The Derelict

Last night I returned to Walker Street. It was early evening and
curiously bereft of souls. I walked through the dull grey evening light down the
steep tarmacadammed road staying, for some reason, in the middle of the road.
As I moved slowly down the hill I felt strangley intimidated by the old
stone houses on either side of me. I don't know why but they were blackened as if
by soot.

I approached the row that ran perpendicular to the rest near the bottom of the street.
These houses, I thought to myself, had long been unoccupied and stood derelict
with their windows black and ominous. Though this feature disturbed me, it also
drew me closer, almost close enough to peer inside the dirty, empty, glass
blackness. As I stopped to satisfy my unexplained curiosity in front of the first
of these houses, I stared into the gloom.

That's when it happened. Their faces startled me - the old couple suddenly appearing
behind the glass and staring right back at me. They were dressed in shoddy clothes,
looking as dilapidated as the house they suddenly appeared to occupy and their stares
were as vacant as the old black house should have been,

Looking closer at the face of the old man, I shuddered at the sight of his deep, black
souless eyes like deep endless pits of despair that seemed to draw the life right
out of me.

All at once, I awoke.