My Walls
this literary horror flash fiction is my contribution to a collaborative publication Tombstack
This one is not going out with an email. I wrote it for Tombstack Weekly but wanted to have it available on my page as well for anyone interested in a quick, literary horror read. Please check out all the other amazing work available on Tombstack.
Countless men have called me home since my inception in 1908. It was a glorious ceremony. Some slick politician embezzled a pretty penny by cutting all sorts of corners. He saw it fitting to throw a real party: red ribbon and champagne.
I felt gorgeous back then, with my white walls and shiny fences, oh-so-ready to make a difference. I didn’t care that the plumbing only kicked out hot water sporadically and rats had already found weaknesses in my cheap foundation. I was going to be a place where men got redeemed.
The heartbreak didn’t come all at once. Instead, it compounded. One-hundred-and-seventeen years of it. Slowly, hope became apathy. Sure, some men did get better, they heard God in the echoes of their cells or fell in love with a dog through some do-good program, but the majority didn’t leave any different than they came. Some became much, much worse.
Antoine Jackson changed everything, turned my apathy into grief. A newly eighteen-year-old high school student, he came after a deadly gas station robbery. Despite never even leaving his house that day, he was tied to the case by eyewitness testimony. He arrived at my door with a sentence of twenty-six years tied to him like a cinderblock.
Antoine had big brown eyes, a fashionable haircut, and a secret love for books. I could sense his wholesomeness and fear the moment he set foot on my concrete. It wasn’t the first time I have welcomed an innocent man. Nor was it the first time that a fellow wholly unsuited for these conditions found himself inside my walls—he was just the first to whisper poems aloud in the deep of night and lull me to sleep with the beauty of language.
When his despair was most heightened, I tried to comfort him with the hum of the lights, but I don’t think it worked.
He lasted just four months. A man not much older than Antoine with a shaved head and ugly tattoos (both in quality and meaning) cornered him three days ago. Punched him in the stomach. This man’s violence was hereditary. His father and grandfather treated me like a final destination, rather than a terrifying place to leave behind.
In the assault, Antoine’s body crumbled, his thoughts spilled across my linoleum, blood rushed into the cracks. His pulse slowed, and mine increased. I have never wanted it all to stop as much as I did that day. If I could have imploded when the final blow landed, I would have taken all these people with me, cleansed the world of them. Instead, I just watched.
Last night, just before they gave Antoine’s body to his mother, I saw a guard take a photo of the fractured head. A young man reduced to gore for internet points. At that moment, something started to grow inside of me. An expansion. The beams that hold me upright had to make space. In the basement, a soft rumble moved among the pipes. So quiet, I thought I imagined it.
Then the pain came. I couldn’t tell if it was in my heart of structure.
Something was changing, morphing inside of me, separating from the wood and metal I knew so well. The rumble turned into a roar. And then it came, an entity born of me but entirely separate.
Ready to devour.
Awesome stuff, inga. If you don’t mind me asking, was it a prison or just a house? I feel like the answer really makes a difference.
If it’s a prison I think my assumption was that the guy with the ugly tattoos was a neo-nazi, and the murder was race related
Would love to hear what you have to say abt this
Beautiful! The details about the guard taking a picture is so small, but packs a strong punch. Very well done!