bite-sized fright, your room in the gloom.
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This week we’re popping back into the series of tiny horrors drawn from your memories. Don’t forget to vote afterwards on whether you have blanked this one or if it still lives rent-free in your head.
I’m not making this up. This story really is pulled from your memory, whether you accept it or not.
Previous memories:
Do you remember when there was something in your empty house?
Doors locked, windows closed, night was falling. You were alone. That didn’t happen often. Getting time to yourself was a rarity, something to be savoured, even celebrated. Maybe you’d take a bath and enjoy the quiet. Maybe you’d put on music as loud as you wanted. It was good to be alone.
And, moving through the happy silence, you stopped.
Something else was with you. Something was nearby, trying to be unseen.
The feeling was like a centipede over your skin, light, delicate, crawling fast, skittering up your sleeves, then gone, leaving only the itch to tell you it happened.
Frozen, you waited. You held your breath. Your ears ached, heartbeat loud with the strain of listening for the thing’s movement, the thing that a deep sense told you must be there. It is a ‘thing’, not a person, the reptilian part of your brain screams. No person could be so silent, so dead-feeling.
The air turned so cold your breath should’ve hung in a cloud before you. You expected the vapor to stir as an invisible hand moved through it, brushing it away, taunting you with this vague sign of its unseen passage.
A faint tap, or was it a creak? Like a pencil falling, or leather cushions adjusting to weight. It came from another room, or it could have been outside, or from a neighbour, was it in the house? You cocked your head, urging the thing to make another sound, wishing it remained silent forever.
Any second now it will rush at you, wailing from the darkness, ragged arms held out, flesh broken and weeping, pale, wasted, filled with despair and rage and fear, stinking of sour things and river mud, wet and rotting limbs, wrapping around your body your face your legs stopping you from running from breathing from yelling for help in the deserted rooms.
It did not come.
Tip-toeing to the kitchen, you found a weapon—a knife, scissors, a rolling pin, a pan, you don’t remember what—and wielded it before you as you slinked through the empty rooms.
The house—your house, you reminded yourself, although it didn’t feel like you belonged there—didn’t feel merely ‘empty’: it became ‘abandoned’, the other occupants fled, and only you were foolish enough to remain there that night.
Moving from room to room, you checked the doors, you checked the windows. You had to touch each of them. It wasn’t enough to believe your eyes. Your touch cast the magic spell, making them real.
With each room, you told yourself it was your imagination, yet you kept on looking.
In the end, you found nothing, but your senses told you to not rest, never rest. After you had searched, it must have moved, filling the checked spaces, making them unsafe again.
Doors locked, windows closed, night had fallen. You were alone, and waited alone—weapon at hand—until others returned to fill the void with real, human life.
The end
Alrighty, that’s it from me this week.
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The world is *checks news* still on fire, so we all have to fill it with love and kindness however you can, as hard as you can. Horror fans are the loveliest bunch, so let’s teach the world that the only good place for horror is in fiction.
Love to you all, go be kind and spooky,
Mata
xxx
I appreciate the second person perspective representation. You don't see it much.
That feeling, of your ears straining, struggling to turn toward a sound like they would on another animal... Only one who was very scared and very alone in a dark place could remember it!