My arms ache. My knees buckle. My mind tells my body to keep going. That he’s not dead, not yet. His body is still twitching. I want it to stop. No rising or falling, no kind of twitching or convulsing, just dead!

If there’s even a part of him still alive, it’ll all start again.

I stumble over to the blazing fireplace. Grabbing one of the pokers, I stoke the fire with it, taking that moment to rest my legs. All at once, the world stops spinning, even if just for a moment. My focus is fixed on the dancing flames atop the oak logs he’d kept here.

“You know,” I say, my voice hoarse. “This chair you got here, it used to be my father’s. This used to be his cabin.” I stoke the logs a little more. I hear nothing behind me, but I can imagine he’s still twitching.

“You remember what he used to say? Huh?” I chuckle. “He used to say, ‘To the elder go the spoils.’”

One of the logs falls. Sparks fly all around me. Behind me, I hear squelching.

I snicker. “Remember when we’d get into fights? Daddy would always tell us to settle it like adults.”

The squelching is much louder now. I think I can hear a little breathing behind me, too. I stoke another log, causing another to tumble. The tip of this poker is getting red hot now. Just a little more, and I think it’ll be ready.

The squelching noises are closer to me now. I can hear them, almost right in my ear. They are sickening, making me want to puke. I’m making every effort to not do so.

“You were his favorite, you know?” My eyes narrow at the tip of the poker. “You were always the one the old man had high hopes for. He always used to talk about how good you were at something, or how you were ‘goin’ places.’ You know what? Not a single time did he ever say that about me, did he?”

I chuckle. “I mean, seriously. Imagine, you’re the oldest daughter, and your own fuckin’ father doesn’t even say one nice thing about you, and instead he saves all the praise for someone else.”

I feel cold air mixing with hot brushing the back of my neck. The squelching dies back down. A well of tears stings my eyes.

“You wanna know the really fucked up part about this, though?” I ask, my voice breaking with every syllable. “I could have cared less.”

I allow myself one good sob before clearing myself up to say, “I loved you, Brian. I really did. I cheered every time someone in the family spurred you on. I laughed and celebrated, right there with Momma and Daddy. But that wasn’t good enough for you, was it?”

I glare at the tip of the poker. My tears are now evaporating, both from the fire and from my own white-hot rage. “You couldn’t just have the glory.You couldn’t just have the love of everyone—me included. No, you had to have what was mine!”

Finally, I pull the poker from the fireplace and hold it up to my eyes. For just a few seconds, the worst moments of my life play in my mind. I can hear myself, at sixteen, crying out to deaf ears while being brutalized in every way imaginable by the one who was supposed to love me most. “I can still hear it, Brian. Can you?” I ask him.

I turn around and find him partially reformed. About half of his torso is still only meaty sinew and bones. His face, or what little of it I can call a “face,” has no flesh on it. One of his arms has managed to regrow. He’s groping the air with it, probably to grab onto something to pull himself along. He manages to cling to the single protruding floorboard and pulls himself an inch closer to me, then another.

I position my legs, ready to stand. I can hear a low, gurgling growling. Part of me thinks he might be trying to say something to me. What the hell did he have to say, though? Sorry? Could he feel that?

Well, it’s too late now. About ten years too damn late. It’s my turn now.

I lift the poker to where his one good, wide eye can see it. His jaw drops. “That’s right, Brian. I’ve read your little book.” I point to the small, black book sitting atop the mantel. His eye follows for a second before snapping back to the poker.

“‘By the innocence of the young.’ Isn’t that what you used to say to me? Yeah, you used to shout it loud and proud while I screamed, begged, and pleaded for you to stop. You want to know what you’ve done to me?”

I lift my shirt, exposing surgical scars running the length of my stomach all the way up my chest. “You did this to me,” I scream. “And for what?”

I wait for an answer. Yet all I hear is that same gurgling noise. His jaws open again, closing and reopening. I narrow my eyes, trying to read him. “What’re you saying?”

“Thissss Houssssse Isss Miiiine,” he hisses.

I laugh.

“That’s right. You raped me, just so you could claim this fuckin’ house. Ain’t that right?”

“Thissss Houssssse Isss Miiiine!” He moves closer to me, reaching up and out for the poker in my hand. I don’t move.

“No, Brian.” I thrust the glowing hot tip into his twitching eye. A loud pop sounds as the eyeball explodes all over my hand. “This house is Daddy’s!”

He falls onto his back, writhing and roaring in a gross gurgle. I raise the poker again, this time plunging it into his gaping, bony mouth. A red fountain erupts from him as he spasms on the ground.

Turning back to the fireplace, I kick the rest of the logs loose. They spill onto the carpeted living room floor. In under ten seconds, the cabin is engulfed in red-hot flames. I bolt outside to safety, but not before taking one last backward peek at the frying carcass that had been Brian, my brother.

I can see his face, searching for me, his mouth agape.

A part of me thinks, if he could, he would try to tell me, “Sorry.”

About the Author:
Thomas Stewart is a young ghoul who harbors a lifelong fascination with the art of terror and the macabre. When he’s not watching horror movies, or reading horror novels or stories, he’s crafting his own chilling gospels of horror to terrify and eternally rob you of a peaceful slumber. Currently he publishes most his work on Reddit under his pen name, Corpse Child. Many of his horror stories have been featured and adapted into audio narrations by a wide variety of YouTube narrators and on the ChillingApp, where he has become a household name for the Chilling Tales For Dark Nights podcast, plaguing the minds of many with his horrifying tales.