The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

The House that Dorian Built  
by Alex Grehy

Brick by white brick Dorian built his fine townhouse,

its pillars of marble and pristine decoration spoke

of his power, said “here lives a man whose life

is important”; his virtues swirled round the rich paisley

patterns of the hand-printed wallpaper, stamped into

the grain of the oak parquet flooring. 

.

“A man of style lives here, of substance”, it said,

“who could doubt his means or his methods”?

.

In the woods Dorian’s house grows, sin by sin, oozing

organic from the loamy depths, hell-rooted it reaches,

hungry, for the fate-shadowed moon.

.

If a tree falls in the woods and there is no-one to hear,

did it make a sound? If a house stands in the wood and

there is no eye to see, does it really exist? 

.

So Dorian, philosopher, devoted to pleasure, believed.

.

But the forest has eyes of its own, and the house had a soul 

steeped in envy, craving the beauty of its respectable twin. 

The house that Dorian built with his misdeeds drew the 

gaze of the trees, begged the forest to testify and purge

it of evil, but that’s not how it works.

.

The magnificent townhouse mottled and warped as 

Dorian’s sins were witnessed and judged. Mildew

crept over the walls, toadstools sprang from the

rotten timber floors. Dorian, fair-faced still, but lost

in opium and lust, lay insensate as he was buried

in rubble and dust

.

Fiction © Copyright Alex Grehy
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

More from author Alex Grehy:

Alex Grehy’s (she/her) work has been published in a range of zines worldwide including Luna Station Quarterly, Aphotic Realm and The Sirens Call as well as anthologies published by Water Dragon Publishing and Red Penguin. Her essays on being a “Lady of Horror” have featured in the Horror Writers Association Newsletter and The Horror Tree blog. Her words are also available via a global network of prose & poetry dispensers run by French publisher Short Edition.  She is recognised for her original view of the world, expressed in vivid prose and thought-provoking poetry.

Please click here to discover more!