Troubling, or should I say troubled. Each time I walked past him I felt an urge to do horrible things. This was never a sudden urge but more or less, it grew. It grew from the moment I turned the corner of the street and it would never stop, never. Mad? How could I be mad? It was just a feeling, but I wanted it to stop but for it to stop, I’d have to do terrible things, horrifying things! Insane? But I couldn’t be…
I don’t know how this feeling come to me, the old man had never once crossed my path. He would greet me each day and sometimes we would chat but despite all this, despite the old man being ever so kind, I couldn’t live with it. Perhaps he held a dark secret that was exerting bad vibes. I needed to know. I needed to know where and why my heart filled with darkness and troubling thoughts each time I past. To be truthful, I hadn’t always felt like this, in fact the feeling has been recent, the last month or so I believe. No matter who he was, no matter how kind he was, I cannot live with this feeling, I must rid of it. Murder? Ha! Only a madmen would commit such a deed. I would merely be ridding of my thoughts. I was smart. Smart enough to infiltrate his house. Smart enough to get in and out each night without being detected. Without leaving a single trace. He had no idea, not one idea that the blood shot in my eye were because each night I would stay up, scouring his house, each night a different room. Never would he know, he would always be asleep, heavily asleep and even if he were a light sleeper, not one floorboard creaked under my soft step.
It started when the feelings grew too much, when I didn’t even need to turn the corner to be filled with a dystopian heart. He was old, he didn’t would accept his life coming to an end and he was crooked. Why would a man prepared to welcome death with open arms close all the windows? It was the perfect opportunity and so each night, through the same window I crept. I stuck to the shadows and the moonlight peering through as if it were a watchtower but I never let touched it my skin. I would search, first the corridors, then the ground floor rooms. Each night was a different area, and I NEVER left anywhere untouched. I searched draws, behind counters, in cupboards. Something, something must’ve been there, anything! Anything to cure this disease that plagues my body with horror! But nothing of the sort was found. Each door, each draw, each piece of oak floor that I slither around on I would expect to find an object to double the feelings, but then when disposed of leave them alone, but as I said, nothing was found. The old man had an attic and a basement, and the house itself was not that of a typical horror scene, but more the type of house that cannot be tended to because the owner isn’t capable and well, the floor boards loved to sing when I entered, but I would move ever so slowly, slower than time itself almost simply so I couldn’t be heard. If anything were to be found, it must be in the basement. His attic were full of insulation.
The fourth night come and again I would pursue my nightly routine and enter the decrepit hell. Did I like this feeling? This nightmare that would fill my veins when entering this place of torment? But that would lead me to be insane and weird? I was neither of these, so how could I like it. Tonight was the night, I would enter the basement. Death? Despair? Possibly the gripping horror I was looking for. It must be! Tonight was the night, I felt the excitement overwhelming the terror. Down the stairs I went and with a bouncy urge to break through the door and be free, but I was stronger than to let my inner beast run wild. I kept the urge back and cautiously open the door for a gap so small that one with normal eyes could not see but with newly founded powers this house have given me, I could see, but what could I see? Bodies? Some form of fix perhaps? But no, just eternal darkness that consumed the light. I needed to see, to check if anything could help but I couldn’t turn on a light, it would be too dangerous and I would be exposed and all this time spent would be wasted. Yet, I had to… The urge broke free and the excitement come flying out and as I swung the door open but still to catch out to prevent a noise, I closed it. Quickly throwing it closed but as it come to connect with the door frame, going ever so slowly. Shaking. I was shaking, from excitement? Fear? I knew it! I had found it, the final piece to this puzzle! No more would I need to suffer this misery. No light could leave, so I held my finger on the light switch, but I paused. I stood completely still as if someone had frozen space and time itself, and I froze. Did I really want to rid of this feeling? What would I think to myself, what would I do each night. It felt like I’d been coming in here for an eternity, only to search for the cause, and did I really want to find the cause and become normal again? You’d be mad to call me mad, but for some seconds I felt like ending my night here, but I had come so close, so very close and I couldn’t now. I closed my eyes, I took a deep breath and released the thoughts trapped within my mind. I was on a mission and I reached the goal. It’s time to end this nightmare. I pressed steadily with my finger, but it wasn’t enough, I pushed my palm against the button, but it wouldn’t switch. It was tough, really tough. It felt like a force were preventing me from turning on the light, almost like something was hiding in the darkness and didn’t want me to see. I pushed, harder, with my body weight. My pupils sharpened, I closed my eyes because they hurt and needed time to adjust. The light was on, my eyes closed and body facing toward the door. A mark left on my palm from the pressure. I counted in my head, 1...2...3. All the way up to ten. I opened my eyes to see the dark coloured door and concrete floor. The excitement that vanished from me had come back, almost that of the excitement of a child waiting to unwrap his presents. I heard a clock chime, I left at midnight and so I must’ve been here an hour now.
I took my last deep breath and turned my body in full swing. No. No it couldn’t be! I had this feeling from the start and I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it! The excitement that filled me? Well now came the antonym of excitement. I felt an anger, a force so strong that I needed to get out, and quickly. I turned to the door and put my hand on the knob. I turned, shaky palms, slowly becoming sweaty, I turned the knob, and I got myself through the door. I closed the door ever so slowly, slower than I had opened it. I was thinking, but about nothing… Thoughts of emptiness were consuming my mind. I let go, leaving the door ever so slightly ajar. I got out, through the window and went home, in fact I ran home. I sat down and cried, took my pills and went to sleep.
The fifth and final night, I knew what I had to do all along to cure my pain, but I didn’t want it to be true, I led myself to believe there were another way, hence the scouring of the old man’s house. But from a day of mind-consuming thoughts, I had come to the conclusion. He had to die. You see, when I turned in the basement, what I saw was, well how would I describe it, paralyzing… The first thing that caught my eye was the grand-father clock. It stood tall and proud, but it was left down in the basement. Why? That I don’t know, perhaps too much noise, however it wasn’t the cure I was looking for. I noticed after the grand-father clock the one ever so straightforward phenomenon that I did NOT want to see. I saw, space. Tonnes and tonnes of emptiness. The basement, was empty. That, lead me to the conclusion, that it wasn’t the house that gave me eerie feelings, but instead it was the man. The way he looked at me and smiled, the way he were so kind to a neighbourhood stranger. I had to do the deed.