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| - You’re alone in the middle of nowhere. You had just woken up; you don’t know where you are or who brought you here. You’re laying in the mud, covered in it, and you feel awfully drowsy. You see a house a few kilometers away, so you start running, and running to get to it. Maybe someone inside has a phone, and can lend it to you so you can call home, or help at least. You reach the door, and knock. There’s no reply. So, you push the door a little. It swings open easily. You gulp a little, and brush your feet on the mat, then brush the dried up mud off you, to the best of your ability. Now you’re walking around a large, dark room. You kick something, and stop walking. You can’t see what it is, and you can’t find a light switch either. You kneel down, and try to feel what it was that you kicked. It smells like burnt flesh. It feels soft, like a sponge, except rougher. When you touch it, it makes a crackling sound. It’s soft though. Maybe it's burnt bed covers? You get right close to it, to try and see it. No luck, but the smell gets worse. It’s so bad you can even taste it. You remember putting a torch in your pocket before you entered the house, so you take it out, play with it, until it flicks on. You turn the light down to the object. Your mind goes completely blank, and your heart starts racing, 10 times faster than usual. It’s a body- burnt to the bone. You scream at the top of your lungs, and try to get away quickly. You drop the torch, the batteries fall out, and it rolls away. You’re alone in a room with a cooked corpse. You’re trying desperately to get away from it, so fast you topple over yourself. You hurt your neck and your back pretty badly. The floor is also rough wood, so splinters dig into your hands. You don’t stop screaming the entire time. There’s nothing in your mind but the glimpse of the body you took. Then you stop. Still panicking, you hear footsteps. You don’t know where it comes from however. You look around. It’s still pitch black. After moving a bit more, you find the torch is in your hand. You scramble to find the button to turn it on. But it doesn't flick on. You shake it, and realize the batteries are gone. You whine, the footsteps pounding on the floor getting louder. Now what do you do? You try to find the batteries as quietly as you can, until you notice the footsteps have stopped. Your breathing becomes heavier, your heart races faster than before. Your mind is filled with fear, and you can still smell the stench of the burnt body. Then a dim light flicks on, from the other side of the room. You can’t see anything in it however, or close to it. A cold gust of window blows past you. You feel a strong presence of someone behind you. You turn, unable to see anything. It’s too dark. You decide not to move, just in case there is someone there. You’re trying to find the batteries still. You hear a voice. Then the smell of something burning, and it’s not the body. It smells like a match. You look around again, and you spot a tiny flame over on the other side of the room, close to the light. Is there more than one person in here? You don’t know. Then you find one of the 2 batteries you lost under your hand. You put the battery in the torch quickly, and then start searching for the second one. While you’re searching, you feel as if someone is trying to tear the torch away from you. You yelp and let it go. You curl up in your own little ball. You hear someone playing with the torch, taking the battery you found out of it. You have no idea who it is, if they’re helping you, or trying to scare the life out of you. The torch flicks on. The person holding it doesn't flash it on their face, or any part of them. They simply turn it off, and toss it at you. You gasp as it hits your head, and lands in your lap. After all, it was pretty heavy being made of metal. You pick it up, with one hand on your head. Your head feels cold. You flick the light on, and look at the hand that was holding your head. Oh great, there’s blood coming from your skull. They’d hit you so hard with the torch there’s a cut. Then you feel dizzy, an intense pain filling your mind. You take your shirt off, knowing no one would see you since it's dark, and wrap it around your head to the best of your ability. You can already feel some blood seeping through it. You use the torch to look around the room, to see if the person who sort of helped you was still there. No, there’s no one there. You look were you thought the scorched body was. Even that’s not there. You shudder. Maybe you’re hallucinating from the cut in your head. You look around the whole room and it’s not there. This can’t be happening, you think. You rush the light around the room, until you see a figure, which looks like an extremely tall man standing there. Your light had gone off him by the time you realized someone was there. You take the light back over, and there’s nothing. You could of sworn someone was there a second ago, but now they aren't. No one can move THAT fast. You look around again, this time slowly, until you feel the shirt behind torn off your head. You feel dizzier. You shine the light on the ground, seeing your blood everywhere. You’re going to die; you've lost too much blood by the look of it. And it just keeps going. Then you notice something rather odd. There’s someone there, leaning down at the pool of blood you’re sitting in. You shudder and lean away a bit. This has got to be fake; your mind is making it up. It looks like it’s lapping up the blood from the floor! You shine the light directly on it. It’s the burnt body you saw before! It’s drinking the blood that came from your skull; worst of all, it’s alive! You scream, louder than you did when you kicked it. It looks up at you, as if to ask why you are screaming. Its eyes are black, one of them are even dangling out of the socket. Its mouth gapes open, its nose is just a hole, and the flesh around it is burnt and flaky. The only sound it makes is a moan, which makes you scream even more. It’s alive! It’s sitting there watching you! You’re terrified! You hear a laugh over your own voice. But you’re getting dizzier, you can’t see straight. Then everything goes black. Entirely. You've been knocked out cold. You’re losing every drop of blood from your body, and you’re unconscious. Fantastic. You wake up. This room has plenty of light, but you can’t look at them, or they’ll blind you. You look around slowly, you’re still dizzy as ever. There’s a clock on the wall. It’s been 8 hours since you've been here, you remember looking at your watch before you entered the house. Then you remembered you were loosing blood violently. You touch your head. It’s healed, you can’t even feel the cut. You look at your hand, and there’s no blood. What’s going on? The room is empty, apart from the clock on the wall, and a chair in the corner. It’s a small room too. A wooden door is next to the clock. You stand up, and scramble to the door. You open the door, and inside is a room full of mirrors. Opposite of you is another door, it’s the same as the one you’re standing in. You look in the mirrors closely, then your reflection. You scream.
- House of Horror is the eleventh episode of season 4 of The Listener.
- House of Horror are actually two different tracks, with one consisting of five parts composed by W. Merrick Farran, and the second one composed by Larry Hochman.
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