The Couple

My name is Ben and recently I decided to change to a new apartment. After some intense searching sessions in the web I found my ideal new home that, although being an old building, was aligned with my available budget.

I contacted the landlord and engaged with him so that I could check out the house and see if it was as good as it seemed. After scheduling a visit to the apartment and having a “tour” around the house, I confirmed that this was indeed an ideal next home. After the end of our house tour he ended up telling me that the previous owners were an old couple that really had a tragic story. The couple was married for sixty years and unfortunately, last year, the wife tragically died of a disease which devastated the husband so much that he ended up also dying a couple of months after. To make the story even sadder, the couple had a cat that ended up being adopted after the couple’s death, which also died, shortly after the husband passing away.

As you can imagine, knowing about this gave me chills, but I really liked the house and since none of the people actually died inside it, I ended up agreeing to move in and proceed to deal with all of the bureaucracy with the landlord. When everything was set and done, I moved in as quick as possible, since I was pretty much already fed up with my previous neighbourhood. After a lot of furniture moving and decorating, I could finally call this my new home.

Although I was overfilled with joy of having a really good new place in a much peaceful neighbourhood, I ended up having a small problem… In the first two nights I kept hearing a cat meowing, and although this might not seem like a big deal… this meowing came from the interior of the house. It was as if there was a cat hidden somewhere. I remembered the landlord telling me that the previous owners had a cat, and the possibility of it leaving some hidden successor behind, kind of crossed my mind.

In the next day, after arriving from work, I searched every corner of the house for any hint of possibly having a cat (or cats) living in my house, but after some intense hours of searching and questioning my neighbours, I couldn’t find anything.

The night came and I went to sleep, hopeful that my searching around might have scared away the potential cat within my house, but for my displeasure, some hours after falling asleep I woke up at 3am to some scratching sounds and meowing that seemed to come from my kitchen. To make things even worse, I heard some mumbling, also from the kitchen, and this was the moment that I started to freak out.

I grabbed a baseball bat, that I kept for good measure, and proceeded to slowly walk towards the kitchen. When I got there my blood froze as I saw this disfigured, rotten old man feeding a creepy looking cat… and as soon as he acknowledged me, behind me appeared this crazy old zombie like woman grabbing me by the neck and trying to stab me with a knife. She kept yelling, questioning what I was doing in her house, and after kicking her and releasing her grip on me, I just ran to the door. I was so in shock that I just wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. When I got to the door to the outside, I tried to open it will all my efforts… but the door simply wouldn’t open.

  • PurplexiaSphinx

    I read the first part, didn’t get to the twist until now because life came up. Gotta tell ya… It’s great!!!

    • The_Spiteful

      Thank you very much for the feedback!
      Glad you enjoyed it.
      Feel free to check out my other short stories💀