Rot

Rot

Lark

The house was dying.

A broken, dilapidated thing left to bask in its own ruins. Rotted floors, molded walls with crumbling paper and a broken foundation. Every stitch in that house undone, ripped and ruined. A reminder of what was.

So, it did what any corner creature did when faced with death- it fought back.

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The woods were watching me.

There was a distinct awareness, a sense that I was not alone though there was not another soul within miles from me. A deep-rooted fear that made the hair at the back of my neck stand on end, and my heart pulsate with thick awareness. Fight or flight. Instincts I had long since thoughts were broken, coming to awareness like a black flag in the night. An undercurrent of fear that soaked into the air. With every rustle of wind through the trees. With every silent step taken forward where not even the soft sound of birds in flight met my ears.

There was something wrong with this forest.

Haunted. The locals had stated, so resolutely it was like asking if they believed in their Christian God. A place they never dared to venture: no matter how hungry, how desperate. But I was none of those. I wanted to be where no one else would dare venture, where no one would think to look for me. I wanted to be forgotten just as the ghosts of these silent woods have been.

And as if the woods had held its breath, the wind died, the leaves stopped their fluttering. An unnatural stillness just as a dilapidated structure came into view. What was once a house, now just rotted wooden beams stained with age. A moss-covered roof sunken into the structure, the walls bulging beneath the weight. Broken stone steps leading to a front door still held tightly in its frame, shining bright red in a sea of rot and ruin.

I could not help my steps forward anymore than Eve could help herself from forbidden fruit. It seemed almost- inevitable. A pull in my chest leading me to these very steps. An acumination of every choice in my life leading me to this moment. When my hand reaches out against smooth brass knob and my feet cross the threshold. Eyes settling on peeling wallpaper and weeping portraits. A pungent floral scent invading my senses, reminding me that nature had consumed this house.

My fingers trail against loose board and over fallen wall leaving only the bones of the house visible. A strong skeletal structure with flesh peeling from its bones. It is almost beautiful the way the house has stood the test of time. How plant life has started to blossom between loose floorboards and ivy clings to the frames of broken windowpanes.

Down the long hallway until a door at the end draws my attention. Chipped paint and water stains have damaged the once sturdy door, but a glint is what had caught my eye. A metal barricade bracketing the door. A lock. Placed on the outside of the room and reinforced so securely that even this broken affair has refused to touch the door. Those feelings return in force, I yank myself back, turning to expect to find something behind me, yet nothing appears. Still beams of light and dust motes meet my gaze, but that feeling does not waver. Does not release the relentless hold that feels like a stranglehold across my heart. I force myself to confront the door in front of me. Solid, looming. Except the lock still dangling from rusty loops that send a bitter shiver down my spine. It takes little force to break the lock. Red dust falling to the dark ground, and the creak of frozen hinges echoing in the silence. It opens without obstruction from the other side, as soon as I let go of the door it swings gently shut. The last streams of light taken with it. The space feels almost claustrophobic, the darkness permeating all wisps of light that can escape through cracks in the walls. My fingers are shaking as I find the matches within a pocket. It takes three times to light a flame, and the sight before me makes the match fall onto the damp floor. Numbness. Then only a wheezing gasp filters through the cotton that had filled my ears.

My breaths.

The darkness is all-consuming and a rough sob escapes my burning lungs. Fingers seize another match. A careless swipe and the room alights with its dim glow. Dark flecks branch in sprays of old crimson, patterning in tales of anguish. Thick pools amass on a wiry frame, a thin moth-bitten mattress sinking into the ground, infested with something far worse than the animal droppings scattering the ground. Carcasses in various degrees of decomposition litter the floor, pieces ripped and scattered around the room with fungi gripping across the marrow in blooms of reds and browns. A writhing mass coats the ground, and in stark realization, I realize the dampness is not from moss clinging to boards, but from thick maggots. Each step forward crushing the mass, revealing the coppery coat of layered blood beneath.

Not a dilapidated house left in ruins.

A graveyard.

I turn, slipping on the creatures, the matches burning the tips of my fingers. I light another, the sticks dwindling until two remain in the box. The flickering light landing upon a body. A rotting body with bones sticking from moss covered wounds, fungi growing between bone-white teeth in a too large maw. Revealed muscle pulling from an open jaw and ivy hanging around a bruised neck. Wide, blind eyes meet my own, a piercing icy gaze that sends ripples of fear down my spine. Pupilless. Hollow. I sprint towards the door, my hand closing around the handle. Squeeze, turn. But it remains unmoved. As useless as the corpses surrounding me.

The light begins to flicker and grow hot on numb fingers.

The last sight I have are of those haunting eyes meeting my own, and skeletal fingers reaching for my chest.

Pain and a sickening crunch in darkness.

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A beat.

And then another.

A steady thrum pulsating and moving, branching and looping through a wide expanse. And then an awareness of self, of being. Walls and floors and ceilings. Mold and rot within. A collapsed roof. Animals feeding, consuming, decaying.

Another thump.

A heartbeat.

Of rot.

Decay.

Dying.

Thriving.