The Walls Have Eyes

If walls could talk, I would be screaming. Cliché, I know.

My awareness came out of the blue. One moment I just was, with no memory of what came before. Blackness? Nothing? I couldn’t begin to fathom how an entire consciousness materialized from nothing. I didn’t have a brain because I was a fucking wall, yet somehow I could think. I didn’t have eyes for the same reason, yet somehow I could see. It felt like a dream. Or at least what my thought bank told me dreams were supposed to be like.

There was a wardrobe partially obstructing my view, but I could see an unmade bed shoved up against the opposite wall. Behind it was a large tapestry, beside it a bookshelf with not a single book on it. Peculiar. There was a pile of dirty clothes heaped up against me, reeking of filth and grime. The worst part was that I didn’t have a nose to plug, so I was under constant assault by the stench, baffled that I was able to experience these "senses" at all.

The predicament was both bewildering and concerning.

For all intents and purposes, I was a "living" wall. A thinking, seeing, smelling—hearing? My inner musings were suddenly interrupted by a metallic jingle to my left. A mechanism clicked and the air was displaced by the opening of a door.

A man walked through the new opening, followed closely by a woman. She hesitated in the doorway, a stunned look on her face that was soon replaced with disgust as she moved her hand up over her nose. The smell probably hit her like a truck. The man turned around and she quickly dropped her hand back to her side and smiled nervously, embarrassed, unsure.

“Sorry about the smell, I think a rat must have died in the wall.” The man said.

The woman glanced at the pile of dirty clothes, then the unmade bed. I could see the regret register on her face as she wondered why the hell she came home with this man.

“I can light a candle.” He suggested. She nodded.

“That would be great.” She said with feigned enthusiasm and a faux smile. Her aura screamed get me outta here. The man seemed oblivious to her rigid body language as he brushed past her back out the door.

He returned with a large, double-wicked candle and a box of matches. The sulfurous fumes of a match being struck were a welcome, albeit short-lived mask over the wretched scent that permeated the air. He lit the candle's two wicks and placed it on his empty bookshelf. Spruce started to infiltrate the putrid atmosphere.

The woman stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, arms folded, eyes darting around uncomfortably like a fish from a net. The man sat on the bed and patted the spot beside him. She cautiously took a seat, as if there were venomous snakes coiled on the bed ready to strike if she wasn’t ever so careful.

The next few moments took place in a blur. The man brushed the woman’s hair behind her ear and she began letting her guard down. Her tense shoulders relaxed. Her eyes locked onto his. Her apprehension fell away and a smile pulled up the edges of her mouth. Seconds later, his hands were around her throat.

A struggle ensued, but ended soon after it began. I wanted to look away, but my vision was a fixed, unblinking thing. I could not simply shut off or avert my gaze at will. Forced to witness the horror and helpless to intervene, I watched as a life was stolen in front of me.

The killer rolled onto his side, breathing heavily and keeping his eyes on the woman's body as if he were afraid she would reanimate and escape. It was only an empty vessel now, I told myself. A vacant temple that once housed a soul. He began to stroke her hair. Rage riveted through me.

It seemed like an eternity of silence and stillness, the candle’s twin flames the only movement in the room. They danced on, indifferent to the loss of life that occurred less than ten feet from their spot on the shelf.

After the room darkened and the fire had eaten half the wicks, the light emitted from it cast ghostly shadows across the walls and ceiling. The killer reached over after a while and snuffed the flames with his fingers, leaving the room darker still.

He hoisted the husk of what could have been a beautiful life and carried her to the other side of the room, blocked from my constant line of sight by the wardrobe. Now that he was out of frame, the reality of what I had just witnessed truly hit. If I’d had a stomach I was sure I would be sick.

There was a loud banging sound followed by the commotion of demolition. It went on for what seemed like several hours, if my sense of the human construct of time held any accuracy to it. From my perspective, time moved slower than cold molasses.

When the killer finally emerged back into view, he was nothing but a sillhouette in the dark, dark room. He exited and I heard a faucet turn on somewhere. The smell of fresh death and old death mingled harshly with the doused candle. Despite its powerful aroma, it did little to nothing to over up the horrendous smell of decay that lingered. I wondered how many others he had killed before her. He looked like he had done it at least twice before. The smell only confirmed as much. Their bodies had to be close by.

After some time passed, he came back and climbed into bed. It was agonizing having to watch him as he slept peacefully in his bed after having murdered someone so callously, so violently. I wondered what was going on in his head. Before. During. After. What makes a killer kill.

Night after night I was forced to watch him sleep like he had a clear conscience. There was no laying awake until dawn staring at the ceiling wrestling demons. No tossing and turning, unable to find comfort in his own skin. No waking in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. No screaming from insidious nightmares. The man was pure evil, not a drop of guilt or remorse in his gaping black hole of a soul.

~~~

It was just another slow-burning day alone with my thoughts when I heard the commotion in the hall. Two sets of feet. The jingle of keys. The door opened and it was as if I was watching a rerun of a bad horror movie. If I had a heart it would have sank through the floor.

It was history repeating. The hesitation in the doorway. The hand over the nose. The increasing discomfort with every passing second. The cradled elbows and nervous eyes.

"Sorry about the smell. Think a rat must've died in the wall. I can light a candle if you want." Now that I was really listening, it sounded practiced, rehearsed. Like he had said it more than once before. Like he planned to say it again after tonight.

When he left the room to get the candle and matches—I wondered why he didn’t keep them in the room—the woman stood awkwardly awaiting his return. I tried to call out to her, to warn her, but it was useless. Apparently talking was off the table for things that didn’t have mouths, yet…somehow seeing could occur without eyes and hearing could occur without ears and thinking without a brain. I tried again to the same futile end. The man returned.

As he tried to light the candle, the woman fidgeted with her fingers, clearly debating whether to bolt or brave it. And I tried to speak. Time seemed to shift into an even slower motion as the candle was lit and set on the shelf. The man sat on the bed, patted the spot beside him. The woman moved toward him, apprehensive but somehow not completely repulsed and running for the hills. I suppose to her he was just an average guy with a much smellier than average room. She didn’t know the truth yet. I still couldn’t force the words out.

The woman was lowering herself onto the bed when I managed something between a squeak and a groan. She paused and snapped her head in my direction.

“Did you hear that?” She asked the man while I strained to get an actual warning of some kind out to her.

“Hear what?” He said, clearly oblivious to the sound. He had something else on his mind.

“There was a noise over by the wardrobe.” He Followed her frightened gaze then and I felt his eyes like they were directly on me. His face was a shadow and I couldn’t quite read its expression. He slowly turned back to the woman he was about to murder.

“Probably just another rat.” He shrugged, but now I could see an uneasy suspicion creeping onto his face.

He reached a hand toward her. I struggled against the blurred borders of the realm of possibility. He brushed her hair behind her ear. She wasn’t buying it. She looked afraid. She started to tremble and the air started to become charged and suddenly I was screaming RUN.

It came out a surprisingly forceful sound, closing in from all sides of the room. It was almost as if it was layered, like a chorus.

The woman seemed to be the only one that could hear it. She bolted from the bed, but the man was on her in an instant, pulling her back onto it and forcing his weight on top of her. She brought a knee up hard into his groin and fought out from under him. He grabbed her arm to pull her back and I screamed CANDLE. And the sound was earth-shaking, harmonic. Yet the killer still didn’t seem to hear me. The woman did though. She was the only one that needed to. She grasped for the candle on the bookshelf next to her and gripped it for dear life, bringing it back into the killer's temple with such force that I could feel it as the thick glass broke against his skull. He released her and then she was gone.

I watched triumphantly as the killer dropped to the floor, unconcious from the impact, lascerated deeply from the glass. He bled out before the police arrived.

~~~

There are a lot of bodies in the room, both living and dead. I was the first one they found. The woman had told the detective that she thought there was another victim trapped inside the wardrobe. When they found nothing inside it, the detective shoved it out of the way, clearing my vision at last. His face twisted as he struggled to speak and maintain his composure. He finally said, "Hi, Rose. We've been looking for you." They say there’s power in a name, which must hold some weight of truth because that was when my memories came rushing back.

~~~

My name is Rose Gwynn. I was twenty two years old when three months ago I met Greg at a local bar called The Well. I was out by myself after a shitty day at work. I knew there were women going missing from bars in the area, but I was confident that I would never be seen as a target to predatory men. I wasn't the victim type, I’d had myself convinced.

When Greg bought me a drink he seemed totally normal, charming even. We had some great conversations and before I knew it we had been chatting for three hours. It didnt take much persuasion for me to go home with him after three hours and lots of booze.

The smell in his house was unbearable then, too. He used the same line about a rat dying in the wall which in retrospect adds another layer of evil to the words. He lit a spruce candle--the same one that would later be used to crack his skull like an egg. I was a little grossed out, but I was wasted so my senses were dulled, making it seem less grotesque than it actually was. I had also been trying not to be too judgmental, especially after the great time we’d had at the bar.

When he put his hands around my throat I thought it was a joke at first. Then his eyes changed. They morphed into black chasms of abysmal hatred. I fought as hard as I could. I even managed to grab the candle, but he stopped me before I could use it as a weapon. In the end, I was overpowered. My last thoughts as the life was squeezed out of me were I'm gonna haunt you, motherfucker.

Now, I’m suspended in the middle of the room with the other women he killed, free at last. His presence is nowhere near us. His soul rotted out long ago, the day he first decided to end a life that wasn’t his. I’ll never know why he did it. I don’t think I want to.

There are several holes in the walls where some of the bodies had been sealed inside, reopened by the CSI team. Others were never filled in, only hidden behind objects in the room—all in varying states of decay. The bookcase, the clothes pile, the tapestry, and of course the wardrobe. There was a large painting covering his most recent kill. He had been doing this for years. Recently, he had escalated his frequency.

We had all been screaming from the walls that night, not willing to watch another woman become a victim, which is why it had sounded like a harmony of screams. It actually had been. Now, we float up through the ceiling, leaving behind our former prison. We can go anywhere now that we are no longer trapped in the walls.

We all have our memories back. But not just memories of this life. Every memory of every life we’ve lived is a thought away. We have no limitations now that we are at peace. We are not bound by the laws of the living or confined within the parameters of a body. We don’t need bodies to experience all of the senses. We are senses. We are energy. We are ether. We are spirit. And we can never truly die.