The Impossible House, a Short Story

By Phillip Garrett

A house with no doors or windows stood at the end of a long, not so important street, in a not very significant city. Inside the house lived a not so eventful but lonely man. The man's neighbors often gossiped and chattered loudly outside the house spinning grandiose tales of how he got in there. In turn, the children of the street would frequently create ghost stories to explain the man away. However, no one was sure how he entered his home, or, as a matter of fact, how he left it. In fact, no one in the entire neighborhood had ever seen the man who owns the impossible house.

Of course, the man inside the house heard it all. He knew of the rumors and ghost stories, and while he tried to talk through the walls to the people outside, it seemed no one ever heard him, forced to speak to empty walls and meaningless appliances forever. All he really wanted was a connection.

 Every night, the man would lie awake, hours on end, unable to sleep through the noise in his head. He wondered if the stories were real and if he was a ghost or, worse, not even real. Now that he thought about it, the man didn’t know how he got into the house in the first place. He just was here one day, with no recollection of anything else. Nevertheless, he woke up exhausted every morning with deep purple rings under his eyes that highlighted his translucent skin. The man felt as if he was on the edge of insanity, forever punished to live a life of redundancy. Meaningless just wasn’t enough for the man; he wanted more from life, or at least what he thought life was. Most of all, he just didn’t want to be lonely. So, he did all that he knew to do.

On a bright summer morning, a thunderous wailing could be heard from inside the impossible home. “A scream of terror,” one neighbor said. It’s the ghost,” whispered a group of children playing basketball. A cry for help,” a woman explained to her husband. But as day turned to dusk, they all went about their day and ignored the screams. 

 The man inside the house screamed until he could hardly scream anymore, hoping someone would come by. However, the chatter around the neighborhood grew, as no one dared step foot on the property. This, of course, only made the man feel worse. He felt abandoned by the idea of people, pained by the thought that if someone were out there, they would choose to ignore him. Defeated, the man went to bed.

Silence rang throughout the house throughout the coming weeks. The man returned to his old routine: wake up, go to bed, and repeat. His eyes grew darker, and his skin paler. He looked as if the life inside him was being drained by the second. It got harder to get out of bed, and even harder to get back into it. The cycle was relentless.

As the summer came to a close, and the dry, noiseless weather decided to move south, a slight drizzle woke the lonely man up. He hadn’t heard any noises besides the gossip in a very long time, so the pattering of delicate rain drops soothed the man. The man got out of bed without fuss for the first time in a long while, just to sit in his living room and listen to the rain. But, the storm was short-lived. The rain died down and turned into puddles to jump in, and suddenly the man felt just as empty as before. His routine continued as he climbed back into bed, defeated by things out of his control.

The next day, heavy rain blew in. The storm revitalized the man, who quickly put on his robe and slippers and reclined in his living room. Water thrashed at the walls, and thunder shook the ground. For the first time in a long time, the man thought nothing. He was at peace as the storm raged over his destructive thoughts. Hours passed as the man listened to the rain, feeling better than ever.

 After the storm came and went, it took the man a while to come out of his trance. Nonetheless, the house was silent again, and his mind loud again. The man began to shake with despair, and having nothing but walls to fight, he began banging his fists into the hard wall of the living room. The banging of his fists rang throughout the house and in the street, and many of the neighbors would hear crashes followed by cries of pain as they came home from work. 

As the man's tantrum continued, a fair young woman who lived much further down the street was walking her dog when she came to a square brown building with a porch but no door and no windows. She had heard the rumors of the impossible house but never had a reason to go to this end of the street, as her usual dog park was flooded.

The woman listened to the muffled cries for help followed by the occasional bang against the wall. The woman couldn't help but cringe each time the man cried in pain, so she quickly walked away, not knowing what to do. But the man continued to punch and punch, until his fists were too bloody and broken to be recognized as his own, then went to bed.

Down the street, lying awake in bed, the young woman couldn’t stop thinking about the house, as the sound of pain still rang in her ears. Her mind raced with ideas of who was in there, faces raced through her mind as she dozed off.

The young woman woke the following day with a sense of purpose. She had to figure out who was in that house. So, she entered her garage, grabbed her sledgehammer, and then strutted down the street with it resting against her shoulder. Once she reached the end of the street, she took a deep breath and took a slow step onto the square house's lawn and then up the porch steps. She stared at the wall where she thought a door should be for a while, knocked as if a door was there, and then waited.

The man was startled awake, as the woman knocked a few more times. Out of confusion, he slipped on his robe and went to investigate. Once he entered the living room, knocking continued, followed by a question this time.

 A muffled voice cried out, “Is anyone in there?”

“Who’s there?” the man replied.

A delicate voice came from the other side of the wall, saying, “I am one of your neighbors. I know everyone else is scared of this house, but I heard your cries yesterday and wanted to see if you needed help.”

The man, perplexed, had never once talked and received a response. He expected the usual silence that followed when he spoke. The man’s head rushed with excitement.

 “Yes, please. I don’t know how to get out of here!” the man cried through the wall.

“How did you get in there?”

“I’m not really sure, one day I simply woke up here. I’ve been trapped ever since, but despite my best efforts, no one’s ever come to talk to me.”

“Then stand back, I’m gonna try to get you out of there”.

The man took a few steps back from the wall as the woman swung her sledgehammer as hard as she could. That wall shook and flaked a little, but failed to punch through.

“Try again!” the man yelled, failing to hide his excitement. 

The woman swung again and again. After hours of swinging, she had only managed to create a tiny hole in the wall. She knelt and tried to look into the house, but an eye stared back at her.

 “I’m sorry, but I’m very tired,” she said out of breath, “I’m not sure I can do any more, today.”

“That’s okay,” the man replied graciously. “Thank you anyway. You are the first person to give me hope that I’m actually alive, and for that, I thank you.”

The woman blushed a little and promised the man she would come back. Days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months, but the woman returned to the impossible house without fail every day. With every return, the hole in the wall grew slightly bigger but remained too small to fit a person. Once the woman could no longer swing her sledge, they would both simply sit and talk to each other. 

The man had never felt companionship like this before, and his desire to be free from his prison only grew each time he got to talk to the young woman. Every day he grew a little closer to being free. But after watching his new friend work away at the wall for weeks now to little success, he realized that he needed to free himself. With a new sense of purpose, the man began working on the hole that night. Without any tools, he punched and kicked. Pain surged throughout his body, but that only made him punch harder. The moon eventually left the sky and the sun began to shine through the hole. He needed to get out, and he needed to get out now!

The man gave all he could, and with as much force as possible, he ran full force into the wall. The wall burst with an explosion, sending debris across the lawn. The man stepped through the lingering dust and onto his porch. He was finally outside. But the injuries to the man became too great to bear. Blood flowed from his head and into his eyes and his limbs were unrecognizable stumps. The man fell to his knees and onto his face. 

The noise from the man's daring escape had awoken most of the neighborhood, including the young woman, who slipped on a robe and rushed outside to see what was happening. All she could see from down the street was a large group of people surrounding the impossible house. She sprinted down the road in nothing but slippers, and with no regard pushed through the crowd to see her bloodied champion. She rushed to his side and rolled him over. She held his head, and said, “Please tell me you’re ok”.

The man’s blood-filled eyes were washed away with tears as he looked up to the only person he knew and smiled.“Now I am.”