Creepypasta [ON HOLD AGAIN]

The House Job

I’ll first tell you what I do for a living, as it will bring some understanding to my situation. I run my own business, if you could call it that. I’ve thought of it more as a personal service. I break into the home or building of a client’s choice, destroy or steal whatever they want, provide proof of the action, then I get payed (quite substantially, if I may add). My clients usually take the form of a middle class man angered at their boss, or a recently dumped individual who wants revenge on their ex. Essentially, I do the work that one has the anger and desire to do, but doesn’t have the actual nerve to do it themselves. It payed well, and it gave me some interesting places to explore, so I’ve been quite content with the job.

About a few weeks ago, I received a usual call for what I expected to be a usual job.

The caller requested me to break into an abandoned home not too far from my area. He requested me to retrieve a few recordings of sorts. VHS tapes, cassettes, DVDs, they didn’t matter. All he really cared about was any that looked “interesting”, as he described. Despite the fact that information is important in my work, he didn’t tell me anything that would be useful for the search. He wouldn’t even tell me anything about himself, which almost made me turn the job down, until he offered me an unusually large payment.

When the caller had mentioned “abandoned home” I had expected the location to be shed away from the local population, and generally safe to break into during the day. To my frustrated surprise, the place was in the middle of the damn street, right along a string of other apartments and surrounding buildings, most of which were populated. People on the sidewalk strolled past it, not acknowledging its derelict state, sometimes being taken back by its derelict state.

I came back after dark, and it was just how I wanted it to be. No pedestrians anywhere, and there were no lights on in the surrounding structures. It appeared to be an easy target.

The home stood two stories, with a small attic at the highest point. I didn’t look like the most enjoyable place to live, even before it had aged. The best word I can think of to describe it’s living quality would probably be “confined.” It appeared to have only a single window, which was on the attic level. The front door (what I believed to be the only entrance) had an unnecessary amount of locks on it, all of which were now rusted away. It opened with a mere tap from my foot.

I should probably state here that though I don’t have nyctophobia or anything of the sort, I enjoy completely dark, abandoned buildings as much as the next wandering man. By my first step into the house, I wanted the job done fast. What I’m saying is that I was not paying attention to specific details at the time, of both the home and what may have been there.

When I had turned on my flashlight, the first room appeared entirely vacant of anything, as if it had been completely cleared after the departure of its residents. This was both good and bad, in my situation. This meant that the room was free of obstacles, but also meant that I would need to search more of the home, which I was wasn’t excited fo. There were other homes around, but I would be fine if I at least kept the noise to a decent level. The place hardly had windows, after all.

I had gone up the stairs to find a similar area: an empty room, with nothing that I was looking for. This meant further worse news: I would have to check the attic. Though I said I wasn’t severely frightened by the dark, I would be lying if I said I didn’t have a discomfort with tight spaces.

The attic was accessed by a standard pull-down stairway on the ceiling of the second story room. It took a couple of jerks to budge, but it came down without much resistance. A large cloud of dust covered my view for a few seconds, which made me realize how old th place really was. Each step of the stairway creaked tremendously, to where it became more irritating than unnerving.