Bogleech.com's 2014 Horror Write-off:

" Porcelain "

Submitted by Samuel Miller

I open the rotten and broken door to the old house. Great clouds of dust, completely undisturbed until now, come from the inside of the abandoned 19th century home when I step inside. I glance around the ancient abode and drop my backpack to the ground. I am an urban explorer, and I am exploring this rundown house for a few days or so. It'll be fun!

After looking around for a few moments, I kneel down and grab some stuff out of my backpack. I grab a flashlight, my camera, a respirator, a crowbar, and a handful of extra batteries for the flashlight and camera. I leave the incredibly dusty front hall to go into the parlor of the building. Inside of the parlor are some old chairs, probably completely rotten and chewed at by termites or something, a table that has been flipped over, a tall bookcase, filled with old books, and a small, completely torn apart teddy bear. Everything is coated in a thick layer of dust, just as with the hall before, and I put on my respirator so that I can breath. I go over to the bookcase to look at the books and see what's inside of them. I take one off of the shelf, and open it. There are no pages! All of the pages of this book have either been chewed and eaten by some animal, or ripped out by somebody. I take another book off of the shelf, and another, and another, and another. None of the books in this entire bookcase have any pages in them! And some of them seem to have bite marks on the covers and spine. There must be mice or something in this house that really like eating books! I go to examine one of the dilapidated chairs when I hear a scraping noise behind. I turn around, but see nothing. Thinkin that there is nothing in this room of importance, I leave to go to the similarly dusty living room.

I enter the living room of the house, and notice again, even more bookshelves! I go over to the bookshelves and take off a book, and another, and another, and another. All of these are just like the ones before! None of them have pages! After taking off a lot of the books from the bookshelves, I look around the room. Chairs lie strewn about the room, legs covered in claw marks and bites. The cushions on some of the chairs are ripped, and some chairs have no wool in their cushions at all! The rug in the room is torn, and with large chunks missing. A table in this room has almost completely broken legs from all of the chew marks on them, and sitting on the table are some fancy china plates, scratched and with numerous bite marks on the edges. Just as with everything before, this entire room is completely covered in dust. I hear something crawl inside of walls, making me jump. It must just be some mouse, or rat, or raccoon, or squirrel, or badger, or something! I dunno, I'm not an animal expert. I leave the living room and enter the rundown kitchen of the buidling.

I enter the dilapidated and dusty kitchen. China plates are scattered around the room, and the pieces that remain are covered in bite marks. Huge chunks of silverware are missing from the forks, spoons, and kinves that are thrown about the little kitchen. The cupboards are covered almost completely with claw marks, and the doors on several ones are ripped off of their hinges. The counters also have many numerous grooves in them from what seem to be claws from some animal. I just now notice how strange it is that there are bite marks on plates and silverware. Animals don't normally eat those things, right? Right? Well, whatever it is, I continue my exploration of the building, and climb a very creaky set of stairs, leaving the dust-coated kitchen behind me. While climbing the creaking slope, I see a shadow pass through the light coming from the kitchen's singular window. I jump in surprise and turn around, seeing nothing. After a few moments, I continue the climb to the second floor.

I get up to the second floor, and notice only one room near to the staircase. I walk over to the doorway, and look inside. I see nothing because of how incredibly dark it is in the room. I activate my flashlight and look inside the room. Straight ahead from the door are many porcelain dolls. Looking around the room, I see that the walls are completely covered in porcelain dolls, in varying states, ranging from the seemingly completely new and shiny, to the dust-coated and almost completely broken. Each doll sits on a shelf, or on the ground, and some seem to be hung from nails in the walls. When I move the light away from the first baby-like toys I hear scraping and scratching. I move the flashlight back to the first few dolls and see that many of them are in different positions. Some of them seem to have been crawling towards me, and some of them are now looking at me. One of them, I now see, has a piece of paper in its mouth. I hear scratching and scraping from all around me, and I move the flashlight to the surrounding baby dolls. Many are now looking at me, and some have begun to crawl towards me. While looking at one especially chubby doll, it moves its porcelain head, very slowly, to look up at me, making incredibly loud scraping noises in the process, and it opens its mouth with similar speed and sound, and from the gaping hole tumbles out a piece of a plate.

I drop my flashlight in fear and rush from the room. Once I get to the hallway, I look back at the room and see innumerable porcelain babies crawling from it in a great pile. I throw my crowbar at them, and break off the heads of some of them, but they continue to crawl towards me. Some mutter things that I can't understand, and some do likewise with whispering. I run back to the stairs and begin to go down it, but when I place my foot on the first step, the slop collapses. I fall into some dark basement or something like that, and fall unconscious.

I feel incredibly intense pain all over my body. I open my eyes very wearily and see small, off white things crawling all over my body. One puts its blurry, stumpy hand onto my body, and I feel a great piercing pain. The off white thing takes out its stumpy hand and in it are bunches of blurry, red stuff. My eyesight focuses somewhat, and I see that what was in the small figure's hand was my flesh. I focus on other off white figures that are on me, and all of them are ripping apart my body and stuffing it into their "mouths". One of the off white figures is gnawing on a bones, still with a thin layer of bloody meat on it. Wait... These are the dolls! I attempt to writhe to get the porcelain monstrosities off of my body, and one of them notices me. It has a face caved in, possibly from one of my blows with the crowbar. It has not hands, bearing only torn holes at the end of its fat and stumpy arms. It crawls across my torso, and when it gets to my face, it kneels down on its little fat legs, grabs the sides of my face with its broken arms, puts its broken head right in front of mine, takes one of its jagged hands, and stabs me in the face with it.

The porcelain dolls continue to eat the body of the person who entered the house. Some of the small babies get bored and begin to crawl back to the room, but most stay until there is nothing left to eat. After a very long time, all that remains is a skeleton covered in bites and claws, and the bag of the explorer will soon be eaten too.