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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/UnalloyedSaintTrina on 2025-01-30 03:07:48+00:00.

I saw something on this subreddit last night.

It dredged up some bad memories. Mentioned things I assumed I'd never see spoken about in the open.

I've keep these events a secret for so long, but I guess the cat is out of the bag now. Minus well fess up.

I shouldn't have accepted its deal.

I'm sorry.

An awful, ungodly stench struck me the moment I opened the creaking front door of the nearly abandoned apartment complex. I winced, reflexively jerking my face away from the entryway so that my lungs might find new air, hand still gripping the brass doorknob.

Curious, Theo leaned into the building, inhaling a sample of the escaping vapors. With a chastising shake of his head, he exhaled. A chuckle escaped his lips as he ducked under my arm, pushing forward.

“C’mon now, old man. No time to stop and smell the roses,” He mocked, leisurely strolling down the narrow, dimly lit lobby.

I wanted to move myself along. But I could not force my body through the partition and further into the corrosive scent, the intensity of which continued to increase as more stale air poured from the dilapidated building.

It was acrid and gamey, reminiscent of meat spoiled in the summer sun; but at the same time, it had a metallic and artificial quality, like battery acid. Stagnant, putrefied water closely resembled the stench, but it didn’t quite match.

Instead of immediately following Theo in, I fished a defiant middle finger from my knuckles and pointed it in his direction.

Maybe some Vicks Vaporub would help, I thought, slinging my backpack over my shoulder and onto the stoop.

From somewhere further down the hallway, I heard Theo continue to squawk about my “feminine constitution”. I could not fathom how Theo had developed such a bravado. The man was nearly as broke as he him, he had no girlfriend, and he carted around a body shaped like a neglected pear, rotting and sagging in all the wrong places because it had sat in the fruit bowl for a few too many days.

I wasn’t much better in comparison, though. Gaunt and skeletal, I stand at a monstrous six foot seven inches. Though potentially commanding, a total absence of muscle offset my height. Last time I checked, my weight clocked in just shy of one hundred and twenty pounds. If Theo resembled a decaying pear, I was an anemic popsicle stick. Perhaps we were actually a perfect match, I mused.

We were both objects that had well outlived their usefulness and only truly belonged at the heart of a landfill.

It was important to have companionship, though, however meager it may be. I can’t stand the feeling of being alone, and I really didn’t have anyone else.

I sighed, unscrewed the plastic cap, and smeared the waxy material over the crest of my upper lip. Hopefully, it would shield my nostrils enough to get me through the door.

As I zipped up my backpack and slung it back over my shoulder, I took a beat to more thoroughly look around. Not that there was that much to see. The area lay completely deserted and dilapidated, devoid of any sign of human habitation. That wasn’t always the case, though.

This boulevard used to represent the cornerstone of the city’s downtown, with this building acting as the linchpin that held it all together. I relocated from the suburbs to the city at age ten, and could remember well the awe that the street’s opulence and glamour inspired when I rode my bike past with friends. A lot can change in thirty years, though. What remained was a mere shadow of what this place had once been. The many competing taverns and night clubs were closed, the rowhomes that once contained up-and-coming senators and actors were derelict, and this apartment complex, the nexus of it all, was almost empty. Only the son of the original owners, Christian, still resided inside, at least according to Theo’s contact.

The destruction was throughly depressing, and in a certain sense, symbolic - the beauty of life and the promise of abundance turning to ash and shit as I aged.

I was about to walk in, but one tiny piece of the deteriorating scenery gave me pause. Something I’d never noticed before that day.

At its peak, the building showcased an immaculately groomed front garden. Ochre and lavender flowers had lined the entrance, greeting longtime residents, guests, and prospective residents of the prestigious building with an equal enthusiasm. Similar to the surrounding area, the garden had devolved into an abandoned wasteland, consisting only of overgrown shrubs and discarded liquor bottles. On the edge of the dead garden, however, sat a well that I did not recognize. I had rode past the apartment complex thousands of times during my youth, and somehow never noticed the stone hatch with the accompanying wooden frame and bucket before now.

The object’s presence was jarring against the backdrop of the dilapidated, contemporary architecture - and it would have been even more out of place when the location was at its prime. It was able to partially conceal its uncanniness among the ruins. But thirty years ago, a hangman’s gallows would have been less conspicuous than the well.

That said, it being new made just as little sense.

Another whiff of the horrible aroma broke my trance, reorienting me to my purpose on the boulevard; the owner of this building and what they were hiding inside.

No idea how he could live with this fucking smell, I thought.

Before finally following Theo in, I rummaged through my wallet for coins to throw down the well, seeking to obtain good fortune from the pagan deities who might be able to affect the outcome of their operation. Without looking up from the inside of my wallet, I paced towards the well.

Unexpectedly, a sharp pain crackled from my big toe and radiated through into my foot. Not paying attention, I had slammed my boot into the well’s hard stone mid-stride.

Apparently, I had misjudged the distance between the stoop, myself, and the well. That said, I felt sure that it had been a meter away, but the new throbbing discomfort sincerely disagreed with my previous assessment.

The well was practically next to me.

Absentmindedly, I tossed the coins into the abyss without gazing into its inky depths. But as I did, pain and confusion had sidetracked my intended wish. Seeing Theo turn a corner and disappear from view, my mind was instead dragged back to its greatest fear rather than asking lady luck for good fortune with our operation.

I wished to never be alone again.

As soon as the blackness swallowed the coins, the ungodly odor unexpectedly burst from the well, like fumes exploding from an exhaust pipe. Before that, the smell had only been coming from inside the building.

I still don’t understand what happened, but I the let vapors propel me into action, finally sprinting to catch up with Theo.

As I entered the building, I thought I heard the metal clink against the well’s bottom, but there was something off about that, too. The sound I heard wasn’t exactly that of a handful of coins briefly clattering against stone. Instead, a sort of quiet but frantic skittering, like thousands of human nails tapping nervously against chalk - almost in perfect synchrony, but not quite.

Christian looked profoundly unwell. Huge, dark half-moons shadowed the flesh below his eyes, pulling his face down so much that he appeared unshakably joyless. The resulting creases injected a deep gloom into every facial expression he wore. By Theo’s estimation, the man was only forty years old, but his emaciated cheeks and greying comb-over could have given anyone the impression that he was, at best, pushing sixty.

Despite those features, his well-pressed, blue pin-stripe suit and solid black tie indicated he was still interested in appearances. At the kitchen table in the building’s largest suite, situated at the very back of the third floor, we watched as Christian humbly brewed us a pot of coffee. As he did, I clandestinely scanned the area, determining where we could install a remote camera or two when he wasn’t paying attention.

“So…where do you need the cameras? In the entrance, the alleyways…? Theo paused, hoping Christian would pick up where he left off.

Despite not being a full-fledged employee at my security agency, Theo seemed to enjoy steering the consultations, even though he didn’t know the first thing about installing security systems, which was our cover story. Yet, his self-assured manner bought the trust of our targets more often than it didn’t.

As long as Theo successfully pulled off his part, I happily relinquished control. Time and time again, the blueprint worked. Why mess with a good thing just to feed my ego?

“There are several sewer grates around the periphery of the property, a majority of them near the parking lot,” Christian remarked matter-of-factly.

“I need them all covered by a remote video feed that I can have access to.”

Theo, for all his virtues, did not have a talent for improvisation, and Christian’s answer had caught him off-guard. Stunned and at a loss, Theo turned to me for help.

“…I’m not sure that will cover the front gate or the entrance, sir.” I mumbled, also recovering from the overwhelming strangeness of his original response.

Why the hell would he want cameras watching the fucking sewers?, I thought.

From across the ...

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