The last day of Charlie’s life started like most others. Getting ready for work. He worked for a real estate company assessing properties that had been abandoned.
He warmed up a pot of coffee while taking a quick shower. He then slipped on a a pair of blue jeans and a matching polo shirt with the company name embroidered on the chest. Sterling and Phelps. They’d been a local agency for nearly a hundred years and were a household name in these parts.
The houses he saw were usually dilapidated, but today’s house was worse than that. It had once belonged to the Jenkins family. It stood at the end of a lonely culdesac. As Charlie drove up he thought about the history of the house.
Why had Sterling and Phelps bought this place? No one in town would ever live in it. Not after what happened.
He put it out of his mind and went to work gathering his supplies from the white work van with the company logo emblazoned on the side.
Clipboard in a hand he approached the front door and began taking notes. Chipped brick work on the two columns that supported the roofed porch. There was a stained glass mural with multiple broken out panes next to the double front door. It was too shady to see inside through them.
He reached to push the handle of the door and was stuck with intense pain as an arc of electricity shot from the doorknob to him.
“FUCK!” He exclaimed, trying to shake the pain out of his hand. He used his foot to kick at the door and it swung open with a gruesome creaking sound.
Inside was blackness. He reached for switches but the power didn’t appear to be working. Strange, he’d contacted the city and requested that they turn on the power for the inspection.
“Must be out.” He muttered reaching for his note pen.
After jotting the quick note he grabbed his flashlight and proceeded into the large foyer. It was a cavernous expanse, a vacuum of light that seemed to ingest the beam of his flashlight and spit out nothingness in return.
Three steps in he tripped on a hard object and the light skittered across the floor and went out just as a gust of wind yanked the door shut.
It was utterly, pitch, black.
Charlie was by no means squeamish but given the circumstances he started to shriek when something slimy and hairy wrapped around his ankle and jerked him along.
He fought and struggled and screamed but the thing was too much for him. His fingernails left scratches on the stone floor, invisible in the darkness.
Moments that seemed like an eternity went by, until the thing stopped and let go.
He turned on the floor, starting to crawl away. Trying to get to his feet.
It was to no avail. The same hairy wet thing reached up the length of his body, a huge slippery muscle pulling him backwards until he felt the excruciating crunch of his back breaking.
He continued trying to scream even as the organs were sucked from his insides, stopping only as the thing reached his lungs.
His brain remained aware until the last moment, when his thoughts too descended into darkness.
Science Fiction
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