MicroHorror

Leaves, moldy and discolored, lay spread across the threshold. This gave my usually confident footfalls a momentary pause, as if the refuse were collectively trying to forbid my entry.

Glancing behind me, I took in the entirety of the decrepit yard. It stared back at me with its vast and impersonal countenance. The once majestic iron gates had long since lost their imperiousness, and were now meaningless and rusted wrecks. The formerly robust and thriving landscape had become a handful of barren and twisted trees, dotted here and there with clumps of yellowed and dried grasses. Everything within view, it seemed, had some time ago given up the will to live.

Turning back towards the edifice before me, I found this observation included the mansion as well. Its bricks were faded and sickly, its windows either cracked or shattered, and its open doorframe exposed its naked interior to the world. Where once was a bold and impervious front, only a desolate and barren shell, an ancient illusion, remained.

Emboldened, I dared a single step inside, finding the atmosphere to be infinitely darker and colder than outside conditions warranted. For the next few seconds, I gauged nothing save for the dusty floor and the blotched walls, but this too proved only an illusion.

Like a creeping rot, the Evil began to stir within the foundation of the structure. It emanated from the walls like a toxic cloud, reaching out towards my body as if it were a pet yearning for its master. I knew full well which of us would be serving the other.

Nevertheless, I allowed the Evil to reach out and grasp me. It swirled crazily about my form as if it were a pack of dogs gripped by bloodlust, ready to confuse me with its deceptions, to tantalize me with its readily available carnal temptations, and ultimately, to corrupt me with its promises of power and grandeur. And I, after a multitude of dejections and failures, was all too eager to give audience to its hollow and meaningless diatribe. Too eager to participate in the mansion’s wicked schemes.

A single female hand, tinged a deep and clammy blue, formed from within the malicious mist. With sharp red fingernails, the hand hovered to me, anxiously reaching out to caress my chest. The cold fingers next ran down the length of my arm, snaring my own hand and drawing me, ever so gently, further into the merciless clutches and inner workings of the residence.

Although I realized this to be nothing less than a demon’s handshake, I found myself unable, even unwilling, to resist. For I had been away for quite some time, and wasn’t this my home, my true home, that I was now standing in?