House of Horror

Heavy, lazy, wet, hardly a sound at all, Robin heard something moving in the hallway outside of her bedroom. The night before, she noticed it much fainter and further away, but she fell asleep. It hadn't frightened her then.

Now, rhythmic cracking and gnashing lightly floated above the deeper, unending slurping that aurally slipped through the cracks around her door. She had moved into this duplex only two days earlier, but she knew this sound was not normal. It had gotten worse. Louder and oozing bubbling sludge in her mind, the ghastly racket echoed like a horrific ocean of blood and guts quivering inside a skinless body, desperately working to cover its holes. It was a festering sound. An awful sound.

On the afternoon that Robin moved in, she noticed a small garden in the backyard. She assumed it belonged to her neighbor until he walked by.

"Hey," he said, "I'm Parker. I live in the duplex connected to yours. You're the new person who lives here, right?"

"Yes. I'm Robin. Pleased to meet you."

"Awesome. Well, welcome. In case you didn't already know, the people who lived here before you loved gardening. That garden and pretty much the whole backyard are yours. I don't use it, so go nuts."

"Great," she looked at the garden. Dehydrated tomatoes ached in the hot sun, and weeds choked the rest of the bed with shade.

"Nice to meet you," he waved.

"You too."

Parker entered his side of the duplex through a sliding glass door as Robin waded out into the backyard grass to meet her new land. It crunched and curled softly beneath her bare toes as she found a trail to the garden.

The plants were relatively unkempt, having missed the touch of their previous caretakers for what must have been weeks. Maybe months. They were deathly parched. Robin watered them using a nearby faucet, but she would need to return to them later. Settling into her new home was the most critical task ahead of her. Once she finished, she would restore the garden to the efficient little world it begged to be.

A snail sat on a leaf to her left and looked up at her in between bites of it. The soft crunch relaxed Robin. Although she was unsure about her new home, this moment felt good. She had chosen a good home for herself. She looked at the leaf, and the snail was gone. Silently, a thin pool of mucus faded in the sun's heat with the memory of its existence, and Robin went back inside.

During her first night, she heard the sound. It was faint and far. The wet smudging topped with a rhythmic crunching fit together like moldy tiramisu. The following morning, she saw Parker getting in his car to go to work.

"Hey Parker, can I ask you something?"

"Sorry, did you hear me shitting last night?" he asked.

Robin stopped.

"What?" she said.

"I'm just kidding," Parker laughed, "What's up?"

"Uhm," she stammered, "I heard like a wet, weird, I don't know, crunching last night. Have you heard a weird noise like that?"

"You know what it might be? It could be snails and slugs."

"Snails and slugs?"

"The people who lived here before you, well, they loved having snails and slugs in the garden. They seemed to think the more, the better, so they dumped a ton of them back there. Don't get me wrong, they help make good soil and everything, but they can also kill plants. I mean, it is possible to have too many. It's hot out, so most of them are hiding, but there's a ton of them. You can hear them munching on stuff. Especially at night. People say they move silently, but I swear I can hear them slithering around sometimes too."

"I think that's what I heard," she said, remembering the snail from the previous day, "It's kind of nice, but it's kind of gross too."

"Uh, yeah. You can see why I don't go in the backyard much,” Parker said. They both laughed.

"Thanks for clearing that up. I won't keep you."

"No problem. I was for real kidding before, too, by the way. That was gross. I'm super quiet when I use the bathroom. I promise."

She laughed and gave Parker a thumbs up. He smiled and drove to work.

On the second night, it no longer sounded like slugs. It sounded bigger. The undulating heavy sludging and light crunching call turned over like a massive compost pile in Robin's mind. This stark contrast in auditory sensations filled her with pure, primal dread. Whatever it was, it was in the hallway outside of her room, it was big, and it was moving closer to her.

Robin kept a small souvenir baseball bat near her nightstand for protection. Her father had gotten it for her at a game many years ago. It made her feel safe to have it nearby, although she had never used it as a weapon before and wasn't entirely sure she would know how to use it if such action became necessary. She grabbed it, held it above her head, and opened the door.

Light from her bedroom gleamed off a gigantic puddle of the thick snotty mess now coating the floor in front of her door. It ran the length of her hallway. The entire floor was covered in thick, clear mucus. There was no way of knowing which direction it all led. It had become one enormous directionless mass.

Robin put on her boots, walked down the hallway and down the stairs. Every surface in her home was encased in film. Her feet sank into the snotty pools and got more difficult to lift with each step. Finally, she reached the front door of her home. Three snails were slowly slithering out as if they had been asked to leave. Robin laid her bat horizontally and crushed them. Then, she went into the backyard and killed every snail and slug she could find.

She dug them up, picked them off plants, and grabbed them off trees. She piled them up and struck the pile with her bat. Again, and again. Snotty blood. A chummy bloodbath. Snail bits soared past her red eyes. Like a small, drowned carcass, the wet weight mutedly absorbed each blow with a cold thud. She wanted to hear them scream. She never wanted to listen to them eat again. When she had killed the last one, all the remaining energy in her body evaporated. She walked back inside, locked the door, and fell asleep in her bed. She would clean the mucus in the morning if it was still there.

When she awoke the following day, the mucus trails were gone. Robin found Parker in the backyard looking at her work. He seemed upset. The line between sadness and anger blurred.

"I had to kill them. They were coming into my house in massive hoards. My place was disgusting last night," she said.

"Hey," Parker turned his head and smiled, "I get it. They're gross."

He walked back into his half of the duplex. Robin sat in the dirt by her garden and watched his sliding glass door until darkness fell. No movement occurred inside of his home, and no lights were on. He was simply gone.

That evening, Robin did not hear a sound. Until her bedroom door opened.

The soft uniformity of silence was broken by the creek of her bedroom door hinges. Then, heavy, slow, wet, hardly a sound at all, Robin heard something move past her doorway, across the floor of her bedroom, and underneath her bed. It had to be massive, whatever it was. It couldn’t have been a slug. She looked over the edge of her mattress and saw a fresh, clear slime trail leading to the small, dark corner beneath her. Slowly, she bent her head down and looked underneath.

In the furthest corner of the dark world beneath Robin’s bed, Parker, completely nude, covered in lube and petroleum jelly, lay crying and shaking and asking for her forgiveness.

Robin screamed.

She grabbed her phone and ran outside. She called the police, and Parker was arrested. Officers searched the home and found that the two duplexes were connected by an attic. He had used an entrance to the attic in his upstairs bathroom to move between the homes undetected, coating himself with lube and pretending to be a slug in some odd fantasy that he could not explain. They never understood why. They only knew that it had happened.

The following day, the carpets were cleaned, and Robin went to work on the garden.