By Noelle chase, Velocity Contributor

You have yet to learn how you enter the House. It manifests the same as any other home beside it—a link in the chain of shingled homes with paved sidewalks. So entirely mundane that eventually you would forget to look. The House hates it when you forget to look.

It starts like a normal day for you. The sun is shining in a bright blue sky and vivid green leaves rustle in the wind. Birds are chirping, the world is alive. You wander down your route past the House. This time, you stop before it. You do not know why you halted. Today is just like any other day, yet today you are made to stop. You turn. You glance at the House you have passed a thousand times. For the first time, you notice it.

When you notice, you find it hard to turn away. It was just a House, yet, you could not tear yourself away from it. You could not stop thinking about it. The House consumes every glance you give it, it devours every thought—a moth to a flame, a fly in a web. With the most wretched grasp made of needles, it pulls you down with it.

The House grows until you question whether you ever thought the House was normal to begin with. How could you be so ignorant to miss it? Why were you so naive to ignore this dreadful House? When did you begin to be consumed by its gaping maw?

Your world collapses away to start a new scene, one that the House directs. It dyes your once bright world montone and it condemns all life to silence. By its ghastly command, the only sound remaining is your shallow breaths and beating heart. It begins to conduct its orchestra, chords made of your suffering psyche.

You stand before the House, its nails buried in your flesh. An oppressive wind creeps along its eerie garden, the air is as heavy as smoke. The smell of decay seeps from every crevice, making your stomach roil. You can taste only iron and bile on your leaden tongue. Cracked panes quiver and ragged shutters tremble. Ivy chokes the friable wood, burrowing into every crack and splinter.  A wicker forest creates the backdrop for the House’s starring role. Above your head is a smothering curtain weaved of lethargy, painted with greys and black.

A path of mangled stone coerces you forward. Your limbs are burdensome and pulled along like the puppet the House demands you are. The House is what controls the stage made of malice and sorrow. You can only bend to its whims.

Your throat tightens when the House turns its strings into your new noose.  Words are unable to form into proper sentences, merely choked gasps for air. It becomes hard to recall anything outside of the House.

Before you is the door to the forsaken House. It is pristine, it welcomes you into the safety of its claws. You reach out for the doorknob, hand resting on cold metal. It burns into your flesh and you are unable to let go. For the briefest second, you hold onto the hope that someone will call out. Someone will save you from the House. The wind stirs mockingly and the forest howls elatedly.

No one comes. You turn the knob.

In one slow agonizing creak, the door opens. A dark hall greets you, the silence is deafening. One step, and then two, you have crossed the threshold. The door slams shut behind you, a loud lock clicking into place. You barely register the heavy iron key you had just turned with your puppet hands. It falls with a clatter as the House pulls you into it by your strings.

Alone you wander through the labyrinth of peeling wallpaper. Faces bound in the macabre vinyl screech with their curses and poisonous drivel. They contort into caricatures and beg you to join their malaise. Paper hands reach out to grasp you. Fear overtakes your sense of self, you run. The faces keep laughing in their wicked tongues, hands wanting to condemn you to suffering.

Rational thought is stolen away by faces in the dark. Cruel voices echo, both familiar and unfamiliar. They say words that pierce your soul and venom that kills your heart. One might call it madness, to stumble along in your self-composed tragedy guided by your wicked puppetmaster.

You drown in the HOUSE, choked by your demons. They find every crack in yourself you tried to bury. They stab every knife further into your back. No solace can be found as your soul is sundered into carrion for the vultures. Every small thought you heard in the back, every doubt you have ever harbored has now been forced into reality.

They whisper words you believe are true and beg you to succumb to them. You should stay here forever with them inside this gracious HOUSE. It allowed you inside its doors so you could be among your kind forever. You should sink into your apathy, and be swallowed whole by despondency.

Nothing will ever know you better than the HOUSE, no one will ever welcome something as broken as you through their doors. The world outside is unkind to monsters. So you should stay in a world made for one.

The HOUSE loves you for all your cracks, it loves you so much it wishes to pick out the gold you used to mend them. It shall tear open your scars so you can bleed and add sanguine color to the world. The HOUSE adores your suffering, it adores your pain.

It loves only this warped reflection of you. It has to keep you that way. It must preserve this version of you. No one will ever love you as much as the HOUSE. No one will ever know you more than the HOUSE. No one will ever want you more than the HOUSE. Give up. Forget everything but the HOUSE. It is all you have in this merciless world.

So drown, drown in your despair. No one will come for you. Die alone being choked by hateful talons. Have your wings clipped in this rusty and cracked birdcage. Forget the key you had turned to lock yourself inside. You made the choice to enter and now it is your choice to stay. Stay alone with your monsters.

You are alone.

YOU. ARE. ALONE.

Something peeks through your cage’s bars. A memory. Birds chirping. A world is bright with life. One warm and welcoming and kind. Was that true? Can you trust your bleeding soul to remember such a place? The House says you are unable to be trusted with yourself.

Is that true? Can you trust this snake who lives in the shadows? The one that feeds itself on delusion and agony. The voice that is always there, it is always talking, warping reality to suit its need to devour you in its hollow stomach.

That single doubt breaks through the cacophony of noise. You take a chance and think about what is forbidden. The House says, no it dictates, that it is forbidden. It knows you best, it knows what is good for you. It loves you. You should listen to it, who else is there to listen to? Who is left for you to ask that dreadful question?

Am I alone?

No.

It’s a warm voice that answers you back. One so small you couldn’t hear it before. It doesn’t yell, it doesn’t scream. It just is. You do not know where the voice came from. You opened the box, and at the bottom was the voice. The one thing that remained at your side as everything else escaped. The origin of your companion doesn’t matter. What matters is that it is in here with you. It matters that such a warm thing remained alongside you in the cold. You aren’t alone. You never were. How could you have forgotten that?

You raise your eyes from the rotted floor and stare forward into the dark, taking in the world for what it truly is. Not what you believe it to be. You behold it with eyes unclouded and ignore the gestalt your mind had created for you.

In the center of the house, lies no heart. There is no hearth to come in from the cold. It is dead. The house is a lonely ghost that wishes to cling to life. It is an old wraith who wants to be heard, so it screams until your ears bleed for it. You feel pity for its miserable existence.

Weakly the house tries to lure you back into its thrall, to repeat an endless cycle of self-loathing and fear. To wallow in apathy and accept the small birdcage it has carved out for you. Even if the small part does fall to its temptation, you do not fully fall down. You stumble, but you won’t fall. One day you might fall again. You might return to this house, once more let it consume you.

All you can do is keep walking down the road and look towards the horizon. The house will always remain with you, waiting for you to turn around and dare to look at it again. You know in your heart that it will never leave you alone, so you resolve to live despite it.

You stand up in the dust-choked house, sunlight turning the world golden. The birdcage collapses in powder at a single touch. With resolute steps, you stride to the end of the hall. Past the peeling wallpaper, over the fragile floorboards. Nothing stops you as you seek to leave your prison.

Your hand rests on the door knob of the splintering door. For the smallest moment, you hesitate. You wonder if the world outside is scarier than the house. You wonder if the house was right in the end. What if it was trying to protect you?

Then you remember the voice, the one alone in the dark. You aren’t alone, you will never be alone. Even when you want to convince yourself you are.

The knob turns and you emerge onto a cracked sidewalk, with a vibrant blue sky above you. Weeds poke out from the cracks and the sun remains hidden by the white clouds. You smile at the flawed world around you and bid goodbye.

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featured image graphic by EMILY STEPHENS