Thursday, March 23rd, 2019
The Bronx, New York
POV: Chase
As I walk down the bland coloured sidewalk, I glance around. Yep, thousands of people going along with their day, as usual. One of those people includes me, Chase Carther, or as my friends like to call me "CC" or as some of the people call me at school "idiot".
Speaking of school, I was walking home from that dreaded place right now. If this was a weekend, or a Friday, I'd be hanging out, and dicking around with my friends right now. But, my friends live over in Queens, and I live in the Bronx. Well, some of them used to live here, but some of them moved states, or moved to other places in the city. But some of them decided to stay at the same school when they moved, at the cost of a longer commute to and from school.
My walk home from school is always the same, I walk from school, past the subway station near the school, go by Yankee stadium, and my least favourite part, go up step street. Now some of you may be confused as what step street is. Well, it's an outdoor set of 130 steps going up a hill, squeezed in between two buildings. I go up these steps almost every day, and I've sort of gotten used to my calf muscles feeling like they're on fire.
Once I reach the top of the stairs, I reach my street. I walk by many apartment complexes, until I reach mine. I walk by the unattended front desk, across the tiled floor, and into the elevator. I select the 4th floor, and feel as the elevator shakes and sputters, before rising up to my chosen floor. As the elevator dings and the doors open, I walk out of the elevator, and across the smelly carpetted floor to room 403. I feel around in the side pocket of my backpack, until I feel a cold metal jingling thing. Bingo. I grab my keys, insert the correct one into the lock, turn it, and open the door. I walk into an empty apartment. I forgot that my dad was still at work. We didn't have a lot of money after mom left, so my dad has to always work really late to keep the lights on. I haven't seen mom ever since that night 8 years ago, when I was 8 years old, and heard mom and dad screaming at each other, followed by the strong slamming of a door, and then...silence. But, I'm only staying here for a minute, as I walk into my room, throw my bag, and everything else in my pockets onto my bed, including my keys. I won't be home until after dad gets home, and he always leaves the door unlocked if I'm gone. Now that I've emptied my inventory, I'm going to my favourite place.
Favourite place? You might be thinking to yourself. What the hell are you doing? Smoking crack? No, actually. I'm going to a house that's been abandoned for about 30 years now. Now you may think "why the hell is that your favourite place? Why can't you just go to a park or something?" Well, the thing about this house is that my friends and I are pretty much the only people that go in there, and we've pretty much made it our direct property, as it's been our hangout spot for years.
As I turn the street corner, there it is, I see it. 956 Harris avenue. I've heard about the history of this place from my friends parents. Apparently, there was a dude in his 30's that bought the house back in the 1960s, and people said it was like he lived in the 1700s, as he would always wear clothes that looked like he was about to charge into battle against Napoleon. People also mentioned that they'd see strange lights flashing inside the house at night, but nobody went to check on him. In 2011, he went missing, as nobody came to check on him for a few weeks.
Despite the creepy story, I have no problem hanging around in there. As I walk up to the front door of the house, I turn right to go to the side of the wooden, rotting porch. I get down on my knees, with my pants getting a bit wet from the grass, and crawled under the porch. The smell under here is disgusting, but I see my destination, I gigantic hole in the side of the house, leading into the basement of the house.
As I crawled through the hole, and stepped onto the dirty, dusty floor of the basement, I panned my view around. Yep, everything just as I remember it, the moldy, unused pipes on the wall, the ceiling planks, and rat shit on the floor, and the creaky stairs to the main floor. I walk upstairs to the main floor, and sit down in what's left of the kitchen. I sit down on the dirty floor, and close my eyes. I don't realize it, but I'm slowly slipping deeper and deeper into sleep. Until I finally cave, and go to sleep.
I wake up in a panic, taking a moment to realize where I was, before remembering what happened. I looked outside through the broken window, and saw that it was still light outside, so I had nothing to fear. I was getting pretty hungry, so I decided to head home. As I walked down the creaky basement steps, and looked towards where I would be crawling to get out of this house, my eyes started straying around the room, and I eventually caught sight of a small door, that looked like it was drawn onto the wall. I walked across the basement and placed my fingers on it. "Yep, real door" I muttered to myself. The curious part of my brain was going off the wall. Curiosity tugged at me, as I reached the tips of my fingers under the small door and pulled. The tiny door wouldn't budge, so I look around the basement floor, and I see it. A thin, sharp rock. Bingo, I'll just use it as a makeshift crowbar. I grab the rock off the dirty floor, and wedge it under the door. After a few seconds of pulling, the door flies open, and I'm flung back a good half meter. As I look into the now open doorway, my eyes are flooded with multicoloured light.