The wine-cellar (standard:horror, 1634 words)
Author: Lev821	Added: Aug 10 2021	Views/Reads: 1142/741	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Perhaps it would be best not to explore the cellar of the old abandoned house...

The bike screeched to a halt on a well-worn path that cut through the
fringes of a wooded area. A place that contained a large house that had 
been built by its owner as a kind of retreat. 

However, as Jake Dermot looked at the structure, now derelict and
looking like it would collapse in on itself in a gust of wind or tumble 
down if one more thing was removed, like a precarious game of jenga, he 
knew it was time to explore. 

He believed he was the bravest kid in school. At twelve, he had already
been smoking for two years, influenced by a father who didn't care. A 
father who accidentally brought Jake into this world. The type who will 
never have what it takes to look after a child. The kind that grows old 
but never grows up. The type who smokes, swears and argues in front of 
children because they haven't matured themselves, who bring children 
into this world and can't look after them. So Jake simply copied him 
and his friends who were the same as his father. Couldn't take any 
responsibility, just smoked cannabis and drank and watched the ‘footie' 
and boxing, and ‘ain't no kid' gonna stop them living that limited 
lifestyle. 

His mother was kind of similar and just shrugged her shoulders at the
father because that's just who he was, and with four brothers and one 
sister, her attention to him was kind of limited. There wasn't much by 
way of affection in his household. Simply convenience. Although money 
was always an issue, his father always seemed to have some, because 
Jake knew he wasn't always obeying the law. 

So he was already showing signs of ‘becoming' like his parent and his
friends. Jake's friends at school had similar fathers, and were usually 
the disruptive ones in class. The bullies. The ones who threw things 
around the classroom. Who told the teachers to fuck off, ‘cos' like, 
why the fuck do you need to learn algebra? 

Why learn stuff you're never going to use? Why go to music class if
you're never going to be a musician? What was the point of learning 
history? So Jake would play truant a lot and ride his bike around the 
town. Sometimes his friends would join him, but sometimes they would 
stay in school for various reasons and he would ‘bunk-off' alone. 

Today was one of those days. An afternoon of double music followed by
double geography. Fuck that. It was bike riding time. His parents 
didn't care when he came home during school hours. 

He rode along a forest path he had ridden plenty of times before but the
thought of breaking and entering the old house had hardly occurred to 
him much as he usually whizzed past it on his bike, and when the 
thought did occur to him occasionally he guessed it would be better 
with his friends, but today, the house loomed about forty metres away 
as if goading him. 

So because he was the bravest kid in class, probably in town, breaking
and entering could come easy to him, even though he had never actually 
broken and entered anywhere illegally. 

However, he didn't need to break in, because the front door was open. 

The house basically looked like an ordinary detached house you would
find in an upmarket residential area, except for the fact it was more 
than twice the size with added rooms. Three lounges and two garages, 
all to feed the ego of one man, business magnate Sir George Durant who 
made his fortune in fabrics who would boost his vast profits by 
inserting hidden fees in contracts to wholesalers and was a master of 
persuasion of misleading offers. 

He had this house built as a place to wind down, a getaway, but spent a
lot of time close to his work, and would rent posh accommodation close 
to the factories he oversaw. So this was a kind of holiday retreat, 
only him living there. No marriage, no children, work work work, the 
time when workaholics experience some ‘down-time', when they think of 
holidays and breaks, and building houses on the outskirts of woods for 
when work became overwhelming or to take a breather. 

Yet, when he wasn't at the factories, or in meetings, or in his offices,
he would always be thinking of work. A workaholic brain seemed to 


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