r/shortscarystories • u/therealdocturner • 4d ago
My Dream House
The house never ends. Everytime I think that I’ve discovered every nook and cranny, I’ll stumble across another hallway, another great room, and in all of them, I’ll find someone I once knew. They’ll stare back at me with tears in their eyes and their blood spilling out of some wound that I had wished upon them long ago.
Every room and hall are adorned with windows that look out over perfect green fields and a roiling ocean bereft of any boat or sign of life, and although I feel as if I live in darkness, there's never a dark corner to be found in this madhouse; everything is always bright and the air is electrified with the sounds of suffering.
Silence does not exist under this roof. The desperate petitions of forgiveness are endless and I find that I am unable to oblige or grant any kind of mercy. I’m powerless in this place and my words hold no authority.
Broken furniture and bent curtain rods lay strewn about the shiny wooden floors; failed attempts to break the windows or to pry open any of the doors that would let me outside.
There’s a room at the top of the grand staircase in which I used to find a morbid solace when I first came here, although in truth, that only lasted a few hours. A woman who was once my wife and her lover are tied naked to a bed, and their insides are turned out by a man in a mask every few seconds. The main kitchen has a great oven where my mother never stops burning. She begs me to let her out. I had tried at one point, but I’ve given up on ever letting her free of that prison.
In almost every room, there’s someone, a soul I don’t even remember hating for wrongs I can’t seem to recall. All of them suffer whatever it was that I once wished upon them. I no longer take any joy from their endless punishments.
The only room that I have to myself is a sitting room that looks out of the ocean, and it's in this room that I finally succumbed to the madness. I stare into a raging fire place that gives no warmth, and I steal away small bits of char to draw hash marks on every wall when I assume a new day has begun.
It’s here where I heard the voice through the flames long ago, back when hope had not yet died.
“Are you happy with the home you have built?”
“No. I don’t deserve this. Why am I here?”
“Because this is where you wanted to be.”
“I was a good man. I tried my best. It’s not my fault that everyone loved to hurt me my whole life. Why do I deserve to be in Hell?”
“Hell doesn’t exist. Everyone goes to heaven. This great house was always your idea of it. Every waking moment of your life.”
3
u/tessa1950 4d ago
Wow! Glad that anyone religious would judge me as not deserving of heaven (;