As it All Burns

(This has nothing to do with a fire nor is it connected to any previous or stories to come. Enjoy.)

The house is silent, forbidding. Ill-kept mahogany groans in admonishment under my bare feet. Ancient wood deliver salvos of pain at every step, splintering rebels mocking my ignorance. The sharp wheeze of my breath finely staccatoes the steady lub dubs of my quickening heartbeat, and they alone set off a sinister illusion of macabre cries and vague movements from the nooks of the decomposing mansion. Reason claims there is nobody, nothing. Fear tells me otherwise.
Nature has already reclaimed its rightful plot of land, and fallen vines grab at my ankles as I tiptoe through the house. I pass the cracked mirror that is 3 paces to my right and cautiously maneuver around the empty camera tripod that stands in the center of the marble hallway; the cold stone reverberating painfully through the arch of my feet as I walk; shoes had been too great a noise factor. Wedging through the oppressive dark of the house was yet another noise. Tick tock. Tick tock. The erratic beat of the grandfather clock that had never been oiled. Two more steps I take, pivot 90 degrees on my right heel and click my feet together. The well- rehearsed plan was going just as I deserved, reinforced by months of careful observation and planning from outside. The source of the ticking becomes apparent to my right, looming and ominous in the dark. I had nearly crashed into it. For a moment my mind clears from all fear and nerve, but just for a moment.
Then there is a flash of light and I’m blinded and I’m sprinting through the house, screaming and covering my face. CRACK!! My calf is shredded through by an excruciating pain and I scream as I fall, my feet entangled in a growing shrub and I fall to the ground hard, my nose collapsing in and exploding on the root of the huge sycamore tree outside as I fall, the fall, fall. Blood splutters from my nose, staining the ground bright red and a numb pain strikes me at the bridge. Each inhale is a stinging struggle that rewards me with lungfulls of bubbling blood and my breathing is funny and then I’m trying, trying to git get up, spit out a tooth. My legs threaten to give out from under me but I manage to lift myself up and drag my shattered shin forward with my good leg, before it gives out as well and I fall again. This time I don’t get up. The world flashes one more time and then everything comes into view for a split of a second. Just a split second. And then. And then there is nothing. nothing. nothing at all.