Prose

I Remember The Day

A Short Horror

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I remember the day they found my dad.

​I remember it well. We hadn’t long moved into this part of London. My family and I didn’t move that far, but it was enough for everything to be new — for the air to smell cleaner, for the sun to shine a little bit brighter, yet it looked worse, a contradiction I could not quite make heads or tails of. Mam never liked the idea of moving, but she would always tell me that it was time to move, we needed more space, this is a better place to raise a family, among other stories that felt more like she was trying to reassure herself than placate us. It changed constantly.

​The other people that lived in this rundown building were not very friendly, not like the people we left. These new people would look down on my family like we were somehow inferior to them, not worthy to walk the same ground as them. They would shout at my mam when she would go for her nighttime walk, or chase me and my brothers down long corridors, the old bulbs humming like hornets over the sound of stomping feet and laughter, the kind of laugh a bully has — the kind of laugh that only a superior being can throw around without a care. Mam would always worry when she couldn’t find us, expecting us to be injured or cowering in some dank corner covered in grease or blood. I think that’s what worried…