The rules are very simple if you’d like to take part:
1) Write for no longer than five minutes
2) No upper or lower word limits
3) You must write something new
4) You can prepare your post ahead of time but the 5 minute limit still applies
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Today’s TIE #FlashFiveFriday comes from MB Mulhall (Keystrokes and Word Counts):
There’s nowhere else to go. No home to return to. No car to sleep in. No dry cardboard box. The rain is constant and the wind cold. If I don’t want hypothermia, I need to suck it up and get in.
Standing in the shadows, I stare at the run down gray Victorian house that sits on the outskirts of the town’s oldest cemetery. The ancient caretaker used to live there so he could just walk out the front door to his job every day, but he died about five or six years ago. The house has been on the market ever since. It almost sold a couple of times, but then the prospective buyers get a whiff of the rumors that circulate about the domicile.
It’s haunted.
People go in and never come out.
Bodies rise from the graves at night and come knocking on the door.
It’s all B.S. Stories designed to scare the kids away from breaking in and squatting, exactly what I am planning on doing. I never believed the tales and even if I did, I have to take my chances.
Checking both ways, I see the nearest streetlight is completely out. How convenient. I make my way to the front door, its paint doing a strip tease as the elements pound at it. Slowly nudging it open, the hinges squeal loud enough to wake the dead. I shudder at that train of thought.
One deep breath is all I allow my shaking body to take before stepping over the threshold into the pitch blackness waiting to swallow me whole.
Here’s to hoping I’ll see the sun rise another day.
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I enjoyed that. I want to know what happened next! Once lived in a haunted house so… shiver me timbers :)
Vickie
Very good post. Like Vickie, I'm wondering if the house is haunted.
Is the caretaker still there?
Classic! You hit all the elements of the haunted house. I liked the way you framed the story at the beginning and end too.
What a great post! Delivering such a great beginning, middle and end that all tie together in just five minutes is a real challenge. This works wonderfully!
Thanks folks! I never write flash, especially not with a 5 minute limit so I wasn't sure what I was going to end up with.
Glad people enjoyed it. Figured it's the season for creepy stuff! :D
Love the image of the peeling paint doing a striptease. Too clever.
And I'm equally as intrigued by the mysterious squatter as I am the spooky house. Nice atmospherics!