WRITTEN AND OWNED BY KRISTEN REID.
7, 6, 5, 4, 3… 2… 1… run… chirp… bubbles… breathing… keep them open… 500… stop. 7, 6, 5, 4, 3… 2… 1…
“Trent! Trent!” The voice pulls me out of the calculated sequence in frantic shouts that turn my bones to jello and melt my insides in acid with its pleas. “Trent! Trent! Please help!”
She’s here. It’s time. I glance at my watch, and yes, it is time. I collect myself at the realization that I prayed would not be happening, that the house had finished playing this little game, but wishful thinking; she’s perfectly on time.
As my gaze of indifference meets hers, she pulls me from the splintered floor and thrusts a finger into my neck all the way to the knuckle, twisting it as it goes in, but I don’t scream… I don’t turn away from her poisoned stare as blank as the void. She withdraws the finger, dripping in oily black fluid, and with it, marks something on the side of my cheek before licking it clean.
“Tre-eeeeent,” she sing-songs with her pearly whites gleaming in the blue glow of the room. As she backs away, I lean back on my hands and sit with my legs crossed before she begins. Her back meets the floral wallpaper wall and she digs her fingers into it, scratching at the pink flowers in a frantic fashion until her nails are bloodied. She stops with a jolt and turns her head to meet my eyes, a sharp crack once it’s in place, her smile stretched wide.
“Trent… save me…” she says, as her grimaced, toothy grin drops to a deep-set frown, almost like a caricature. I feel bile rising in my throat at the display, but keep my composure in tact as best I can. She walks back to me until she’s inches from my face and looks at me with lifeless eyes. “Run, baby… RUN.”
The floor cracks, and she screams while her eyes hold mine… It’s stifling hot, and there’s sweat pooling at every bend of my body. I feel nothing. I know nothing. With each cracking of the splintered floor that’s giving way to a black nothingness, I stare at my watch ticking with each second.
7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2… 1… I close my eyes.
I open my eyes and hear the chirping of the bluebird on the branch outside, sun coming in through the shattered glass with an expected warmness, but I don’t let myself feel it. I stand from my sitting position to watch the bird on the branch, until it begins singing the chaotic song of so many others inside one tiny bird. With each note sung, its voice adds fifty more voices, until the entirety of the area is filled with a cacophony of little daggered voices clamoring to be heard, and it shatters the glass further, almost opening this little piece of the world up to everything. I don’t cover my ears. I don’t turn away.
The bird tilts its head at me… staring into my eyes with its black, doll-like ones, then flies straight into the glass that remains in the window… a spot of blood dots where it hit. I stare at the lifeless body lying in the dead leaves outside the window. Another bird hits the pane with a hard thud, then another, then another, then another, another, another, until there are a thousand little thuds and a thousand little red dots and a thousand little corpses on dead leaves, and yet… I do not scream. I do not cry. I do not tear my eyes away.
The bodies rise, broken necks hanging crooked as they march forward in unison to the cabin through the windows that have now lost all the glass that separated me from the outside. They start their uproarious song again, only now they have Amy’s lungs, Danny’s lungs, Mother’s lungs, to draw their song from, yet I do not scream. I let their little feathered bodies surround my dirty, bare feet, and clamor up my legs with their sharp claws. It’s like a sea of blue flooding the floor up to my knees, as the little corpses consume my feet and calves as if I have stepped into a knee-deep lake. I wiggle my toes under the mound and feel sharpness from beaks, and softness from feathers. They lick their beaks of the blood, and I lick my lips at the sudden taste of copper in my mouth. The sun outside has been stolen behind the mounds of dead birds, leaving the cabin bathed in utter darkness. I look at my watch.
7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2… 1… I close my eyes.
I open my eyes. I’m in the hallway, with black circles covering the walls. I never reach into them. I do not wish to know their depths. There’s the sink at the end of the hallway and one single light bulb in the stark-white, tiled room. I walk up to it and watch as it turns on, shooting out in spurts. The clear liquid morphs into a thick, deep red as it gurgles and coagulates in the ceramic bowl. It bubbles into a mound and begins running off the edges, dropping in clotted clumps onto the floor, and I squish my toes into the stringy texture, feeling the slippery smooth floor it creates beneath me. I turn my eyes to the tub by the left wall. It runs with the same sticky, red liquid, but then it shuts off. I watch as bubbles begin forming on top, with abstract, soapy shapes. I feel myself being pulled over to its edge but not into it. I sit down beside the tub and trail a hand in the soapy bubbles of the bath. The soap bubbles turn soft pink, like billowing fluffs of cotton candy, and I want to stick my head into the tub and sink my teeth into the sudsy metallic-laced foam, to feel it squish with soapy pops between my teeth and tongue. I want to let the copper sting of it spark my taste buds and leave a thick film in my mouth with its devilish contents, but I do not. I do not scream. I do not leave. I sit there and watch the pink bubbles pop above the dark red beneath.
A flutter brushes like a dark kiss at my left ear, and I turn my eyes to a black moth sitting atop the ceramic sink that is still gushing with red. Another joins its mate and the two dance atop the sides of the sink. I stare at their cavorting, as my hand dips down into the tub, feeling the contents cling to my fingers and coat my hand, so I wiggle it loosely and let the warm thickness join to each crevice and crack in my skin. The moths join into one form, and it dances up from the sink to the top of the room, attaching to the ceiling with its legs, hanging upside down. The lone lightbulb in the room flickers as the moth inches over to it. I want to scream now. I wantto tell it to leave the room, because I can feel the heat of the bulb on my skin… it will burn. I want to grab the moth and conceal it in my grasp, but my mouth forms a silent shriek, and the moth attaches to the bulb, melting against the glass of it until the light shatters, and I look at my watch.
7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2… 1… I close my eyes.
It’s dark. There’s no light to be found. I know where I’m going though, I can feel it. I can hear its gruff breathing getting closer with each step, the kind that should send shivers down someone’s spine, yet I do not shiver. I keep walking. The sharp, strangled retching echoes through the room that I’m in now, and the whoosh of the door closing behind me stops the noise at once. I do not scream. I do not cry. It’s in the corner this time, and its breathing has resumed to a quick pace, like it can’t get air in fast enough and it’s shifting, shifting, shifting… walking upside down over towards me, feet stuck straight in the air in sharp points. My throat tightens, and I rake at it with my fingers to free myself from the feeling. The air can’t get into my lungs fast enough, reflecting the creature’s strangled noises. I feel its breath coming in raggedly against my left ear. It’s sickening sweet words enticing me with a quick end that wraps me up in a blanket rotting from moth-eaten holes. I do not feel warm. I do not scream. I feel the cold caress of razor fingers against my mouth, but I keep my eyes open. The darkness of the room is as much as it would be with them closed. I want to have them open.
“Close. Close. Cloooooooose. Close them,” It creaks out in disjointed voices, spilling in sharp anger from its lips. I do not close them. I stare into the darkness. “CLOSE THEM.”
I shake my head. I wish for light to see my watch, and I try to suck air into my achingly tight lungs. The floor breaks and a small light appears in the top corner of the room, floating around like a lightning bug, revealing only a jagged form of the creature hunched over me, neck sunken in to reveal a bony spine, its breathing coming in short puffs. I glance at my watch.
7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2… 1.
The room spins and drops me down a hole, the creature sucked back into the corner with the lightning bug. My breathing returns to normal and I’m in a red room with letters written all over the walls, the random characters from the alphabet scribbled in frantic fashion. I know where my area is. I walk right to it. There it is. Five hundred tally marks drawn, five hundred counting the days, now five hundred and one counting. Counting, counting, counting, always counting. I sink down into the floor, pulling my dirt smeared legs up under me and hold my head in my hands.
The same images come in, yet I do not push them out this time. I let them in. The lone cabin, a black door, but no way out, a locked door without a knob, unbreakable windows… stuck. I see images of Amy, the bathtub, her red soaked butterfly top, the razored wrists sloped over the edges of the white sides. Danny, his windshield broken to give way for his body to land outside on the hard pavement, one dot of red to mark his exit. Mother, not quick enough to run from the fire licking at our red floral walls, as I ran outside the house, holding the phone for 911.
I feel the walls begin to crack open as I sit in the room with scribbles on the walls, and I pull my hand up to look at my watch. A black moth lands on my finger and bites it, drawing blood. I do not feel it. I do not run. I cannot leave.
7, 6, 5, 4, 3… 2… 1…
FOR THE AUTHOR'S ANALYSIS AND MORE INFORMATION ON THIS PIECE, PLEASE SEE THE SEPARATE ADJACENT POST TO THIS ONE (TITLED "AN AUTHOR'S ANALYSIS: 'THE BLACK SOUL HOUSE'") BELOW OR ON THE "THE BLACK SOUL HOUSE" PAGE.