The internal inhabitant

The house had stood for years, brave storms and memory lapses, but it never had a real person living in it in the basement, hiding behind a door that people were too scared to even knock on, the devil aws just chilling, waiting He couldn't remember his name or the reason for his damnation, But he knew that this place sits both his prison and his sanctuary

From the shadows, I had seen generations arrive from now on families sharing laughter, children growing up, and the elderly saying their goodbyes. And no matter what, the house was always empty, and he was still there, unmoved. Over the years, he knew every nook and cranny, every screech of wood, every gust of wind that mixed into the building, his presence felt like a soft murmur in the hallways and a subtle hiss in the plumbing.

The demon couldn't help but hold his breath, taking the slight tremor of the flashlight to the rapid beating of the human heart. It didn't hurt them at all. The house was doomed, not out of kindness, but because their loneliness is so deep that even the fear of the living felt like a rare friend. The company trapped the earth, and outside, the machines were scrambling, all set to tear it down. The demon experienced a new kind of fear: What would happen to the building if it were torn down? Would he be free or would he be buried in disaster that night.

As the lightning groaned under the weight of time, the devil determined to put all his focus on the final point he could find: the frame of an old window above, where the sky looked through the bulldozer laid the façade, and the house was buried in a cloud of dust and pieces of wood workers looking at the rubble stumbled upon a strangely intact window frame, leaning against a pile of bricks Chief Teh told him that he is heading to the landfill, but that night, on the way the truck went out of its way and appeared the next day in an empty place, with its body stuck to the ground like a lone tree, and on moonless nights, the neighbors swear to hear a whisper coming out of rotting wood, as if something, or someone, is still expected to be taken home.