The deep red blood coiled through my hands like snakes, ever changing, ever flowing. The crimson drops soon fell between the fingers and puddled together on the floor. She was no more. Many a times had I imagined this situation, however, I never imagined myself truly doing it. However, no amount of remorse or regret can bring the lifeless chunk of flesh lying at my feet back to life. Her eyes were still open in shock and awe, and her cold, stale face was still distorted into the grotesque image of fear, a mask she never thought she would be wearing in her single last experience.

Her blood pooled itself quickly, almost as if trying to escape the terrible and single truth of life, that all life must at some point or another end. The single, deep wound in her back stared back into my frenzied eyes, as if trying to ask “why?”, but I had no answer, I never did. My fingers loosened and a loud “bang” reverberated through the ground as the long knife I used to force her demise fell with a splash into the pooling blood.

No sirens. No blue lights. Nothing. The air was still, and all secrets that it held were out in the open, the thick scent of blood wafting through it with every ragged breath I took. There was nothing to fear but my own actions. I couldn’t allow myself to be brought to justice, if that were to happen, I would have no choice but to come to terms with the fact that I did, in fact, take her life.

But how does one hide a body? That was one of the few questions I hoped and prayed never to have to answer. My frantic gaze wandered the room in search for an answer, but the darkness simply stared back in silence. There would be no answer.

I knew it was easier to hide a body if it was in smaller pieces, but asking myself to defile her body even further would simply bring the situation to reality, a place I wished never to visit again. But I had to do something. I bent my tired body down to hers and carefully, oh so carefully, lifted her lifeless body into the air. I couldn’t stand looking into her empty eyes, devoid of any light of life, so I slowly slid my hand over them, allowing her to cease looking at what she had. I carried her body as far as my trembling legs could take her.

A trail of blood followed us down into the basement, where I laid her body gently on the ground. The blood tried to pool, but she was a no longer someone, instead, she had become a husk, filled with intestates, meat and dying tissue. What had once been a self was now simply a husk of meat and bones, and I only knew one way to dispose of such things.

I left her cold body there, and when I came back, I had company. Three starving hounds followed me, whimpering in pain and hunger. I led them down the stairs, I couldn't even look at her as I closed the door on the starving things.

And like that, I spent the next new days in fear, unwilling to accept her loss or her current situation. One could have called me mad, if her death was so traumatic as for me to not be able to even accept her loss, how could I ever have been able to feed her to a couple of starving hounds? As one could expect, I neither have nor had an answer to this.

Within a few days the scratching on the door of the basement and the loud whimpering from it had ceased, and the last hound had fallen victim to the terrible sickness one calls living. The dark, black door easily slid open with the slightest push of my cold hands. The three hound lay silently by the door, deep bloody cuts covering their bodies, not like that of claws, but like that of a long knife. In the middle of the room, right where I had laid her, she laid, not a scratch on her body, aside from the deep wound stabbing through her back and out her chest.

Her body was soaked in crimson, like the deep, red petals of an autumn rose. However, her face had, instead of the pale mask shaped and twisted with fear, her face was calm. Her mouth was closed in a slight smirk and her eyes were closed in peace. Not even a wrinkle on her face could even indicate that she ever would have felt even a trace of the terror i knew she had felt in her moment of demise.

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I stood in awe at the sight, but even though she made no movement, even though she couldn't do any movement at all, I didn't dare to approach her. Slowly, slowly, I closed the door behind me as I left the basement. I didn’t know what to do. Was she still alive? No, her body was as cold as death. There was no conceivable way for her to still be alive. However, speculation would get me nowhere. Soon enough someone would report her as missing, and when they come to ask me questions, she has to be gone.

I hesitated to do so, but soon enough I returned to that ominous place. The door slid open without even a squeal. The creatures I held in my hands would make quick work of the bodies. I threw them inside without even taking the time to notice how the hounds' carcasses were gone. I slammed the door behind me, hoping that this would be it.

Time flew by, I couldn’t stay patient. The door to the basement seemed alluring, as if trying to drag me down. After a mere two days I couldn't take it anymore, I had to know. From the door protruded a stench unlike any other. It smelled like that time one of my cats swallowed a mouse alive and died due to it, it smelled like the rotting meat we had in the fridge, it smelled like... her.

I gently rested my hand on the doorknob. It felt cold, yet alluring. I twisted it and it slid open without the slightest resistance. The inside of the door was covered in blood and scratches, almost the entire floor was covered in red, like a huge blanket.the only part of the room not covered head to toe in blood was her. She looked as if she had never even died to begin with.

However, the worst part by far was the smell. Everything smelled like blood and death. The stench of dying tissue trying to find itself hung in the air like a mist. I couldn't take it. I closed the door with a slam and ran to my bathroom, where I puked up all that could sustain this miserable life I led.

There was one thing left to try. I hated the thought if it, but I hated the thought of paying for something I didn't intend to do. I called him over. He came rather quickly, most likely since I told him it was important. I hadn't been in contact with anyone, so I suppose it is how it is.

He complained about the smell, how the whole house smelled rotten and dead. I couldn't argue it, since it was indeed true. I had gotten used to it, but I can understand why someone such as he would be uncomfortable with it. The odour only got thicker and deeper as we slowly reached the basement door.

I asked him to open it. He hesitated, but eventually the door slid open as it always does. The room was painted entirely in crimson, the walls, the floor, even the stairs and the ceiling was the deep, dark red of blood. While he was distracted by the awful sight, I pushed him. He fell down, a loud thump chiming like a bell every time his heavy body hit the stairs, and with a final thump he had reached the floor.

I closed the door behind me and spun the key in its hole around, a “click” most likely resounding down in the crimson room. I heard him groaning in pain. He tried shouting for me to release him, I even heard him banging and scratching on the door, but it was no use. After a day of this, as night fell and the moon shone brightly in the sky, I heard a scream. Like the damned souls from hell screaming for me to release him from the crimson room. But no such mercy would come, for I had long since lost any traces of humanitas.

In the morning, the screams had stopped. He no longer made any sound at all. No groaning, no scratching, no screaming, nothing. My house fell under a deep veil of silence. I approached the door. Even the door had gotten a deep crimson tint due to the blood soaked into the wood. I opened the door. It slid open, silent as the night.

The room was empty. There was no carcass of her, nor the body of him. No hounds, no creatures. Nothing. I descended the stairs into the room. Not even the scent of death could be found. It was as if nothing had happened. As if her demise and all that happened afterwards had never happened.

I left the basement. The house smelled like usual. Not a drop of blood wafted through the air.

I would have thought of it to have been nothing more than a strange dream, but the door to the basement, no matter how hard i tried to imagine it as being red before it all happened, it was still that crimson colour.

Every single time I opened that door, even to this day, I still cannot help but think what lies beyond that door is the staircase to hell, where she will greet me with open arms, and drag me down, down, to the crimson depths of hell.

- The End -