From: "Amanda Sichter" To: "Outside The Lines" Subject: [OTL]: The Monster Under The Stairs Date: Sun, 1 Nov 1998 16:24:21 +1100 Warning: This story is VERY unpleasant. It covers a lot of psychologically revolting ground, involves bad language and is seriously adult-themed. I would rate it R at least. I don't know where the story came from - no it wasn't from a couple of stories posted lately, I actually had the idea before reading those stories. But it just poured out today. I'd also like to dedicate it to Jeff Picka - who may be the only one that likes it . Thanks, Jeff, for keeping on reminding me that I can write these kind of things. Remember: I've warned you. Nasty, nasty, nasty story. Disclaimer: You should be able to pick the guy owned by Marvel, no problems. The rest belongs to me. I am not making any money from this story. The Monster Under The Stairs 'Why haven't you started yet?' he asked her. She turned her head to him, looking through the perpetual gloominess with exasperation at his idiocy. 'They're not all here yet,' she said. 'There's still the empty apartment on seventeen. When they move in - then I can start.' She turned away from him again, letting her focus drift back to the darkness in front of her, drift back to the voices that filled her head. He knew he had lost her, that her interest was elsewhere. He snorted his annoyance, knowing she wouldn't hear, and turned off the light, leaving her in the dark she so adored, the dark that kept her safe. He left the apartment, climbing up the stairs to the street and headed out to the grocery store. She'd want food soon, lots of food, and as long as she could give him what he craved so badly he would go on buying it for her. * * * * * The last two moved in the next day. She had worked long and hard to get the right people to move in - the ones she wanted. But finally the last chess pieces had been placed on the board and she could begin to play the game. She started with the new couple, the reverend and his lovely, innocent wife. The wife was first - had to be first. Her husband was out and she stepped from the front door and the neighbour was there, young, clean-cut, and the wife smiled and nodded happily and the thought slid into her head ~Gosh, he's handsome~ and she shook her head slightly and wondered where the thought had come from and walked away. Down in the basement flat, she smiled. The first move had been made. * * * * * The woman on thirteen was reading when the urge came to look at the clock. She glanced at it, and then the thought slid through her head ~He's late. He's been late a lot. I wonder what he's doing that makes him late.~ She frowned slightly and when her husband walked in fifteen minutes later, she was just a little angry, just a little upset and when he asked her what was wrong she wouldn't answer. He frowned at her back as she walked away and the thought slid through his head ~Why would she be angry? What's she done today to make her angry? All she does is sit at home and do nothing.~ He couldn't shake away the thought and he too, began to be angry. * * * * * She smiled, down in the basement, down in the dark. She'd sent out the first tendrils, baited the first traps. This game was going to be good. The gloom lightened momentarily as he walked in the front door and she averted her eyes from the light. She hated the light. He walked into the room with a Twinkie bar and held it in front of her, where she couldn't quite reach it. She snatched her hand at it, but couldn't stretch far enough. She thought of moving for it, but couldn't summon the energy. She'd passed beyond fat, now, beyond obese. She was grotesque and she knew it, a lump of lard that couldn't move, could barely breathe, could barely look after herself. That's why she needed him, needed him to feed her, to bathe her, to wipe her ass when she soiled herself, to fuck her when the longing got too great. To keep him, she would do anything she had to. So when he held the Twinkie in front of her, and grinned 'Uh-uh, girlie's gotta tell me what she's done today, before she can eat the lovely Twinkie,' she had opened up her mind and his, and dumped the memory of the reverend's wife and the couple on thirteen into his head. 'Oh my,' he said, as he savoured the taste of them. 'This is goin' to be a long game, isn't it?' She nodded. 'Good girlie,' he said and gave her the Twinkie. She wolfed it down in two bites and held out her hand for more. He smiled again. 'One more, for me,' he cajoled. 'Then you can have what you want.' Sighing, she cast her mind out again, a lonely shark circling for the scent of blood. * * * * * ~Bored, bored, bored~ thought the fourteen year old girl on nine. She stared into the mirror, fruitlessly, trying to imagine herself as smarter, funnier, prettier. Nothing happened. ~Why doesn't anything ever happen around here?~ she thought. ~Why doesn't anything interesting ever happen?~ She picked up her magazine and flipped mindlessly through the pages, her eye finally caught by an article on drugs. ~I wonder what they'd be like?~ she thought and then raised startled eyes from the page. She'd never thought about anything like that before. Down in the basement, he smiled and gave her the rest of the Twinkies. * * * * * The reverend's wife stepped out of her front door and the neighbour was there again. She nodded again, and this time the thought came ~He is handsome. I wonder what he'd be like in bed~ and a hot little stab of lust pierced her groin. She blushed and lowered her head and hurried away. He watched her go and thought ~Hot damn, she's a cutie~ and smiled. He'd make sure he was always there when she walked out the front door. On thirteen the phone began to ring, but she made sure the woman never heard it. Instead, she tweaked the anger, the little bright spark and the woman began to think ~I bet he's having an affair. That's why he's always late~. In his office, the man from thirteen put down the phone again. ~Why won't she answer?~ he thought. ~What the fuck is she doing in the middle of the day?~ On nine, the fourteen year old began to wonder how she could get her hands on some grass. ~Just a little try,~ she thought. ~It'd have to make this place more interesting.~ On twenty, the quiet man who lived by himself turned suddenly and asked, 'Who's there?'. In his head, the little voice started ~They're all plotting against you, you know. All of them, they're out to get you. Just you wait and see.~ He began to brood. * * * * * He came back at twilight, stepping from the gloom of the street into the gloom of the apartment. The first thing she had made him do when they moved in was cover all the windows with black paper, so no light got in. That was why he liked to get out in the day, see the sun, feel the warmth. But what she gave him drew him back into the dark every time, an obscene, bloated spider that lurked at the centre of a web, with his body weakly struggling in her coils. She turned and looked at him as he walked in, grocery bags piled high. He opened his mouth to ask her the question, but she was ready for him. His mind opened and it was all there - the lust of the reverend's wife caressing his thighs, the anger of the couple on thirteen spiking his mind, the vapid curiousity of the girl lodged behind his eyes, the incipient paranoia of the man on twenty bringing out a sweat on his chest. He smiled and closed his eyes, savouring the touch of their feelings as they tugged at him, poured into him, moved through him. It never even occurred to him to ask why he had to get these feelings second-hand, why he could never feel an emotion of his own. All he knew was that he needed her and that she gave him feelings and they were his ultimate drug. He dropped the bag, pulled out the giant bag of chips and gave them to her. She ripped them open, even as he reached down and caressed her thigh, the lust of the reverend's wife still tingling in his groin. His mouth lowered towards her, down, kissing her breasts, working down over the great mound of her stomach, down to between her thighs. Even as his tongue worked at her, she stared into the dark over his head, munching solidly, stolidly on the food he had brought her. * * * * * The anger grew sharper on thirteen, the couple using words as knives to wound each other. On nine, the girl inveigled her brother to bring her grass. The first taste of it was good and her hunger for more satisfaction sharpened. She began to long for oblivion. On twenty the man began to mutter sharply to himself about aliens and the CIA controlling his thoughts. The lonely woman on five began to drink heavily. On two the man introduced his wife to his desire for bondage. Over time he began to hurt her more and more and her screams for mercy became genuine. He didn't hear them over the frantic thoughts inside his head that told him to ~Hurt her! Hurt her! She wants to be hurt!~ On fourteen the accountant began to dream of better things and the slow ardent compulsion to steal, to take the money of the worthless slobs he worked for began to grow inside of him. On nineteen she gave the man an endless need to fuck, so he prowled the streets, taking prostitute after prostitute to try and satisfy an impossible urge. He didn't hear his wife asking him what he was doing with all the money. He didn't use condoms. On seventeen the reverend's wife and the neighbour grew hotter for each other, until she couldn't step out the door without creaming herself and he ached with his need to plunge himself into her hot little pussy and when she got inside she'd rub herself raw trying to get satisfaction and the guilt ate away at her mind like a cancer. But she'd smile at her husband when he got home and cook him dinner and ask about his day and when he rode her in the night she'd close her eyes and think of her neighbour and only then could she come. She began to cry herself to sleep. And when he got home she'd open up a window in his mind and pour out everything that'd happened and he'd wallow in the feelings, draw them on as his own, drown in the ecstasy of them. Most of the time she could force so many feelings on him that he would pass out and leave her alone, leave her alone to eat and eat and eat. Only when there hadn't been enough would he stay conscious and force himself on her, fuck her like he thought she wanted to be fucked. She didn't even bother to pretend to enjoy it any more. She just continued to eat. She drove the occupants of the apartments harder. * * * * * The reverend's wife stepped out of the door and the neighbour smiled at her. Her panties dampened instantly and her face flushed. 'Hello,' she said, softly. 'Hello,' he said back and then the thought was in his head ~Kiss her, go on, kiss her. She wants it. You can smell how much she wants you.~ And he could smell her, the heady musk of her desire. Before she could flee down the corridor to the lifts, he stepped forward and caught her hand. For an instant she looked startled and tried to pull away, but then his mouth was on hers and nothing mattered at all but the taste of him, the feel of him, the smell, the heat, the hardness of him. Without a word, he pulled her into his apartment. The fucking was animal, hard and mindless and heady with ecstasy. Afterwards, dazed, confused, in her own apartment, she realised she didn't even know his name. It didn't matter - all that mattered was that tomorrow they would be doing it again. She forgot about guilt. That night, when she opened the window in his mind and gave him the animal taste of the fucking, he took her from behind and the lust-memory was so strong even she could feel the tremblings of ecstasy. * * * * * The couple on thirteen were getting a divorce. When the screaming had gone on long enough, when they'd hurt each other as much as they could with words and baseless accusations, she had put the thought inside his mind, and he had hit his wife. She had gone home to her mother that day. The apartment was up for sale. The woman on five drank herself into oblivion every day. On fourteen the accountant was arrested for embezzlement. She had given him the thought of doing it but had taken away his skill. The despair of his wife and son as the police took him away had dropped him in his tracks when she'd opened his mind that evening. He left her alone then although, annoyingly, she had had to get up to reach the grocery bag. On twenty, the man's mutterings grew worse. He bought a gun and began to suspect something had been put into the water. On nineteen, the woman cried herself to sleep again when her husband didn't come home. In an anonymous hotel somewhere he growled his lust into the hair of some anonymous prostitute, blindly pounding himself into her body, unaware that her body teemed with a virus he would soon pass on to his wife. On two, the man had bound his wife a little too hard, cut her just a little too much. She had to go to the hospital. She didn't come back. On seventeen, the reverend's wife and the neighbour kept at each other with animal lust, exploring each other's bodies with frightening passion, fucking anywhere, any time, any place they could. She gave them ecstasy, put such primitive pleasure into their fucking that they forgot when and where they were. Then she reached out to the reverend at his church and made him feel ill enough that he had to go home right now. He had opened his door to find his wife bent over the couch, with the neighbour fucking her ass as she screamed for him to keep doing it, keep fucking her till she exploded with ecstasy, he was the greatest lover she'd ever had, just do her. The reverend's tears had tasted like wine to him when she opened his mind that night. That divorce was coming up soon. The reverend's wife moved in with the neighbour and she took away all the lust. The grey, ashen end of their affair drifted down to the basement and filled him with ecstasy. She continued to eat. The little girl on nine began to take speed, then managed to get some LSD. Her parents became more worried, and the girl became more surly. The fight had come when she'd fled the apartment. She reached up from the basement, directed the girl down the stairs, down to three. He was in his room, measuring quantities when the thought came to him ~Need a breath of air. Step outside~ and he had just as the girl had barrelled into him and he knew what she wanted and took her into his apartment and introduced her to the pleasures of smack. She'd passed out on his couch. Satisfied, the monster in the basement let them go and concentrated on eating. The thought caught her attention an hour later. A lust-thought, a fuck-thought. She reached out with her mind and found him on three, on top of the girl on the couch, ramming himself into her semi-conscious body. The girl was nearly comatose, but her thoughts were clear ~no no no don't want get off no no get off you're hurting you're hurting get off no~ and she reached out with her thoughts and gave him pain, rammed pain into his head until his nose started to bleed and he cursed and got off her and down in the basement she began to cry. She hadn't wanted that to happen. She hadn't been paying attention. She didn't want that to happen, not the fucking, not the hurting, not the hurting like daddy did, when he'd come home from going out with his drinking buddies and mommy had been passed out face down on the couch, her hand wrapped round the bourbon bottle and she'd been waiting there, all alone, and mommy hadn't been able to help her and daddy wanted mommy, but she was passed out and daddy took her instead, opened his trousers and took out his thing, all pink and with veins and forced it down her throat, and she choked at first as he told her to suck it, and she was only six and she knew it was wrong and it hurt so much as he forced it into her little mouth and she thought her jaw would break or she would choke and it hurt her so much, so much, it never stopped hurting her, it was hurting her now, inside her head it was hurting, she was so afraid and then she was nine and mommy was dead and daddy said she was his only girl now, and he put his thing in her and it had hurt her so much she had screamed and he had hit her and then he'd kept hurting her and it was an agony in her and she wasn't allowed to scream so she'd kept all the agony inside her head, there was agony inside her head and she didn't want it, didn't want the fear and the pain and so she lashed out. He was on five, washing the dishes, thinking how weird the building was going lately, with the divorces and the lady on two dying and the arrests and thinking how much he loved his wife and kids and he'd never doing anything like that to them and then the agony came into his head, agony and fear, spikes of terror in his brain, agony, it all hurt so much, daddy, stop it you're hurting me, and he screamed and tried to get away from the pain, but it would never go away, and he ran through the lounge, past his wife and his kids, startled faces he never noticed, and then the window was there and he jumped, slammed into it, it hurt, shards of glass in his face and his body, but it didn't hurt as much as the agony in his mind. She rode him all the way down to the ground, the agony of his wounds mixing with her terror and her pain, so he didn't stop screaming all the way down until he hit the ground and went into the blackness and, mercifully, took her there for a little while too. * * * * * He walked into the basement flat and noticed all the lights were off. He thought they might be. He'd had to dodge the cops and the cordoned off area where the body was and he thought she may have done it. 'Big day, huh?' he asked as he stepped into the darkness. And then she opened the window in his head, and it was all there, the hate and the pain and the agony, and then she had him, she dragged him into the room and he cursed as he stumbled over the food containers that littered the whole room, she'd been eating all day it seemed, and then she put lust in his brain and he was hard, instantly hard and then he was in her arms, then he was in her, riding her, and he thought ~she'll kill me one day, but I'm an addict, I need her, I need this, want what she gives me, I'll never leave you, never leave you~ and then there was a fire in his mind, and a fire in his balls and when he came he was screaming. Eventually she was able to heave his unconscious body off hers. Dispassionately she looked down at the blood that trickled from his nose and ears. She would kill him one day, she knew. Not on purpose, though. She needed him. Needed him to feed her, needed him to take care of her, so she never had to move out of the dark. She was safe in the dark. She reached for the grocery bag and began to eat. * * * * * 'We have to go,' he said. 'It's all getting too much to be a coincidence. If they start checking people out, they'll realise about you and the other apartment buildings.' She nodded. She'd known for a while, longer than he had. She'd been practising walking around the apartment so she could get to the van when they moved. She'd even starting ringing around to find another basement apartment. She would be ready soon, everything was planned. She opened the window in his mind and gave him the feelings of the man on nineteen, when he'd opened the envelope today with the positive results. His eyes glazed with the bizarre ecstasy he took in second-hand feelings and then he slid to the floor. She reached for the phone again. * * * * * She'd found the new apartment. He was helping her move now, had got everything out to the van. She had finally managed to get out of the apartment and up the stairs, into the light she dreaded so much. She flinched from the sunlight when she got outside and he had led her, eyes closed, to the van. She settled herself in the back and then watched as he closed the doors on her. Blessed gloom fell again. He climbed in the front seat. 'Ready?' he asked, turning to her. She nodded and reached out for the last time. Her mind flew unerringly to the man on twenty. He hadn't been seen for weeks now, his mind sinking into ever-more-bizarre paranoia, the voices in his head that belonged only to her. One last time she reached into his head and finally detonated the bomb she had placed in there. 'I'll get them,' the man screamed and she rode with his mind as he moved into the lift and down to the ground floor. She knew how to do this now. Slowly, methodically, she began to drive him to the apartments, through the doors, slaughtering one by one everyone that was there. She waited till she knew he wouldn't stop, till the mingled screams and gunfire reached out to the van and then she took her thoughts out of the man's head and nodded at him. He turned back and began to drive away. Then a thought was in her head that was not her own, that knew it was there. ~I felt you do that~ it said. ~You monster. I felt you do that.~ Frantically she turned her head, trying to deny the voice that was there, but it stayed in her head. ~We're coming~ it said. ~I'm coming to get you.~ ~No, no, no~ she screamed inside her head. She knew this would happen if she came into the light. Everything bad happened in the light. They were always coming to get her. He was coming to get her. She remembered the light from so long ago, where daddy had always been, in the light, he had always hurt her in the light, and he had told her she was pretty and that he loved her, but that hadn't stopped him hurting her, and then when she was thirteen and she was old enough, he said she was old enough, he had brought home his drinking buddies as well and they had hurt her as well, and they'd been inside her, all over her, and they'd hit her when she'd cried, or worse, they'd laughed and they'd hurt her so much, until she couldn't stand it any more and she was sixteen and she'd heard daddy's car and she couldn't stand it and she had hid under the trailer, in the blessed dark where he couldn't find her, and he hadn't found her until she'd cried and he'd heard her, and he'd said I'm coming to get you and she saw his feet and she'd heard his thoughts in his head about how much he was going to hurt her, what he'd do to her because she'd hid, and she'd been so scared of those thoughts that she'd lashed out, as hard as she could, pain and fear and agony lashing out and daddy had screamed and fallen down, and she'd stayed under the trailer until it was dark and she came out and daddy was dead and she'd run away in the dark, the only place she was ever safe, the dark, and she'd found a man who'd keep her, who'd feed her and live in the dark with her, so long as she fed him emotions and he kept her safe, she needed to be safe in the dark. ~Oh my god~ said the voice in her head. ~I didn't know. I can help you. I'm Charles Xavier. I can help you. Let me help you. You don't have to live in the dark~ She laughed inside her head, but it wasn't joyous. She liked the dark, she wanted to live in the dark and nothing anyone could do could help her. ~I can. I can help you. Wait for me. I'll find you,~ said the voice in head. ~I don't want to be found~ she thought and then she used what daddy had taught her that time, she lashed out with everything she had down the thought that touched her, until she felt the mind and she forced herself inside the mind and flung every ounce of hate and rage and terror at it, and at first it was surprised and then it faded beneath her assault until it winked out into blackness and she kept pounding until she thought that she had done enough to make sure he never found her again. 'Are you okay?' The concerned voice came from the front seat and she opened her eyes to see him looking at her with worry on his face. Wearily she nodded. 'Just get us there as soon as you can,' she said. 'And give me something to eat.' He tossed her a block of chocolate and pulled away from the curb. She settled down to stuff herself with food. ~I am a monster~ she thought and surprised herself with the equinamity with which she accepted it. ~I am the ravenous monster who lurks under the stairs.~ ~Watch out, little ones, because I'm coming to eat you.~ The End Amanda wolf@ozdocs.net.au 'Never moon a werewolf'