Short Stories

Dirty Discovery

The first chapter of another story I'm working on!

WARNING: This story implies topics that may be disturbing to some readers, such as rape, murder, kidnapping, and torture, but does not detail any of the above. Reader discretion is advised.

The lamp lit up, the first time in three months.

Kimberly ushered her children into their hiding place, crafted from strange objects throughout their basement home and meant to be unassuming. After the two were swiftly secured in the rubbish, Kimberly raced to the staircase, kneeling before it with her head down, as she was meant to.

Regardless of repeating these steps countless times over the years, she was different this time. Thinner. Kimberly had no sense of time without Harvey, but she knew it had been a long while since he’s last been down. He had never been generous with food, by any means, but without him she had grown much thinner, as had her children. It worried her, she thought he may have died; while that would have been a miracle in many ways, she dreaded the possibility. If Harvey were dead, Kimberly and her children would soon follow; he was their only resource.

Then the light went out, and the door opened. Several pairs of shoes were heard in the dark hallway at the top of the stairs, and Kimberly screwed her eyes shut, unsure if her weak state would be able to take Harvey and his friends, who were always much more violent than he.

Three hours prior, Lia Pillard pulled onto a long driveway of a house, nearly two miles into the surrounding forest.

“This place is creepy as fuck,” Navien, Lia’s best friend, stated beside her.

“Oh, shut up. It’s just some dead widower’s house.”

“Yeah, he’s dead!”

Lia rolled her eyes with a sigh.

“The guy wasn’t a murderer or anything, and he didn’t even die in the house,” Lia explains. “I’ve seen pictures of the house, anyway. It’s modern, far from the haunted mansion you’re imagining.”

Navien looked to his best friend, eyes wide. “It’s in the middle of the woods, and you know they never found his wife’s body! That’s the only reason he didn’t go to jail for her murder!”

“Oh my God, Vien. He didn’t go to jail because she left him, ran off.”

“Mhmm, sure.” Navien crosses his arms in protest, turning to face the window.

Lia only chuckled in response. The two were in charge of a small crew of three other people: Akira Millan, Yamik Ghast, and Kyle Whinston. The crew of five were assigned to clean out the mysterious late widower’s mansion so the bank could put it on the market for a high price. The group would remove all personal belongings of 
Mr. Nash’s, clean the interior of the house from top to bottom, and finally make note of any remodeling or repairs that may need done.

This was the group’s first large project, they were typically only hired by the apartment complex that Navien lived in, cleaning out old rubbish left by evicted tenants who failed to pay rent, and usually the things they cleaned went straight to the police. The group was relieved they could do a job that wouldn’t involve the police, but dreaded the large job. It would likely take multiple days, and the hour-long drive there would be far from fun, especially since they take two vehicles: the rusty, black pick-up truck that Lia and Navien currently piloted, and the white van–unofficially named the Un-Rapist Van by Navien–contained cleaning supplies and the rest of the group.

The house came into Lia and Navien’s view through the trees, Lia parking her pick-up beside the stairs to the front door, so that Kyle could park the van in front of it.