The wine-cellar (standard:horror, 1634 words)
Author: Lev821	Added: Aug 10 2021	Views/Reads: 1143/741	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Perhaps it would be best not to explore the cellar of the old abandoned house...

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

operate at a high percentage. Sometimes it was perhaps at 95%, 
sometimes 99%, and that extra space at the end was what cried out for 
leisure time, what tried to give him a break, and sometimes won out, 
would get him to build retreats, to take holidays in Spain, but the 
consuming nature of a workaholic would strain to overwhelm, and back to 
99% it would go, and stay there a while, maybe years, because he could 
not just ‘switch-off', unlike an employee who couldn't wait to switch 
off the second the clock struck knocking off time. A businessman's 
brain was set in stone, the 1% occasionally making itself known, until 
it bowed down defeated, rarely used. 

Business and profit was his whole existence, until the curious eye of
one of his own workers in the accounts department noticed those fees 
within the contracts to buyers and saw something wasn't quite right. He 
was the kind of person you could call a ‘jobsworth', and he showed his 
findings to others in the department, and they all took it to 
solicitors to find they had a case, a case for corruption, and George's 
empire came crumbling down. Someone even set fire to a section of one 
of his factories but it was put out before the whole building was 
ablaze, but expensive fabrics went up in smoke. 

His reputation was shot. It was all very well having plenty of money,
but you cannot buy people's trust. It has to be earned. So he was cast 
out. A pariah. Just another corrupt businessman. 

He retired to this house, and nobody ever saw him again, because nobody
cared to come looking. 

Was that a butterfly inside Jake's stomach, flapping around? A slight
inkling of fear. Fear of what? Of the whole place collapsing, or was it 
occupied? By who or what? 

Still, a brave kid overrides that, and nobody need know, so he walked
his bike to the entrance and went up three creaking wooden steps and 
entered the musty hallway which had been ripped of seemingly 
everything. Even the wallpaper had been torn in places. There was no 
carpet, only a carpet of dust with old footprints. Some of which led 
across to beside the stairs where there was an open door. 

As the place was fairly big, he knew he could start exploring anywhere,
but the cellar seemed to be of the most appeal, so he passed other open 
doorways into large empty rooms. It seemed to be a placed that had been 
explored plenty of times before, torn of everything that could be 
moved. A skeleton of a house. 

Except that was, when he entered the cellar. 

Down there though, it was dark. Seemingly darker than any midnight, but
where he stood there was a grubby light-switch in the gloom. A 
light-switch that worked. 

In the cellar, one solitary bulb gave out weak 40watt light as if at any
second it would give up. 

From his vantage point he could see lots of things glinting, but nothing
could be made out, so he slowly walked down the straining cracking 
wooden steps until he stood on the last one and surveyed the carnage 
before him. 

There were wine-racks, some with full bottles still in them, but most of
the rest was smashed on the floor, literally carpeting the place in 
glass. 

Amongst it all, about five metres in front of him, he noticed there lay
shiny, seemingly new knife and fork. 

As he had on his black synthetic leather school shoes which had durable
soles he walked down onto the glass and stood in the middle where he 
also discovered something he had not seen from the vantage point of the 
stairs. 

There was a corpse. 

It looked like it had been there years, as it was basically a skeleton
with transparent skin stretched over it. 

He wasn't scared, and his first instinct was not to run, but to simply
stare at it, wondering who it was and why they were there. The corpse 
wore shredded clothes, stained with blood long since dried. 

Strange, he thought, as the door to the cellar slammed shut. 

Panic fired through him and he dashed to the entrance to find it locked
up tight. He banged and shouted and kicked, but all to no avail, until 
he tired himself out and resigned himself to the fact that he was 
locked down there. 

As he slowly crunched his way across, back to the corpse, he picked up
the knife and fork and looked at them in the sickly light. 

A strange yearning and compulsion came over him, and although knowing he
was locked in, even if the door opened he would stay, because he wanted 
to, and looked down at the corpse of Sir George Durant, who in a 
maniacal frenzy smashed the place up and ripped the glass into himself 
as the realization of his fallen empire hit him, and Jake sensed he was 
here somewhere in spirit. 

He lifted up the knife and fork before him. 

George knew he was coming, and was still bitter, still had to take out
his frustration even on people. Why must he suffer alone? 

Yet it seemed to Jake that he wanted to use the utensils, and smiled at
them, because he knew why they were here, and what they were for. 

He was going to eat himself.


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