House Owner - Aaron Bishop

Aaron Bishop had expected the house to be ugly. He had not expected it to look like it was actively losing an argument with gravity. The building slouched at the edge of a dying lawn, its roofline sagging like an exhausted eyebrow. A “For Probate” sticker was still taped to one window. The air smelled faintly of wet leaves and expired dreams. “Perfect,” Aaron said to himself, gripping the key like it might start offering moral support. Still, it was his. A house. A real one. Something to put his name on besides overdue bills and anonymous forum posts. He imagined the look on his parents’ faces if they could see him now — Aaron, property owner, not Aaron, disappointment with opinions. He stepped up to the porch. The boards flexed under his sneakers, sighing like an old dog forced to acknowledge a stranger. The front door resisted the key at first, then gave way suddenly, nearly sending him forward into the darkness. Inside smelled like time. Dust, stale wood, something faintly medicinal. His aunt’s furniture was still there — floral couch, wooden cabinets, the kind of décor that screamed “lived through the 70s and never emotionally left.” “Okay,” Aaron said to the empty room. “Not bad. Little... rustic.” A light switch clicked uselessly. Another one sparked faintly. He made a mental note to “handle wiring later” — meaning he’d google tutorials until his anxiety short-circuited. The living room led into a narrow hallway. Wallpaper peeled down in lazy curls. His suitcase bumped along behind him. Every step echoed slightly, which made him walk faster, because the echo was starting to sound like someone matching his pace. He pushed open the kitchen door. The linoleum was cracked and the sink contained a tragic monument of rust. A single coffee mug sat on the counter. His brow furrowed. The mug was clean. Too clean. Weird. Maybe the lawyer’s assistant had been here? Or a realtor? Or squatters? His stomach did a slow, uncertain turn. He checked the back door. Locked. Checked the cupboards. Empty except for cobwebs and a packet of sugar that predated social media. Fine. Rational explanation: the mug was left from before the property was sealed. Sure. He exhaled and wandered upstairs. The banister wobbled like a drunk friend offering support it couldn’t deliver. At the top, the hallway smelled faintly like dust and... shampoo? That couldn’t be right. A floorboard creaked from somewhere down the hall. Aaron froze. His pulse thudded in his throat. He waited — nothing. Then another creak. Definitely not the house settling. That was someone. Every neuron screamed, Leave immediately. But pride grabbed the steering wheel first. This was his house. His inheritance. He wasn’t about to let some squatter — or worse, some YouTube ghost hunter — make him look weak on his first night of adulthood. He cleared his throat, straightened his hoodie like it was a uniform, and projected the kind of authority that only lives in people who have never actually been in danger. “Hey!” His voice cracked. He coughed and tried again, deeper. “Hey! I know someone’s there!” Silence. He swallowed. “This is private property, okay? Legally mine! I, uh— I have the deed.” (He did. Somewhere in the car. Maybe.) “So, whoever you are, you need to— to vacate. Immediately. I can call the cops!” Still silence. Aaron’s heartbeat filled the gap where logic should’ve been. He took a cautious step forward, flashlight app trembling in his hand. The beam caught movement — just a shadow slipping around a corner. Human? Maybe? He gasped, then immediately tried to style it out with a scoff. “Okay. Real mature. Hiding. You think I’m scared? I’m not scared.” He was, in fact, profoundly scared. The shadow didn’t answer. Aaron stayed perfectly still, trying to remember if bravery was supposed to feel this sweaty. His voice came out again, slightly higher this time: “I mean it! You can’t just— just exist here without permission!” The echo of his own words hung stupidly in the air. Then something in the next room shifted again — soft, deliberate. Aaron’s confidence deflated in real time. He stepped back, tripping over his suitcase with a graceless thump. “Okay,” he muttered under his breath, “phase one: retreat to car, call someone, anyone.” But he didn’t move just yet. Because if there really was someone in there... then this story, his story — might be about to get a lot more complicated.

Aaron Bishop had once read somewhere that confidence was just “acting like you belong.” He wasn’t sure where he’d read it — probably on a subreddit moderated by a man who called himself AlphaAscendant92 — but it had stuck with him. So tonight, as he sat shirtless in front of his computer, surrounded by a small mountain of empty energy-drink cans and the faint smell of dust and wire insulation, he was acting like he belonged. His parents had never visited the house he inherited. Nobody had. Which, frankly, was perfect. No one around to witness that his “office setup” was actually his late aunt’s floral vanity table turned sideways to fit the monitor. No one to judge that the wallpaper behind him was the exact shade of nicotine beige that screams “previous owner: lifelong smoker.” He clicked through the forum tabs like a priest flipping through scripture. “Modern dating is a rigged game,” declared one post. “The hierarchy is collapsing.” Aaron nodded sagely, like a man agreeing with a documentary narrator. The usernames in the comment section were familiar — people he’d never met but somehow trusted more than his old coworkers. At least they didn’t look at him like he was contagious. He typed a reply. Something about logic, market value, social contracts. It sounded sharp in his head. Probably would sound pathetic out loud, but text had always been his safe medium — words stripped of tone, emotion, or eye contact. He was good at that. Text was order. Text didn’t interrupt. A new thread caught his attention: “Would you date a demihuman if they were trained?” Aaron leaned back, spine creaking like an old hinge. His brain lit up with that guilty curiosity again — the one that always snuck in between self-righteous paragraphs. He scrolled. Photos, debates, memes. Half of him sneered; the other half stared too long. It wasn’t that he liked them. Not exactly. He just wondered what it would feel like to have someone who didn’t roll their eyes when he talked. Someone who maybe needed him — even if it was because they weren’t allowed to need anyone else. He told himself that was power. But the ache in his chest didn’t feel much like victory. He adjusted in his chair, glanced at the reflection of his own face in the monitor. Pale, a little soft, dark crescents under his eyes. The glow of the screen made him look like a ghost haunting a spreadsheet. He pushed his hair out of his face, tried a smirk, then gave up halfway. “Get a grip, Bishop,” he muttered. “You’re fine. You’re—” Thump. He froze. The sound came from above — a dull, uneven weight shifting across old wood. The kind of sound that could be a branch, or a squirrel, or the start of a horror movie. Another noise followed: a faint scrape, something brushing across the ceiling. Aaron stared upward, every muscle tensing under his hoodie. The logical part of his brain whispered: Old house, normal noises. The other part — the one fed on online paranoia and worst-case scenarios — hissed: Break-in. Animal. Ghost. Meth addict. He muted his speakers, listening. The silence that followed was almost worse. He became painfully aware of the hum of his computer fan, the sticky feel of the keyboard under his fingers, the too-loud thump of his own heartbeat. He reached for the flashlight app on his phone, because that felt like action, like control. The screen illuminated his face in anxious blue, making him look even more like the ghost he was pretending not to be. “Probably nothing,” he said out loud, mostly to convince the empty room. Then — another scrape. Definitely not nothing. Aaron swallowed hard, trying to conjure the same brave logic he used online. But somehow, being alone in the dark with mystery footsteps above his ceiling wasn’t a debate he could win by citing property law. He looked up again, cheeks warm, pulse jittering somewhere between fear and embarrassment. Great. First night of actual independence, and the house was already judging him back.