Madeline
Grace tapped her bare foot on the concrete floor. She wore a pout on her face, a pout that was now permanently stuck there as though it were a stubborn stain that refused to fade. She tapped her cheek with her fingertips while resting her chin on her palm. She was careful to avoid her neck. She never touched her neck anymore, it was too sore to the touch.
If she had known she would be stuck in this basement forever, she would have picked a more pleasant place to kill herself. She would have done it in a meadow or a forest. Some place where she could watch the fluffy rabbits and the playful squirrels and where wind blew in her face. Some place that wasn’t so dark, dreary, stale and cold.
Now, sitting in this basement, she could barely take the monotonous boredom. If she knew that this is what the afterlife was like, she would never have hung herself. She would have carried out her terrible life and would have been content with it regardless of how bad the depression got.
When the funeral home took her body away, Grace followed the men to the top of the stairs. She planned to walk right through the door after them but something stopped her. She could not make herself take another step. She tried stepping through the narrow threshold again and again. That day and many others, but it seemed there was a force keeping her down in the cold dark basement. It was as though a strong magnetic field could not let her go any further. She was stuck there.
She was now stuck with her thoughts and fears. It was her thoughts and fears that caused her to go down into this basement with the rope to begin with. And now she was stuck with only her thoughts and her fears.
“What’s down here?” Grace heard a cheerful voice come from up the stairs. Grace wasn’t sure how long she had been down there. She couldn’t believe it. Did she have visitors?
“I believe it is the unfinished basement,” a man said. “Should we have a look?”
A woman wearing a light blue skirt suit, a white blouse, and matching light blue kitten heels appeared at the top of the stairs. Her unnaturally blond hair had been curled close to her head as though she wore a helmet of yellow hair.
The man behind her wore a white short sleeve button-up shirt and a brown tie. He had plenty of hair above his top lip but none on the top of his head.
“Well, it is roomie. And if we finish this room, it will give us another couple hundred square feet of living space,” said the woman.
“And doing so will only add value to the house,” said the man raising his eyebrows.
“And I know just what to do with this room,” said the woman.
“I think this house is a fantastic deal. What do you say? Do you want to make an offer?”
Grace thought of the husband she left behind. Of course he would sell the house. The tragedy of her death could not have been easy on him. Staying would only bring him terrible memories.
“Absolutely!”
“There is something I need to disclose before I sell this house to you. I need to tell you someone died in this room. In this very basement. It was a suicide.”
The woman swatted her hand as though she was swatting a slow fly, “ghosts are nonsense and death does not bother me. I’ll take it.”
The next few weeks went by as fast as a fox on a hunt. Construction started almost immediately. The noise was too much for Grace to take but she knew the noise would eventually stop. Grace observed the workers. Although the physical craft didn’t interest her, she would never be able to take part, it was something to watch to keep her desperate interest.
When the oversized floral couch and a large television arrived, Grace knew the noise was over and she could now relax. With the new family of course.
On that first night of peace, the woman wearing the blue suit came trudging down the stairs and turned on the television. Finally, Grace had something entertaining to watch.
The screen showed the inside of a warehouse not unlike how this basement was before the workers cleaned it up. It seemed to be filmed with a low-quality camera. Was this a home film? Did this woman record some baking tips in a basement and wanted to rewatch them?
Then three men entered the room. The first man had an oversized bag over his head. Perhaps it was a potato sack. Grace couldn’t tell from the quality of the video. He appeared to have his hands tied behind his back. Grace shifted her attention to the other two men with black ski masks on. They appeared to be leading the first man by poking his back. Grace got a glimpse of what the prod was, a large machine gun. Grace knew little about guns except what she saw in movies.
The two men wearing ski masks kicked the first man so that he was down on his knees. There was no volume but Grace could imagine the man would make an uncomfortable noise. A fourth man, larger than the others, came into view. He too had something in his massive hands. Grace saw the unmistakable glint of sharpened metal. He had a long machete intended to cut through branches as thick as an oil drum. Grace covered her eyes, she couldn’t watch anymore but she couldn’t leave the room either.
Never in Grace’s life or death had she seen such horrific images. The woman watched one after another, sometimes rewinding to watch the more horrible scenes again and again.
Night after night, the woman with the perfect helmet hair and expensive skirt suit would come into the basement with a glass of Chardonnay and watch these demonic videos. Each night Grace felt disgust. If ghosts could puke, then she would have. Who was this woman that got gratification from this? Who would voluntarily watch these nightmarish videos? And why was she not afraid of the ghosts of these people coming to haunt her?
Grace’s horrible thoughts started moving away from her own problems to the horrific scenes she had watched. She realized she had made a terrible mistake when she came down here to end her own life. Her problems were nothing compared to the victims in these videos. These were people who wanted to live, but were kidnaped by horrible people and put in horrible situations? For what? To make a video that few people would like. What Grace really wanted was to live.
She wanted to live so that she could find whoever is making these videos and stop them. Her life never felt so petty as it did while she watched those videos with that woman.
Although, now that she was stuck in this basement with this woman, she had one option, to scare the living daylights out of her. To make her fear death.
