Cleo's Obsession: A Narrative Fiction

The mouldy, rotting, brown house stood in front of Emily, only fear keeping her feet planted to the ground. Moaning and creaking noises being projected from the house. The grass was damp from the evening fog and every time she took a step the mud squelched. The bottom step squeaked as she applied pressure with her foot, she let out a sigh of relief as the old structure hadn’t swallowed her up. The door, slightly off colour from the rest of the house, loomed over her like a giant as he reached for the brass door handle. A shiver ran through her body like an electric current, the musty smell of a house that had been long abandoned filled Emily’s nose. It was dim and uninviting. The furniture dusty and old, looking as if it would crumble to dust if she was to touch it. Mould ate away at

As I went downstairs the tone of the room felt hot, humid, and empty. Hot, because of the burning Atlanta temperatures of ninety-eight degrees or higher. Humid, caused by the broken air conditioning and affecting the density of the atmosphere. Finally empty. The furniture was missing and minimal sounds can bounce off to make echoes. I was departing from a place that I called home. I lived at the address 353 Leisure Court for almost a year; the identity of the street brings back smiles to my face because of its pleasantry. Living here has made me feel secure like a dog to his owner. Moving away from this security brought feelings of uncertainty. My lack of confidence was about the new beginnings my family would experience after the move. But

He opens his eyes to see a slate white room. He turns his head to see a colossal amount of many different flowers. He hears a beeping beside the bed he is laying in. Then, he feels a rush of excruciating pain throughout his entire body. Suddenly, he feels as if somebody is tearing off his leg. He frantically yanks off the white sheets to reveal his a stub leg. He attempted to let out a scream but no air could come out. Finally, his mother runs in with decaying tissues in her hand and red puffy eyes. “Oh Derek!” she exclaims while thrusting him into her arms causing shocks of pain to circulate his body. “They said you might not wake up. Thank you! Thank you! Don’t worry it will be okay. Everything will be okay.” However, Derek didn’t believe anything she said. Nothing at that moment seemed okay. Derek closes his eyes hoping that if he fell asleep he could escape

Her house appeared to be falling apart. It was as if a tornado hit. The dirty dishes piled up higher then the Eiffel tower. Dirty laundry was strewn around the living room floor so densely, it looked as if there was no floor at all.

Upon opening the back door, Vasquez observed that there was just enough space to squeeze past the refrigerator blocking the exit. The air smelled of burned rubber and melted wires; a damp ash covered the ground, sticking to their boots. In the kitchen, Vasquez and Fogg discerned only smoke and heat damage—a sign that the fire had not originated there—and so they pushed deeper into the nine-hundred-and-seventy-five-square-foot building. A central corridor led past a utility room and the master bedroom, then past a small living room, on the left, and the children’s bedroom, on the right, ending at the front door, which opened onto the porch. Vasquez tried to take in everything, a process that he compared to entering one’s mother-in-law’s house for the first time: “I have the same curiosity.”

The large cut on the right side of my forehead had begun to bleed again; my own blood threatening to choke me. “Calm down its ok. You're going through a rough phase that's all. Try to get some rest,” was all the comfort dad could manage before choking up into tears. He turned away as streaks of auburn curls lightly brushed against me, the owner tending to my wound. Rest, he says; not so easy when every time your eyes droop, the dreams begin. They have been getting worse, the closer I become in finding a way to bring her

The door swung open with the amount of vigorous forced used by Babe Ruth to hit a homerun. The sound of the dilapidated, white wood smashing into the wall created goosebumps along my spine, as if a small spider was crawling up my back. Broken glass scattered the floor. The torn, black sheets on my bed laid the floor from the previous childlike tantrum. A single candle, with its flame still alive, remained from the outrageous outbreak.

Mary sat at her desk, just like she always did. The desk’s varnish had been worn down to the raw wood, and it was covered in scratches made by her own clawing nails. Mary couldn’t remember when she had been locked in there, in the blanched room. The room was vacant except for the debased desk, a plastic chair, and a very shabby Mary.

Crumpled newspapers scattered the table like the bones of dead bodies after war. Windows wiped down of memories huddled between oak frames, facing a street with cosy cottages. Single embroidered carpets hugged the floor, covering the marble tiles in delicate silk. A whisper of wind floated in through cracks of the panes of glass, whispering it's songs of misery throughout the house. I breathed in gulps of air, allowing the icy coolness to fill my lungs, and the morning frost creep out. My glistening blue eyes presented purple bags, and my sleek hair was a tangled cobweb. My feet dragged along the stone floor like the walking of the undead. I’d been up all night, searching and seeking for answers.

I took a deep breath as I walked through the doorway. The door was stuck open, hanging on just one of its hinges. It was clear that no one had been near this place in a long time. As I entered, a stench hit me. It smelt sickly sweet, almost like rotten fairy floss. I looked around the room at the faded and ripped wallpaper, and the broken furniture. The air was so thick with dust it was almost impossible to breathe, and everything was thickly covered with dust. The little light there was came from the cracks in the yellowed blinds.

“Good morning,” I said as I walked into room 34. I picked up the patient's chart and looked through it. “So you’ve been experiencing speech difficulties, headaches, nausea, and drowsiness?” I asked. “Yeah. I’m sure it’s nothing, though,” Mrs. Gallagher replied.

The boundary between the imaginary and the real is even less distinct in this troubled period than during puberty. One of the most salient characteristics in the aging woman is the feeling of depersonalization that makes her lose all objective landmarks. People in good health who have come close to death also sat they have felt consciousness, activity, and freedom, the passive object affected by fate seems necessarily like another: I am not the run over by a car; I am not the old woman the mirror shows me. The woman who ‘never felt so young’ and who never saw herself so old is not able to reconcile these two aspects of herself; time passes and diminishes her in dreams. So reality fades and becomes less important: likewise,

Cleo froze on the top step, it was infallible. Every fleck of the wall and every particle of dust was in its original condition. No blood, no knives, not a single atom out of place. In stunned silence, she paced the hardwood floor, she walked from the railing to the bathrooms. She wasn’t sure how they had pulled it all together while she was gone, but they had.

The stone remains cold from decades of freezing winter nights as it sat neglected andunwanted. The couches is decorated in a faded flaming pattern of roses. The musty smell continues into the library. Shelves of forgotten novels line the fourwalls, and a large window is strategically placed between two of the shelves. The lights hangingfrom the ceiling are dimmed, and the melodic ringing of wind could be heard. Bodies crowdtogether in the small room, and all heads gaze at one single item. The television growls awarning, but it is set up in the form of a welcome to the hotel. Above the shelves sit manyknickknacks: a beat up camera, adusty music box, a rickety old fortune telling machine, andeven a vintage girl’s doll sits on the wall with beady eyes staring down at me. I gaze at my oldfriends. Their presence adds a hype to the idea of what awaits. The television blanks out and thefamiliar spike in my heartbeat comes, and there goes the lightning right on queue. The creek ofthe door is heard over the rumbling of voices, when a bright light blinds my vision for a quicksecond. A heated breeze flocks into the room from the shadowy corridor. The empty smell of steam surrounds, and it caresses my arms the further into the room Igo. The cold brick walls brush against my arms as families rush past me. The concrete floorchanges into a steel bridge. Over the railing, the boilers cascade down to the floor standing talland rusted. The smell of oil and steel disgustingly mix. The sound of my feet clattering againstthe steel reverberates around the room. The bridge splits into two and leads the newcomers intoan aloof. I remember, in the end it doesn’t matter; however, I am pulled to the right. The redboilers line the path as it slowly descends. The clatter of footsteps follows, and the steam in theroom thickens, crushing me. I turn to the elephant in the room. A steely service elevator door threatens the room in amagnificent haze of power. Above the powerful door

The familiar smells of the hospital woke him up. Hux felt his head pound, muscles tight and tense. His back was hurting again, the bruise aggravated from laying down, but he couldn’t roll to his side. His hand was cuffed to the railing of the bed.