Household Monsters
Household Monsters
You are in a dark, dank, and dilapidated house. Plaster is shining through from behind the once pretty wallpaper, that is now torn and grungy. On the ceiling you can see cracks that make you worry about the stability of the ground underneath you. You jump on it once to test it and it creaks and shudders a bit, but upholds your weight. You sigh in relief, cursing yourself for having felt the need to test the floor. A few seconds pass and you look around. You notice a door that seems to lead outside and go over to check it out. You push down the handle, but it will not open. You get a sinking feeling in your gut as you investigate the door only to find that it has a strange shape that looks like a cross between a circle and a rectangle. You tear off a piece of the wallpaper and grab a pencil that is laying around and make an etching of the shape you need to open the door. It looks like this:
Feeling somewhat unstable on the floor, as you notice that it has several cracks in it that lead to places in the middle of the floor, you decide to go downstairs into the basement. Perhaps you can find the item for unlocking the door down there. You open the door, which squeaks and squeals angrily making you wince and wish you had a canister of WD-40 to oil the hinges with. You turn the light on and are surprised to find that it still works.
You lightly tread on the stairs, testing each step before you put your weight on it, and skip a few steps that have long since disappeared, holding onto the handrail that you hope is still securely fastened. Once you reach the bottom, you sigh in relief, before you notice the cold, wet, stagnant smell of the basement. You feel a coldness of water against your toes from the puddle you just stepped in, that was left from the last time the basement had been flooded. You notice insects swimming around in the water, and instantly pull your feet out of it, taking another step onto dry cold land. You shiver in the coldness of the basement and want to go back upstairs, despite the feeling of impending danger that the floor will cave in beneath you; but realize you haven’t searched here for that strange object yet that will set you free of this house.
You rifle idly through piles of rubbish, finding: a few broken saw blades that you barely avoid getting nicked by, a headless doll, the doll head that went to it, a barbie with cruddy hair and whose clothes were stained and torn, a few Legos, the list of junk went on and on. But you don’t find an item that matches the drawing on the wallpaper. You decide to check inside the laundry machine, just in case, and it suddenly comes alive. You barely manage to pull your hand out in time before its jaws snap closed. Startled, you let out at little scream and back away from the strange apparatus. Now you know why the laundry machine was left behind by whoever might own this dilapidated house. It isn’t a laundry machine at all. It is a monster!
The washing machine monster’s eyes are set on you and it jumps a few times to move closer to you. You startle out of your stupor and flee up the stairs as fast as you can. A stair gives way and you have to pull your leg out of the darkness below the stairs where it met with something fuzzy and suddenly you hear footsteps underneath the stairs. You hurry up the stairs as carefully as you can while in a hurry, not even daring to look back. You reach the door back out and open it. You gasp for breath as soon as you reach the main floor, and forget to close the door to the basement for a few moments.
Finally, you gather your senses and notice that the footsteps are now on the stairs and drawing closer. You turn to close the door and look down the stairs. You notice a pair of green striped fluffy socks coming up the stairs. Each of them has four eyes and with shock you realize that this must have been the soft texture your foot had brushed underneath the stairs. Behind them you can see the corner of the washing machine as it continued to jump closer to the flight of stairs. You let out another yelp as you see the razer sharp teeth protruding from where the toes normally would be.
You quickly close the door and look around for some way to barricade it. You see a small table with what was once an ornate pot that now looks grungy and has cracks in it. The plant in its soil has long since died and there are spiderwebs draped across the leaves and stems. For a moment you let your disgust overwhelm you and look around for anything else, but you don’t see anything that’s close enough. So, you swallow your fear and push the small table, which is surprisingly heavy, in front of the door to the basement. Just as you finish, you notice a big fat spider coming out from its hiding place within the pot. You scream and flail around, knocking into the doorhandle which promptly breaks off. You hear the double clink of it falling off both on your side of the door, as well as on the opposite side. It continues to fall on the other side of the door until you hear the sound of metal on metal gnashing and grinding and you shiver as it then cuts short. You wonder if that was the sound of the socks or of the laundry machine eating the doorhandle.
You quickly back away from the door and from the huge spider that makes you feel like screaming again. Though shaken, you move refocus to find the key. Finally, you notice a few trash piles and start looking through them. Among the trash, you find: candy bar wrappers, dirty dishes, a sullied diaper that is littered with dead maggots and fly carcasses that makes you want to clean your hands ten thousand times, a clean pair of socks that you slip on, and many other pieces of trash, but nothing that matches the figure on the door. You curse softly, the banging on the basement door has become a background noise by now. You aren’t sure if the washing machine monster was able to climb up the stairs or not, and if part of the thumping is from it climbing the stairs. You don’t really want to find out though, either.
Seeing as it seems impossible to avoid, you carefully journey up the stairs. Several of the steps are mildewy and partially rotted through and, when looking, up you can see why: there are cracks in the ceiling where water has been seeping through when it rains. One such crack is right above the stairs. You carefully step on each step, drawing back a few times when a stair disappears into the basement below.
You finally make it upstairs and find yourself looking into what once was a kitchen. To your left is what used to be a living room and to your right, a corridor with three doors: two on the right and one on the left. You decide to check out the doors first, feeling wary of the kitchen appliances, afraid they may be monsters. You open the first door on the right and find the bathroom. There’s a pile of dirty diapers there that you refuse to peruse. Lacking anything else, you open the door on the left. There are two beds, a hole in the floor that leads to the basement, a desk, a closet door, and a pile of rubbish. Having enough of trash, you decide to check the closet first. You touch the handle and the door comes to life. You quickly draw back as it opens, sharp teeth appear on the door and you feel a slight suction emitting from the door, but not enough to do more than tear at your clothes a bit.
You then decide to search the desk. It’s covered with old receipts, appointment reminders, bank statements that always seem to be red numbers - it’s a sad story told by those papers. After going through the papers, you start investigating the desk itself, pulling out the drawers, while keeping an eye on the closet monster, as the suction starts to increase a little. You pull out a drawer and notice that it seems a little small on the inside for its dimensions on the outside. You take the rotten pencils and erasers out of it and lay them on the table, investigating this drawer until you find a little piece of string that is surprisingly intact. You pull on it and the bottom of the drawer comes off, just as the string snaps. In the drawer you find an amulet that matches the shape you need to open the door to get out.
You grab the amulet and suddenly the suction increases tenfold, so you find yourself drifting towards the closet monster. With all your strength, you resist its pull holding onto the beds as you make your way to the door. Once you’re beyond the door, you close it, and the suction goes away. You sigh in relief and head towards the stairs that you carefully descend. You take the amulet and it fits perfectly into the slot in the door and turn it. Taking the amulet with you, you leave the house that is littered with household monsters.
Suddenly, you wake up. You’re in your room again, in bed, in your pajamas. But for some reason you have wet socks on your feet and something clenched in your hand. You look to your hand to see what you’re holding and yelp in surprise. For there, clasped in your hand, is the amulet you left the house with.