*19 August, 2019*
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It was a wooden two bedroom apartment; and it was few feet from the graveyard. There were big trees that seemed to cover the house from the view of the sky. However, those trees were part of the ‘things’ that lived there. They were seen as parts of the ‘things’ that lived there because people, well, some people, couldn’t see why somebody would choose to build his or her house almost ten feet from a graveyard.
It was midnight, so the lights were switched off. And when the lights were switched off it were as if all the lives in that house were switched off too; you could barely see, two feet from you, the teeth of the person smiling next to you. The darkness in that house was, on it own, a life; it breathed whenever there was no light. So, your ears had to listen to only the beats of your heart, and your mind was however, supposed to be your eyes.
Outside the trees began to sway and dance to the rhythm of the wind; the wind had gone mad, tugging and removing anything out of its way while the thunder roared, struck and shook almost everything around that place. The house seemed like it was going to fly, fly and go high above the sky and lose itself there. The windowpanes cracked. Some of the bulbs from inside and outside of the house were already broken.
Mr. Bredford woke up, drew the blanket off him, and came down from the bed. He tried to switch on the bed lamp but when it came on, it flickered and went off. He drew open the bed drawer and took out his torchlight and switched it on. The light was dim, so he hit it on his left palm; it became bright, even brighter.
“Honey, what’s that you are playing with?” Kate muttered with her eyes closed.
He didn’t say anything because while she spoke, he thought he heard footsteps. But he wasn’t sure if what he heard were really footsteps. He stood up, and on his first step he stepped on pieces of a broken bulb. He was wounded. Bleeding even. But his curiosity or fear rather, would not allow him to check how was his foot. He wanted to be sure it were not footsteps he heard.
He tiptoed to the parlor. A small one though. He looked at every nook and corner in that parlor; and there he saw that not even bulbs, but the ceiling fan and even some of the glass cups were broken. But he didn’t see anybody or, he thought he didn’t see anybody. He hesitated; he wasn’t sure of himself. He turned to go back to the bedroom then the door creaked, opened and a gush of wind swooped in. He abruptly turned. The torchlight fell, broke and rolled away together with the batteries, the light off. The darkness breathed, became thick, and even thicker. He gasped, bent and trembled with his both hands. Objects clanked. He felt something scamper past him. He held his breath.
“Hello!” he called out.
More silence crept in. He half breathed in and out. His heart beat; but the beats were fainter than the touch of a new born baby’s. He sweated. He crawled, moved his hands and luckily, one stumbled upon something. It was the torchlight. Slowly though, he moved and felt something again; but it wasn’t hard; it was hot and soft and meaty-like. In fact, no matter how dead and flat and worn out batteries were supposed to be when they fell from a six feet height man, that’s even if they were supposed to be, he thought at least, they weren’t supposed to be softer and hotter than a fourteen year old girl’s breasts.
So as he knew that that couldn’t be what he was searching for, he wondered —and wondered just what could have been _that_. On lifting the thing from the ground he sniffed and it reeked, of blood of course. It was dripping. He threw it, crawled back and sat down. He whooshed. Then he felt something hard under him; it was one of the batteries. Carefully, he lifted one of his buttocks and carried it; but as he was about to put the battery, it fell and rolled again. He immediately traced where he thought he heard it rolled and luckily, he found both the two. Before he could finish putting them in the torchlight, he heard Kate screamed. A loud scream. He held the torchlight tight —he held it very tight like a hungry baby at his mother’s breasts.
He switched on the torchlight and he saw everywhere was almost smeared with blood. Even the walls too. He felt every pore open up and grow wider; each hole seemed to emit hot bubbling sweat, while from every nook and corner of his body his hair flinched and wrinkled. He thought he should turn and lit at where he threw, some minutes ago, what he couldn’t say was what yet. But he just knew that when he held it up he felt it was small and round —a small round hotter meaty-like thing. He thought he really should lit and check and confirm what really was that, but there was no time, and Kate was all what was important at the moment, so he ran to the bedroom.
On his stepping inside the bedroom he lit at her face; she froze. She was only able to point to him at a direction to the bedside, and shouted,
“There! There!! There!!!”
He quickly lit at the place. He saw it there. He saw the cat —their cat as it clawed and pawed with its fangs at a one eyed poor thing, at a very big but hopeless rat.
