The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
A Fresh Start
by Elaine Pascale
Louise had rented the apartment sight unseen. She needed a fresh start; she reminded herself of this fact when her confidence wavered. This would be a fresh start away from John as well as a way to rescue her autonomy, rescue herself. When she pulled up to the leasing office for the keys, she felt a surge of hope.
Until the manager told her about the door.
“It stays locked,” he said about the portal between her bedroom and the kitchen.
“It’s not an exit?”
The manager considered this. “You’ve got one of those. Two, if you count the front door, but most think of that as an entrance.”
Louise decided that the locked door was an eccentricity belonging to an old house that had been carved into apartments. She wouldn’t let its oddness put a damper on her fresh start.
Until she heard the scratching that sounded as if it were coming from the other side of the door.
“Just a mouse, probably,” she told herself during her first few days in the residence. The sounds were loudest at night and she attributed that to her nerves. She had never lived alone and fresh starts came with learning curves. As such, she was able to convince herself of the nothingness of the sounds.
Until they seemed to be accompanied by a low growl. She knew that mice didn’t growl and she called the management office to send someone to check.
“We can come next month, maybe fumigate,” the manager said. “But none of our people go behind that door. It stays locked.”
Louise didn’t like the sound of that. Certainly the management company would have access to all parts of the building? She caught a neighbor carrying laundry from the basement and asked about the door and the noises and the management company and all of the weirdness of the old building.
“I don’t hear anything,” the neighbor replied, appearing annoyed at being waylaid with her laundry.
Louise tried another tack. “You lived here long?”
“A couple of years.”
“The person who rented before me—”
“Didn’t know them.” The neighbor brushed past, seemingly finished with the conversation.
“But the door,” Louise called after her.
“It stays locked,” the woman called back before disappearing into her private space.
The noises prevented Louise from sleeping and it felt as if it would take forever for management to arrive. She had begun calculating if it was at all possible financially to abandon the place for a fresher fresh start somewhere else when John came to her door. He was returning a few items she had left behind.
Despite wanting a fresh start more than anything, the sight of him at her door was a relief. He was familiar and his presence was comforting. She invited him inside and as they talked, she remembered how well she had slept in his home. As she poured some wine and talked some more, she realized that the sun had set, but the sounds were not apparent with John present.
Knowing that it was the antithesis of a fresh start, she invited John to spend the night. When she woke in the middle of the night, she saw that John was no longer in her bed. She got up and looked around, finally seeing a large shadowy figure in the kitchen.
She took his arm and began guiding him from the kitchen to the bedroom. She felt safe, tucked against his body.
Until she realized that the body she clung to was not John’s.
It was too tall, too thin, and much too cold. She tried to pull her arm free but this person, this thing, held her tightly. It was as if they were now conjoined.
She wanted to scream, to call for help, but fear and the sulfuric essence of the figure accompanying her silenced any noise she could make.
The figure brought her to the door, the one that remained shut, and it opened it.
It was dark but she could make out a rocking chair in the center of the room. There was also a body crumpled in the corner. The moon peering through the small ceiling window confirmed it was John, covered in blood.
“Your offering is here,” the shadow figure said in the growl that had become familiar to her.
The door closed behind her and she knew it was to remain shut with her inside.
She had wanted a fresh start, yet she recognized that this would be her end. And with John’s body eviscerated and lying in the corner, the vibe, and the air, in the small room was anything but fresh.
.
Fiction © Copyright Elaine Pascale
Image courtesy of Pixaby.com
More from Elaine Pascale:
The Kitchen Witches
The women of Cape Cod have a story that is dying to be told. If only they could live long enough to tell it.
When Fiona Walker is contracted to write about a party attended by her social circle, her friends begin dying. She captures the competition and misery of the women around her through three different stories.
In Wishes, Melanie Voss discovers a Time Between Time where nothing that happens counts. Initially, Time Between Time is a welcome escape from a life spent watching the clock while doing chores for her family. But something sinister is in the Time Between Time and it is headed straight for Melanie.
Death and Taxes tells the story of Nashville DeCota, the Cape Capo. Nash swears that she is not the Island Impaler, nor the Tooth Snatcher, but she has just as many skeletons in her closet. When her husband, Derrick, is kidnapped, she has to come clean about her crimes if she ever wants to see him again.
Fiona tells her own story in Hazing, where she finds that the real source of evil behind the deaths of her friends is worse than she could have ever imagined.
