The Rotting Feast

Five years ago, when I was nine, my family moved into a cramped flat above a derelict fishmonger’s shop in the port town of Greyhaven. The flat was cheap, and my father was proud of the fact that it had its own small bar counter in the living room, a relic from when the building had been a sailors’ tavern. I remember the first time I stepped inside, a damp, salty smell clung to everything, and something about the layout felt wrong, as if the walls were leaning in to listen. I shook it off as the jitters of a new place.

But soon, the unease settled deep. When left alone, I would stay frozen on my bed, afraid to even look toward the kitchen. That room was the worst. The linoleum floor was always cold, even in summer, and there was a patch near the sink where the tiles were permanently stained a dark, rusty brown, no matter how hard we scrubbed. And in the bathroom, a swarm of tiny flies perpetually circled the showerhead, a constant, dizzying dance. My mother cleaned with bleach and boiling water, but they never vanished. They just buzzed, patient.

In biology class, we learned that flies are drawn to decay, to the sweet perfume of rot. The teacher said, ‘Where there is death, there are flies.’ The words struck me like a cold wave. I tried to laugh it off, but the image of those flies lingered, and I started to notice a faint, sickly sweetness in the air, especially near the drain.

One stormy evening, my father found a starving black dog shivering in the alley. It was all ribs and matted fur. He brought it inside, hoping to nurse it back to health. The dog, which I named Wraith, was too weak to do anything but collapse on the kitchen floor, right next to that stained patch. That night, I woke to a strange sound—a wet, grinding noise, like bones being gnawed. I crept into the kitchen and found Wraith, miraculously on its feet, its snout buried in the gap between the fridge and the wall. It was eating something. The crunching was too loud, too wet. Then it turned, and in the dim light, I saw its eyes—they were not a dog’s eyes. They were too intelligent, too hungry, and they glowed with a pale light.

I screamed, and Wraith bolted, disappearing into the night. My parents thought I had a nightmare. But the next morning, the flies were worse, and the stain was darker, and there was a faint, greasy sludge seeping from under the fridge. I pulled the fridge away from the wall, and behind it, I found a crack in the floorboards, and from that crack came a terrible smell—like the sea at low tide, like death itself. I peered in, and I saw something white and wriggling. It was a mass of maggots, squirming over a half-devoured, rotting shape. It was the remains of a rat, but it was wrong. The rat had no head, and its body was twisted, as if it had been pulled from a void.

I ran to my parents, but they were furious at me for making a mess. They didn’t believe me. That night, I heard a scraping under my bed, a sound like something dragging itself across the floor. I looked down, and a pale, thin hand reached out from the shadows, fingers tipped with black nails. I grabbed a lamp and smashed it, and for a moment, the hand withdrew. But then I heard a voice, soft and dusty, like the rustle of old paper: ‘We have been waiting for you.’

I fled. I ran from the flat, through the rain, and never went back. My parents thought I was a runaway, but they moved out a month later, complaining of the flies. I was placed in a foster home, and I never told anyone what I saw. But to this day, sometimes, when I see a fly, I feel a cold draft on my neck, and I hear that voice again, whispering, ‘We know where you are.’ And I know, somewhere, in that kitchen, the stain is still spreading, and the flies are still buzzing, waiting for me to come back.