My House of Horrors

“Is this animal abuse or human abuse?” The cruelty and savagery that the pictures portrayed made the drunkard uncomfortable. He shoved the pictures back into the drawer without looking through all of them. As he pulled his hands back, he suddenly felt something wet and sticky on his palm. Using the phone to see, the drunkard’s eyes jumped. His palms were wet with reddish-black blood.

“But I haven’t touched anything other than the pictures? Could the blood have seeped out from the pictures?” Standing alone in the strange room, with things scurrying in the corridor, the wind chime singing, and a mop-like monster blocking the front door… even if the drunkard had one hundred times his courage, he would not have left the room.

“The monster that threw the dog fur out of the window was on the second floor, and this room was the furthest from the stairs, so it should be the safest room.” He did not dare to leave, worried that the monster would be right outside the door once he opened it. However, he could not help but panic, staying inside the room. “But why would the pictures leak blood? I should have accidentally brushed against a certain part of the drawer, or maybe there’s a hidden compartment inside the door.”

Summoning his courage, the drunkard yanked the last drawer off its hinges and placed it on the ground. This time, he clearly saw that there were indeed the pictures inside the drawer.

“Wait, so did the blood really come from the pictures?” His assumption was overruled, and there was a sudden urge for him to escape from the room. His eyes fell on the pictures, and the drunkard noticed something strange. In all the pictures where the man was abused, the man’s face was hidden, but in all the pictures where the man was abusing the animal, when the animals were on their last breath, there would be a hand gripping the animals’ neck, turning their heads to the camera like the man was brandishing his victory spoils.

“Such a maniac.” Perhaps he had been staring at the pictures for far too long, but the drunkard suddenly noticed that all the animals in the pictures seemed to be smiling.

“This is the first time that I’ve seen such an expression on an animal, or I think they should be smiling, right? A smiling dog?” The drunkard shivered. He did not dare get any closer to the pictures on the ground. He looked around, and the longer he stayed in the room, the more scared he became. “How come it feels like this place is scarier than the one from before?”

He rubbed his hands on the bed, trying to rub the blood stain away, but his fingers touched something else. After some hesitation, he pulled the bedsheet back, and the stench hit him like a wall. On the mattress of the wooden bed, there was a human-shaped blood pool that had already dried.

From the shape alone, he could tell the victim must have been in great pain before he perished. The blood splatter exploded around the stomach. It looked as if the victim had been pounced on by some kind of beast, and the beast had torn open his stomach and neck.

The drunkard was a salesman; he had not experienced something like this before. His body petrified, and his brain went into shut down. His scalp was numb, and a blast of air was rushing out of his lungs. At the last minute, he bit on his own hands to stop himself from screaming.

“Someone has died in this room! This bed is his last resting place!” This conclusion came easily. He did not dare stay there any longer. For a man who lived in a peaceful world, this was the first time the drunkard had come so close to an actual murder. His eyes darted about, and he finally came to after a long time. The first thing he did was toss the bedsheet away.

His eyes moved to his feet, and the animals’ faces seared into his mind. “That dog is smiling; he is really laughing! I’m not mistaken!”

The drunkard was a bit crazed from all the scares, but this was not his fault. After waking up inside the bus, it felt like his whole world had changed. He had not experienced anything like this before, not even in his nightmares.

“I need to leave this place; I cannot stay here anymore!” The drunkard leaned against the wall and walked to the window. He gripped the curtain, but he did not have the courage to pull it back, worried what he might see behind it.

His heart was gripped by hesitation, and his legs were shaking. As Murphy’s Law stated, what one wished would not happen would always happen. A strange sound came from inside the room—it sounded like a rat chomping on something.

“It sounds like it’s coming from underneath the bed…” The drunkard was not crazy enough to bend down to look under the bed. When the noise grew too loud, he yanked the curtain back.

The bedroom window was already half open. Through the window, when the drunkard looked out, a face was looking in. The black hair that looked like cloth plastered on the face and the pale head was trying its best to squeeze through the window!

PA!

The drunkard used all of his strength to slam the window shut, creating a loud noise. His brain was drawing a blank, and it was his body’s reactive nerves that compelled him to slam the window shut.

The head slithered up the thin glass of the window. Its lips opened and closed slowly, and the last few remaining teeth ground against the glass as if it was saying, “I’ve finally found you.”

After locking the window, the drunkard felt like he had exhausted all the energy he had. He collapsed to the ground and looked up at the head at the window. Before he could recover, he felt something wet staining his pants; the sudden cold sensation made him uncomfortable.

With a shuddering gaze, he turned his head down to look. He had fallen on top of the pictures, and blood was spreading on his pants.

Other than that, the drunkard noticed that all the animals’ head had gone missing from the pictures where the animals were abused. The reddish-black blood was seeping out of the stumps where their heads should be.

The drunkard felt the air being sucked out of his lungs, and he crawled swiftly away.

BANG! BANG!

The human head knocked against the window, but the drunkard was not going to take a look. He forced himself up and ran back into the house.

“Help, help, where are all the other people‽” He crawled back into the corridor, intending to find a different room to hide, but once he got out, he saw a shadow leaning at the corner of the stairs leading to the second floor. It looked like a dog but also like a man!

“What is that‽” Too afraid to get close to the stairs, the drunkard turned and hid inside the closest room. He closed the door without even realizing what kind of room it was. He locked the door and gasped hungrily for air while leaning on the door. For a normal person, he was already quite mentally strong considering the experience that he had been through.

“No, I can’t die here! I need to leave and group up with the rest!” The drunkard now realized how important it was to stick together. He moved the table to block the door and started to observe his surroundings.

A stove, a fridge, and a large kitchen cupboard.

“Is this the kitchen?” The drunkard looked around and realized that this was not good for him. He had entered the kitchen, and the worst thing was that there was no window in this room.

“It’s over.”

There was the sound of glass shattering coming from outside, and the wind chime in the corridor screamed even louder. The drunkard refused to give up. Compelled by a strong will to survive, he started to rummage through the kitchen to look for anything useful.