#nightmare!bec

the house is just as your memory promised you. It's empty and cold and filled with a space you had never realized in your youth. You move past the still framed faces smiling- lifeless eyes and skin overcoat with dust- and do not turn towards closed doors but keep in mind the straightness of your destination:

  chilling remains. Find the dog.

  Hallway.

  Parlour.

  Stairs.

  Stairs.

  Basement.

      He is waiting there for you.  Scattered piles broken and lay to rot, a body licked clean with the eventual decay of flesh and muscle your loving puppy waits cast to pieces around the bare basement floor and his smile-

  You lift the skull with  trembling hands-

  his smile a permanent grin, splitting to the sides of that flawless white head, the same gleeful expression as years before, the same trusting welcome that you would always return for him no matter how far or long you wandered. The dog could never lose hope in you- your smile falters and the sound from you is but a choked whimper. That same hopeful grin welcoming you home now set beneath the baseball-sized hole of a single buckshot entry wound.

    "Good boy, Bec,"

  Carefully you set the skull at your feet.

  "Good dog,"

  You're going to need some better lighting. You're going to need to see as you work to organize the mess of skeleton back to its proper place. You're going to have to try to stop the shaky cry rising in your throat and to steady your hands.

the house is just as your memory promised you. A simple woods cabin, like the ones you'd expect to stay in during the warm summer and fall months, sitting on the flat grassy terrain overlooking the dreary grey mass of Atlantic waters. Your earliest recollections are from this place and it is what has been beckoning you all along.

You exit the covert of forest you have been travelling through, dead grass crunching beneath your aching feet as you head for the buildings door. Tentatively your fingers meet wood, rotted and chipping beneath your skin, you inhale the smell of age and decay, the faint whispers of the sea waves droning into a background of sound and static. [S]

this is what you have been searching for all along. this is the east you have been beckoned towards and this-

                  is no longer the home you once felt  so young and sheltered in: the materiality of the building not the only thing to fade over the time it has been left to silently waste away-

in a void of world, immeasurable lengths distant from your tangible body, where you have been left to wonder the ruins of the collapsing and endless city, free from sound and the dislocated barking of the skeletal canine, the weakened ribcage beneath your chest strains against the pounding of two very distinct heartbeats, the volatile pulsations uncontrollably quickening with every step and-

you feel physically sick, a painful sinking to the depths of your stomach which go unheeded as you carry forth and reach for the door.

It's unlocked (or the lock that had once stood guard has been completely eroded).

>hesitate

The door swings open and you stand, remaining still and uncertain and sick as you stare into the sweetly welcoming darkness of the house. You are hardly aware of the object you have placed back between the cups of your hands, but the dim blue light of the cell phone creates a momentary aura of glow into the first few steps of black. Your fingers  dictate a last message; nothing more than another obscured plea, electronic fingers grasping for the return message of a simple 'okay' or ':)' or anything anything in your sudden fit of uncertain bleakness, cowardice to just turn back and-

>hit Send