1 Missing neighbours

"What was that story about your new roommate?" Victoria asked. Hi! I'm Aiden, and I'll tell you the story of my friend. Or so I thought.

I was inattentively meandering my way home. I was exasperated, aiming my eyes low and kicking small pebbles that were in my way. It was the usual route. Walk down the busy main road, turned left into a minor suburban street, walked past the local tennis club, past the playground until I had reached the rundown, fin de siècle apartment complex. As I got to the apartments, I routinely turned right. However, what I was met with was not my house. It was utterly foreign. I looked closer and saw a young boy through the window. I turned away for a few seconds since I felt a little dizzy. I turned back, and the apartment complex was gone, as well as the boy.

I rubbed my eyes to see if I was dreaming or not. I spun back around and decided I was going to get coffee. I thought I was delusional, but as soon as my foot almost touched the ground, someone was there, in front of me. I was looking down, so all I could see was the acute reflection off of a pair of monochrome shoes. I slowly tilted my head up, and there he was, in front of me, the young boy I saw previously was standing right there.

"Hi. I'm Michael pleasure to meet, you Aiden." Michael said and, putting his hand out to shake mine. I paused. Questions shot into my head. "How does he know my name?" "How did he appear in front of me?" I was dying to know.

"Uhm. Yeah. It's a pleasure to meet you too, Michael. Also, may I ask how you know my name and how you got here?" I questioned.

"Oh, it's on your backpack tag. And I was always here. What are you talking about?" Michael replied, furrowing his eyebrows. I shrugged and just left, thinking that it was better to leave him alone. Little did I know that that was naïve of me. It was then too late. The great disaster had already begun. I thought Michael was someone nice and a responsible kid. But I was completely wrong.

After that day, I never saw him again, which I found weird. A death was reported in my neighborhood last week. Nobody found out who was a part of the crime, but more death reports were showing on the news day after day. I wondered why it was only from my community, but I didn't care too much about it. Day by day, things were getting worse. A noise was consistently coming from my basement every night with screams and cries saying, "Spare me, spare me." I remember that night fondly. My legs were shaky, and the feeling of fear crawled up my spine. A strange smell was also noticed by my parents and not me, but we brushed it off, even though we shouldn't have.

A couple of days later, as my family and I were sitting at our dining table, enjoying the food, when we heard the loudest scream from the bottom of our basement.

My parents told me to go down and check. I grabbed my flashlight and walked down the stairs. As soon as I got down the stained stone stairs and reached the ground, a solid horrifying smell hit me in the face. A rotten, toxic smell. Like when you have a dead animal, and the body is still there. Suddenly, I felt something particularly squishy at the bottom of my shoe. The horrendous smell was dampening and getting stronger every second that I took one step further into my basement.