Chapter 6.

When we finally arrived at our destination after several long hours of hiking in the woods, what came into sight was a large mansion with ten-foot walls erected around it’s surrounding area. It stretched as far as the eye could see, but it was disguised and hidden well in the densely packed trees deep within the forest. We entered through a rusted gate at the front and ventured inside. 

Behind the gate, there were even more trees lying in wait. There was a narrow path that branched off into several directions throughout the forest enclosed behind the walls. The first thing I noticed when we entered was the three gravestones off to the side in an open patch not too far off from the gate. When I asked about it, she just said those were the graves of a few of her deceased family members.

At the time, I didn’t think too much about it since my head was in the clouds when we were together. I was really looking forward to meeting her parents despite being slightly nervous. Would I appear to be a poor match for their daughter? I remembered having such normal innocent thoughts back then. 

However, it didn’t take very long for my thoughts to change when we arrived at the main building. When she first opened the door, a small gust of wind blew into my face and with it, it brought a rather peculiar smell. If I had to describe it, it was musty, like mildew or mold had built up excessively over an extended period of time. It felt like it had been quite some time since anyone had actually lived there. 

Rather than somewhere that somebody would live, it all felt very off-putting; it was not homely at all. Instead of somewhere warm a family lived together, it felt cold, isolated, and abandoned.

When I asked her about it, she just laughed it off a bit and said her parents sometimes spent time away from the main building and they stayed in some of the smaller housing areas within the premises. She said they didn’t like servants or maids either so things tended to get a bit musty after some time passed without it being aired out properly.

It was by that point I grew a bit more concerned and suspicious. The moment we stepped inside, the fluffy atmosphere we had outside had completely vanished into thin air. The door eerily crept shut behind us before I heard the click of it locking in place when it was fully closed.

It was rather chilly inside and the stench was getting worse the deeper we ventured inside. I tried to turn on the lights, but when I flipped the switch, nothing happened. There was either no power, the breaker was tripped or the bulbs were blown, any of those things were enough to put me on edge. She explained and claimed the power to the building was turned off since no one had been using the main building recently.

Red flags went off in my head right, left, and center by that point and I’d grown aware that the entire situation was the perfect setting for a classic horror film. When I asked her if she was pulling a prank on me to try and scare me, she smiled and nodded her head, but she didn’t say a single word as she proceeded to drag me further into the mansion with her.

She led us into an empty room near the back of the mansion where she came to a stop in front of a bookcase at our side. She placed her hand under one of the bookcases’ shelves and after fiddling around a bit, it slid to the side revealing a door behind it.

In my nervous state, my heartbeat accelerated out of control. I took a deep breath to try to calm myself down, but it really wasn’t helping much. On the off chance that it wasn’t some sort of prank, I internally prepared myself to make a break for it. She was acting far too strangely.

She opened up the door, walked in, and motioned with her hand indicating for me to follow behind her. When we entered, I discovered a winding staircase leading down to what appeared to be the mansion’s basement.

Of course, I naturally tried to find out where she was taking me, but she only chuckled and asked if I was a little kid who needed his girlfriend to hold onto his hand. Incensed by her provocative words, the masculine nature in myself, which oozed of concentrated testosterone, was provoked and I said the only natural thing a muscle brained idiot would say in the situation. I widened my larynx and stuck out my chest and in a manly deep tone of voice told her resolutely, “I’m hella scared, so let’s go back, babe.”

Somehow, I got a laugh out of her by touting the air of a true intellectual alpha male. I’m certain it was a line so powerful and dominant that it had surely made uncountable panties drop throughout the history of mankind.

But really, I was scared out of my mind by that point and I really wanted to lighten up the mood somehow. In the end, she held onto my hand and pulled me along, down the winding staircase, and despite how much I protested against it, she didn’t listen to a single word I said.

When we reached the bottom of the staircase, a rancid odor grew more distinct. It smelt reminiscent of dead rats or animals on a farm. When she pushed open the door to what I initially thought was the basement, I finally saw what I was most afraid of seeing.

There were about fifty human skeletons and one body that had a few scraps of decaying rotten flesh remaining on it. The majority of the organs were eaten up and in a tattered state with only small portions of it still intact. There were several rats digging in, they were all eating away at the body and there were maggots growing out of what little flesh remained on the decayed body.

The disgusting sight, combined with the foul stench left me in a state where I couldn’t hold back any longer. Without any warning, I spilled some nasty looking spaghetti all over the ground.

In my delirious, horror-stricken state, I asked her what the meaning of the scene she’d shown me was. She simply told me that they didn’t love her for who she was, so she had to lock them up here to let them play with her pets. She actually got a bit flustered as well and explained that she hadn’t visited them once during the three years we were together. It was almost like she was afraid I’d think she was cheating and seeing other men while we were together.

After she explained everything, she asked me while looking deep into my eyes whether I loved her for who she was. I knew for certain what fate awaited me if I said I didn’t love her, so the only thing I could do was tell her that it was only natural that I loved her. I lied through my teeth, looked her in the eyes, and forced myself to put on a warm loving smile while I killed off all my true thoughts jumping about chaotically in my head.

When people told me women had all sorts of baggage, I scoffed it off as nothing much in the past. It wasn’t until that very moment that I finally understood just how heavy that baggage could truly be. It was baggage so heavy that it was surely more than enough to leave me eternally devastated and scarred.