The Essence of Nothingness

By The Essence of Nothingness

It is a rather peculiar house. It isn't like any other ones on the block, because you see, this house has the essence of nothingness, a certain emptiness that puts chills throughout your whole body. And every time you so much as walk by it, you feel as if something, for that time, is following and watching you, and in some cases even holding you down or attacking you. I have been past this house before, I live right across the street from it. I watch it, observe it, try to understand it, it more or less consumes my every thought and feeling, the aspiration to rid my curiosity. It has pale grey walls, three stories tall. It has a balcony that peaks over the first floor from the second story. A very old and wretched balcony with squeaky wood railing and a ripped up floor, as if somebody fell through it. The third floor has peaked tops, and the end of a fireplace vent lurking over the house. Boarded up windows, and padlocks on all the doors, nobody goes in or out for that matter. Though it is the middle of spring and everything else in the neighborhood is live with color, and light, the yard to this particular house is all dead and dark.

Not a single life dares to live on the property of this house. I'm just daring enough to wonder what might have happened to this old house. So empty and left behind. Everyday I take my binoculars upstairs and stare at this house, this place for hours, as if maybe someday I'd find something new about it. I don't like to keep secrets, I don't like secrets to be kept from me. My telephone, and my doorbell have been ringing more often lately, neighbors are constantly trying to check up on me.

In the past few days I haven't seen much, but for some odd reason the fireplace was smoking the other day, somebody had to be in that house at one point, but I never once took my eyes off of it, and I never seen anybody go in. Today when I looked at the house once more through my binoculars it felt like somebody was staring at me from the bedroom door front. I'm going to check it out, I'll just have to wait for morning.

Today I put forth the most daring inquisition of my entire life. I stepped foot past the sidewalk and into the front yard of the house. Left right, Left right, each step getting heavier. Soon I fall to my knees crawling, and then dragging myself by my fingers in the dirt. Crying what have I got myself into. All I can think of is what if. What if, I can never go back to who I was. But who was I to base curiosity on a broken home, ruined house? Still heavier, seemingly further from the house with every drag and pull of my body in the dirt, completely flat and laid out, I continue. Just then everything let me go, I was able to get back on my knees and then stand up. I blinked my eyes and just like that, there stood the house. Doors still padlocked, windows still boarded. I stepped up on the porch and rang the door bell, nobody came to the door, not a sound of movement. I waited, sitting on a chair that looked like its been there forever, looking back at my house. I rang the bell again and again, waiting. Patiently for somebody to open the door. I sat back down and looked more at my house, nobody around.

Hours pass, and I was still just sitting there watching my house. I seen something of a shadow through the window on the second floor of my house looking back at me with binoculars, I didn't think much of it at the time, I thought I was just seeing things. I got tired of sitting there, that's not what I struggled to get to. I broke into the front door, using the chair as a ram. I don't think I caught the attention of my neighbors fortunately. They would just report a break in.

As I began to walk in, it was dark from not having any windows, and none of the lights were on. I just kept walking. This house was huge, but so empty. I stumbled on a severed plank in the floor. I was to busy to wonder why it was higher then the other ones though, I felt so much like someone was there watching me, and they didn't want me there, I was in a hurry to get out. It was really cold in that house so I started the fireplace. The light from the fire showed the rest of the entire first floor, all just one room. That is except for a half wall that stood in the far east corner. I looked over the wall and saw a spiraling staircase going down so deep, which was strange because I was already on what was the bottom floor from outside. I started going down the staircase, but something suddenly pushed on my weight and I couldn't carry myself any more. Just as I began to think I was stuck I felt pushed down the rest of the stairs. At the bottom of the stair case, as I barely walked nearly unconscious and bleeding from the head, I saw yet more darkness. I wasn't even sure I was at the bottom, I couldn't see anything, but I felt like I had fell long enough. But then a spotlight hit me and somebody asked who I was. I didn't reply. But later they came down the stairs, and it felt as if something stabbed me in the gut.

Moments later I woke up and deciding I've been through enough, I returned home. I noticed that my door had been broken into, everything around me was so dead-like, and when I turned to look at that old house one last time, there was nothing to be found but an empty lot. I looked around some more and soon realized that I was all alone. Nobody lived within miles of my home and I didn't even have a telephone line, just an unplugged phone setting on my corner desk. I seen blood pools everywhere. I thought somebody else was dying in my home, so I looked everywhere on the second floor seeing a shadow of a man in the bedroom with binoculars, and then all of the first floor, and then I walked over to the single staircase, that goes into my basement, and looked down. There was another person, but just lying there. I shined a flashlight on them and asked, "who's there?" and when they didn't answer, I went down the stairs and found it to be myself, dead. I looked to my hands, they were the only blood covered part of my body, and beside me lied a knife. My gut started bleeding once more. And I fell slowly to my knees as if something was holding or pushing me down, then flat on the floor. I'm just a ghost now. According to the mirrors that no longer show my face. I killed myself in the dark emptiness of nothing but me. I haunt myself everyday, but who am I to judge a broken home, a ruined house by the slander of your absence.