Erase

By Jem Morgenstern

The wood burned. Fire tainted every color its wrathing arms could reach. Bright embers and dark ashes slowly fell onto the white floors, painting it black and spotted red. Blue wallpaper disintegrated: curling downwards, crumbling, fading to brown. Blinding yellow flames rose into the sky and bled into the blue horizon dyed orange by the rising sun. The blinding light would wave and the smoke would peer over the hills, but no eyes would look in its direction. None were near enough to witness the building’s excruciating mutation. Nobody would hear the aching wooden skeleton crack and fall apart. Nobody would smell the distinct, uniquely putrid scent of the burning evidence: the sulfurous stench of keratin, nauseating odor of heated bacteria, or fumes from unused chemicals.

No roads led here. Nobody ever wandered here. Discovery of what happened here was unlikely. If anyone did happen to find this ruin, every question they could have would forever be unanswered. The specifics of the crimes committed would never be uncovered. The identities of those involved would always be a mystery. Their stories would never be told, shared, reported. Nobody would hear about the cold nights they spent in that building - body shivering, teeth chattering, hands shaking - waiting. Waiting for the breathing to stop. Watching a body laboriously force itself to continue living until it lost the strength to keep itself running. Sometimes, it would take minutes. Sometimes, so much time would pass by that they felt their own bodies might give up before the one collapsed on the floor would finally croak out its final breath. They wanted it to last, so they could savor the intensity of seeing life inch itself out of a body with every shaking moan, every quiver of the body, every exhalation. So they wouldn’t have to clean up after themselves. So they wouldn’t have to begin the tedious process of finding another again so soon. They always wondered if anyone would notice these people were missing. They always did their best to choose lonely people. Quiet people who nobody noticed. Ones that were almost expected to disappear someday anyway.

It was when they noticed somebody had begun looking for one of their people that they fretfully decided to burn the building down. Tears rolled from their eyes, as they set their place of ritualistic pleasure ablaze. They watched the walls that housed so many memories of joy crumble to the ground. They burned their souvenirs along with it. Erased any proof of their dark avocation. Though they didn’t intend for the loss of their house of memories to put an end to their past-time. So they set out to find a place to begin again. One as hidden, as disposable, as perfect as this one. Where, even now, they continue to derive joy from watching their victims struggle to stay alive. Where, even now, there is no trail that leads to them - to their discovery, guilt, or conviction.

Before Midnight

By Late Night Writings

The pungent odor of the bodies wafted from one side of the room to the other, into the vent and upwards through the entire ventilation system, filling the cliffside estate with the putrid scent of his rotting corpse. The windows were barred and the doors were somehow completely impenetrable. The one potential exit that remained was off the widow’s walk, where Thomas had attempted to climb down, but quickly and unfortunately discovered that the heavy downpour and harsh sea winds had made that route of escape far too dangerous. Mangled in the thorns and covered by soggy dead leaves in the garden below, his body reminded the few people who remained that escaping was not an option. In the three days they had been there, it seemed that they hadn’t come any closer to unmasking Doctor Horn’s killer. Hanging from an elk’s antlers mounted above the fireplace, his dead eyes stared down at the home’s guests. The house who lured its suspects inside and promised to open its doors to whoever uncovered the identity of its lover’s murderer. The guests who sat down, who gave up after frantically searching for anything that could lead them to the truth, and accepted their reality - that their careers in finance and marketing were no help in this scenario and that they would be killed by a house in less than four hours. They would not find Doctor Horn’s killer before the fourth midnight.