James sensed there was something wrong whenever he entered the kitchen – there was a chill in his bones.
It wasn’t only pink mould growing on the walls – that was all over the 16th century farmhouse they’d bought: the place was crumbling to death.
It wasn’t the musty smell that creeped him out. He was a university academic and supposedly a rational man but he still believed something evil had happened in that room.
Emma, his fiancée, told him to stop imaging and pick up a hammer. All she could see were months of hard work ahead to turn this rotting pile into their dream home. Then, in her plans, came marriage and many children: if she could convince James. They were both in their thirties and life was only beginning.
‘Come on,’ she chivvied as she spread out hammers and chisels on a trestle. She was the practical one in the relationship, if she didn’t take the lead they would be living in a damp house for the rest of their lives, ‘Let’s get this render off the walls.’
She slipped down her goggles and picked up a hammer. ‘It’s all got to go,’ she grunted and she hammered away like a navvy.
It came away easily, the wall was rotten. She hummed away to the music on the radio, revelling in the sensation of manual labour. She couldn’t have been happier.
Then, a lump of the wall fell at her feet and with it the first two human fingers.
Words: Richard Rooney
Illustration: A.I.
Flash Fiction 250
Flash Fiction 250 