Just Like Home

by Sarah Gailey

“Of course the grease is real,” the thing replied. “It’s not inside men, not like Francis thought. It certainly wasn’t in Brandon. And it was never in your father,” it added, “although he thought it was. That was awfully useful for Daphne. It was so easy for her to keep him in check. All she had to do was tell him that he was acting unclean, and he’d go do his penance.”

So she was the one who drove him to kill. Was it her delusion influencing him? Honestly, that whole family is screwed up ...

“I know what you are,” she whispered. The thing in the bed looked back at her warily. “Oh?” Vera nodded. “I know you. I remember you.” She licked her lips and then, before she could stop it, a smile bloomed out of her mouth like the crown of a mushroom. “You’re the house.”

there’s a monster in the room—it was asking for help.

“He digs out pieces to mix into his paintings,” the House said in its usual, rasping voice.

“He hurts you.” The House looked away again. “Is that why you needed me to come home? Is that what you needed my help with?”

There was nothing of Daphne left in there, nothing recognizable. There was only the foulness. This body, Vera knew, wasn’t Daphne’s body at all anymore. It was nothing but a costume.

“You don’t want to kill me,” James said, and in that moment he was not a man but a thing, writhing deliciously on the end of a hook.

The walls had been brutalized, scarred with long deep trenches, ranging from a few inches to a few feet long. “Oh, no,” Vera whispered, reaching unconsciously toward the far-off wall. “What did he do to you?”

Duvall was a monster. She’d saved the house from him. She’d saved them both. Her father would have been proud of her.

Was he Though? I mean yea he was a fringy douche trying to profit off their family , but calling him a monster is overkill

Good, bad, foul, clean—none of that mattered. Not really. Because she was Vera Crowder, and she wasn’t good, and she wasn’t bad. She was hungry.

Sounds like another serial killer is born.