Indelible

An excerpt from my newest short story.
TW: Dark themes, violence and implied sexual assault

If walls could talk… The man dragged the woman’s body across the wooden floor’s deeply engraved scratches. Vibrations travelled up and over the floorboards from his efforts, a silent, tangible melody beneath my coats of paint and wallpaper.

This body wasn’t his first. No, I’d watched this scene unfold too many times to count. Different clothing and hair styles spanning decades, but the pattern remained the same.

He brought them home happy, plied them with a buffet of alcohol and drugs, always followed by screams and the stench of assault. The room’s drywall was pockmarked with thick gouges and finger divots. Long scratches stretched down the hallway, morbid morse code no one would ever see.

No one but me.

The blood of his victim seeped through the porous surface of the floorboards. Decades of fleeting life permeated the fibers of my bones, creeping through wood and nail to breathe those stolen souls into me.

But with new life came ravenous hunger, and I craved each drop of blood and sliver of muscle and skin dragged free of the bodies. 

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