For @flashfictionfridayofficial prompt #117 The Last House on the Left. I hope I make it in time!
Not proofread! (Sorry for any typos or mistakes.)
Thunderbirds fandom.
Rated teen - nothing bad, but it is a rescue fic!
Approx 837 words.
Virgil’s footfalls sent water splashing up his back as he ran down Stony Creek Road. Any time his feet strayed off the bitumen the his boots sank at least an inch into the sodden ground with a spongy squelch, so he tried to keep to the solid road surface rather than taking shortcuts across lawns.
He fixed his eyes on the two story red-brick home at the end of the row still some hundred metres away.
The last house on the left the caller had said before John had lost the signal.
Communications in the area were hampered by the weather which had knocked out signal towers all across the region. It was amazing anyone had even been able to get a call for help out there for Thunderbird Five to latch onto.
Days of relentless rain, swollen waterways and rising flood waters and now strong winds bordering on gale force. Local authorities had their hands full evacuating people from homes in the path of the oncoming flood. Local emergency services had been inundated with calls for help as trees, power lines and even communication towers had toppled onto cars and homes. And then major roads into and out of the town had been cut by a major landslide, with further rock and mudslides expected to tumble down the hillside and endanger more homes.
So, International Rescue were there to assist, boots already on the ground when the voice had reached John’s ears. Unable to convey much more than the fact they needed help, the name of the street and that last on the left detail.
Approaching the house with trepidation, the hydraulics of Virgil’s exosuit whined as he slowed. Something struck him as being very odd even before he reached the front door and saw the note scrawled in a messy hand.
We have evacuated. House secure.
He didn’t want to interrupt John who was feeding information to Scott and Alan at the site of the landslide where they were trying to free people from a number of vehicles, some partially buried and others quite precariously positioned.
He rang the doorbell, pounded on the door, shouted “Is anyone in there? International Rescue. Do you need help?” and peered through the window. He glanced to his right, towards the side of the house, considering looking for another way in, any unsecured entry point, and caught sight of the fence. Just beyond the wide wooden slats was a section of neat but waterlogged lawn interrupted by a paved driveway.
A driveway leading nowhere.
Virgil’s heart took a dive into his gut.
“John,” he had no choice but to interrupt now, “what number would the last house on the left of Stony Creek Road be?”
There was a pause. “Twenty-seven.”
Damn!
The number on the door of the red brick house was a shiny brass 25.
Virgil cursed himself for not noticing there was another driveway, for not asking for the number sooner. He ran the last few metres from one house to where the next should be and couldn’t help but gasp as he saw what had happened.
At the end of the driveway was a large sinkhole that had evidently opened up beneath the house and taken it tumbling down the slope towards the creek. As he drew closer he could see the way the building had been torn apart on the way down, bricks and weatherboard, soft furnishings and appliances and all sorts strewn over the steep slope and area below.
“Thunderbird Five I need information. Now!” Virgil’s requests for readings on the stability of the ground beneath him, the possible position of the person who’d called for help and all the information he’d need to safely reach the house and its occupant were efficiently met by Eos’ precise numbers, readouts and calculations.
Virgil tested every footstep on approach to the edge of the sinkhole, then set himself for a long slide down towards the wreckage. The exosuit would be enough to help him pick his way through the debris and reach the victim, but he would need his ‘bird to help them get out.
As if on cue the air was filled with a familiar engine rumble, and the voice of a little brother broke in over his comm.
“Thought you could use a hand,” Gordon said, almost cheerfully. “Where do you want me?”
It took some time and a lot of careful manoeuvring, Virgil directing Gordon where to use Thunderbird Two’s grapples to remove or lift and support larger sections of the collapsed building while he used his Jaws of Life to shift or break through smaller pieces. There were a few heart-stopping moments where the ground beneath them shifted further, the house groaning around them, but finally Virgil and the old man who had called for help emerged from the rubble. Gordon lowered the rescue cradle and hauled them both up into the safety of the great green Thunderbird, leaving behind the crater where the last house on the left had once stood.
Prompt | The last house on the left - @flashfictionfridayofficial
Planning to just write a bunch of little things for the Never better crew in preparation for November, to get to know everyone and maybe snoop around the world for an actual plot.
Could use a little word polished off here or there but I liked the final word count to much :D
The last house on the left was a ruin of a mansion, every opening and the fence surrounding it wrapped in yellow tape, large signs screaming, !!!DANGER!!! Magical cataclysm site! DO NOT ENTER!!!
At least they had, some time ago. Now several had fallen down, and the words had peeled off to a point where they felt more like a mumble, despite the blatant abuse of exclamation marks.
Kadmos had never known it to be any different, although to be fair, when he was young, he’d rarely come to this side of town. He had thrown an eye on the house for some time now - it seemed like such a perfect spot to spend the rougher nights, to avoid having to ask his friends for favours.
Of course he wasn’t a fool, and he’d spent a few hours in the library and the city archive trying to figure out what the danger might be.
But he had found nothing. Either the signs really just served to keep the homeless out, or whatever incident had occurred had been thoroughly wiped.
The street was busy day and night, having evolved from an elegant lane at the edge of town into one of the big arteries of city traffic. The mansion was the only one of its kind left; the rest of the street was lined with brutalist housing blocks and shops, half of which at any given time seemed to be permanently closed.
Kadmos had decided to give it a shot, figure out whether it would be a safe place to stay. He was sure someone would stop him if he attempted to enter the house during daytime - or else he would at least be filmed by someone hoping for the worst - so he went when enough of the light was gone he could hope to slip onto the overgrown property unnoticed.
The last streetlamp on the left had been broken for years, which helped.
He felt his phone buzz in his pocket when he climbed over the fence, but that was all that happened, so he took a moment under the old elder tree to check. Bernt had written to the group. Who’s down for brunch tomorrow? Trying to make madeleines.
For a moment he wondered whether he should tell his friends where he was going, but then, that was silly. It would be alright; he would be careful, and odds were nothing was going on here at all except an attempt to keep the likes of him out.
Would love that :D You’re a treasure.
He put the phone away, the buzz of the others’ incoming replies strangely reassuring as he walked around the house once, trying to find the best point of entry.
At the left side, crowded by the next house over - a solid wall taller than the mansion, no windows facing this side - a single window on the ground floor had lost the entirety of its glass. Tatters of yellow tape still clung to the frame, brittle with age.
Kadmos glimpsed in, using his phone flashlight carefully so it wouldn’t be seen from the street.
Everything seemed perfectly ordinary. Lots of dust. Near the window, leaves had blown in, which was no surprise with the plants clawing their way up the outside walls. There wasn’t much furniture left, but a chandelier hung from the ceiling.
Everything seemed perfectly ordinary, and yet, Kadmos felt a shiver down his spine, felt watched.
But then, to be fair, he was currently breaking into a house.
He pondered for a moment. His phone buzzed again, as per the nature of groupchats. He looked over the room once more. Everything looked like it had been untouched for the years the house had been empty.
As if no one had attempted this before.
But then, who wanted to deal with the aftermath of a magical cataclysm?
»Hey!«
… not careful enough. Kadmos did the first thing that came to mind, swung himself up and slipped through the window.
Good evening.
Someone stood behind him, blocking him from the window, and he froze, trying not to panic, to stay rational. A ghost? But a simple ghost wouldn’t be enough to abandon an entire house like that, not with the current price of real estate.
Someone - a freezing cold hand - grabbed him by the back of the neck like a kitten.
It’s been a while.
He had been stupid. His hand scrabbled across his phone screen, trying to at least leave a message to his friends, but he still could barely move, and it slipped between his fingers, thonking onto the dust-covered floor.
He was pulled beneath the floorboards before he could scream.
@flashfictionfridayofficial. I've been writing more sonnets lately, and apparently iambic pentameter is stuck in my brain.
The last house on the left, or so they say, is where the monsters all come out to play. It's there that ghouls and gremlins love to be, that house which lies upon the roaring sea.
One day I went to see what was inside (at night the door is covered by the tide). I heard a song which made me think of you. But then again, how do you know that's true?
I saw a coffin buried in the stone, and jumped a little when I heard a groan. From deep inside the coffin came a voice, "Oh, can I offer you a wondrous choice?"
I told the coffin yes, and it replied, "then first, I must inform you how I died. I lived not far from here, some years ago. The one thing that I know I was is slow.
"A beast came chasing me, to my dismay, I couldn't seem to hide or run away. When he caught me, I knew that I would die." Another voice joined in "now, that's a lie.
"You hunted me, so really, who's to blame? Not me, for all I did was play the game." The voice was calmer than I thought to hear, but looking at him, still I felt my fear.
"It's almost dark, so now it's time to go, unless you'd like to give us both a show." At that, the coffin laughed and called once more, "I promise that it would not be a bore."
"I like my life," I think, I hope, I said, "then come back here when you are nearly dead." So from that leftmost house I walked away, from what I guess I cannot rightly say.
for the @flashfictionfridayofficial prompt: the last house on the left
“So, you wanted to know about the weird house at the end of the street. Consider this your induction into the neighborhood. It’s the oldest building here, at least hundreds of years old,” Falad says..
“But does anyone live there?”
“Well, that’s what’s weird. Most of the time the house sits empty. But occasionally, maybe once a year, someone will activate the portal outside the house and then enter the house.”
“That’s not weird. Maybe he’s a portal mage and spends most of his time off venturing to unconnected towns.”
“That may be, but that wouldn’t account for how long he’s been doing this. My grandma says when she was a kid, the same guy, with his same hat with it’s weird feather, same hollow, sharp face would do the same thing. And that this wasn’t a new thing even when she was a kid. The same person has been coming to that house for maybe two hundred years. And hasn’t aged. And that’s not even mentioning the weird thing his hair does. His hair is the only thing that changes about his appearance, it grows and he cuts it, as the rest of his body stays the same. But, the story goes, two decades ago, on one of the rare occasions he goes into town and buys some foodd, food that’ll last a good while, he turned around quick, causing his hair to fly. It would have hit someone – but didn’t. His hair went through a person.”
Written for @flashfictionfridayofficial prompt above. A bit of scary stuff.
”No, not that house!” He rolls his eyes at his sister.
“You believe what they say?” He is anxious to get started. This is the first time they have been allowed to trick or treat alone. His sister won’t be ruining it for him. That house, the last house on the left, has its porch light on. He won’t be given in to the rumors and not going there. It is, after all, a test of his manhood. At ten, he believes himself grown enough to handle it.
“Why take the chance? There are plenty of other houses.” She stands firm, shaking.
“Alright chicken, you stay there. I am going up.” He starts out not looking back at his sister. In truth, he is hoping she joins him. Despite his bravado, he is a bit scared.
The sound of her footsteps behind him, are calming. He lets out his breath. They approach the house together.
With it’s porch light on, it resembles most of the others on their block. Until they get closer. The upper windows shrouded in heavy blinds, reflect just enough light to make them look eyes. The front door has a creepy looking knocker. It is shaped like a skull. It isn’t just that though. There is a feeling, a creepy skin crawling feeling. It raises the hair on both their necks. She grabs his hand.
“Let’s …” She gets no farther. Something comes out the front door. A ghoulish looking thing. They try to run but are frozen in terror. It reaches out for them.
The search begins at ten that night when the trick or treaters are reported missing. A search that encompasses miles around their house. That house, the last house on the left, is included. But, it obvious that the children hadn’t come that way. The layers of dust and growing kudo hadn’t been disturbed. The house had been empty for fifty years. Or so they think.
The children aren’t seen again until the next year. At Halloween, when another brave yet foolish child approaches the house, he is greeted by the siblings. They lure him in, tired of playing just with themselves.
