It was thirty-three years ago—an anniversary I never mark, nor care to recall—that I last spoke a word. Thirty-three years since the words that sealed my fate, that ended my existence as it was known, echo through my every thought, hollow and damning.
“Do you have any last words before I take you?” snarled the demon. Those words, those infernal words, sliced through the night air like a blade through flesh. I was young then, naïve, a mere boy whose only concern was a series of trivialities—school, friends, parties—ignorant of the things that lurk in the shadows of the world, waiting for moments of weakness.
It was my uncle’s junk removal service that led me to that moment.
You see, my uncle ran a small, unspectacular business in a run-down corner of town. He would often collect discarded items—old furniture, broken appliances, forgotten relics of lives once lived—carting them off to storage units or scrapyards. Nothing particularly notable about the work, except for the peculiar jobs that occasionally came his way.
One such job came in the fall, when the winds howled and the trees stood stripped of their leaves, standing like forgotten sentinels. A call had come through, a request for a “deep clean” of an old, crumbling house on the outskirts of town—an abandoned property that had once belonged to a family who, it was rumored, had vanished mysteriously. My uncle had made his living collecting the refuse of forgotten lives, but something about that house… something about that place, left him uneasy. Still, business was business, and I was too young to understand the warning in his tone when he asked me to accompany him that afternoon.
I remember that house as if it were yesterday. The air inside was thick with mildew, and the floorboards creaked with every step, as though the house itself were alive, watching, waiting. The walls were cluttered with dust and old portraits of men and women with eyes that seemed to follow us wherever we went. The place reeked of decay, both physical and spiritual.
We were tasked with clearing out the basement, a damp and oppressive place filled with crates, boxes, and piles of forgotten debris. But beneath the layers of detritus, there was something else—a chest, old and wrought iron, sealed tight with rust. Something about it called to me, as though it were alive, something waiting for me to uncover it.
“Don’t touch that,” my uncle had warned, but I was too eager, too foolish to listen. I pried it open, and the moment my fingers brushed the metal, a chill like nothing I had ever felt swept through me. The room grew darker, the shadows stretching unnaturally long. My heart pounded, and I could hear nothing but the erratic rhythm of my breath.
That’s when I saw it.
It emerged from the chest, or perhaps it always had been there, lurking just beneath the surface, waiting for the moment to strike. A figure—no, something—not of flesh and bone, but something darker, more ancient. It was a demon, cloaked in shadows, its eyes glowing with a sickly yellow light, its grin sharp and malevolent.
And it spoke.
“Do you have any last words before I take you?” Snarled the demon, its voice the sound of a thousand whispers, the agony of a thousand lost souls.
I remember the terror that seized me in that moment, a terror that turned my insides to ice. The words, once so easily accessible, fled from me, leaving only an oppressive silence. I wanted to scream, to beg for mercy, to plead with the thing that stood before me, but my voice betrayed me. It was as though the demon had claimed it the moment I opened the chest.
And then, as quickly as it had appeared, the demon was gone. The shadows receded, the air grew still once more, and I was left in a state of numb disbelief. The chest had vanished too, as if it had never existed at all. I was left alone in the darkened basement, my uncle nowhere to be found. He never spoke of that day, and I, in turn, could not speak.
Since that moment, I have not uttered a single word.
Thirty-three years. No sound has passed my lips. No conversation, no exclamation, not even a whisper. People around me have come and gone—friends, coworkers, even strangers—yet none have been able to draw a word from me. I have become a ghost among the living, my silence a prison I cannot escape.
But the demon still shadows me.
At night, I feel its presence. The walls close in on me, the silence grows unbearable, and sometimes, in the darkest moments, I hear it. The faint rustling of something—an object being moved, a whisper of movement too subtle to be certain. I know it is there, waiting. It is as if it is biding its time, preparing for the moment when it will take what it has claimed.
I now work as a junk removal specialist, a role that might seem ironic given my past. I clear away the remnants of people’s lives, their possessions, the discarded remnants of their fleeting existence. Every day I cart away objects—clocks, mirrors, old books—each one a reminder of the past. I wonder sometimes if my job is some form of penance, or perhaps a way to confront the shadows that follow me.
A few months ago, I was called to a home, an estate that had been abandoned for decades. As I cleared the attic, I found something—a chest. It sat there, just as it had so many years ago, untouched, unopened, waiting.
I cannot bring myself to open it, to disturb the silence. For I know the demon waits inside, and it will take what it has come for.
And I, bound by silence, can only watch.
It has been thirty-three years, but the demon still haunts me, still shadows my every step. And as long as I breathe, as long as I live, it waits for me to speak—one word, one cry—and with it, my soul will be claimed.
So I continue, day by day, moving the junk, removing the remnants of lives long gone, each discarded piece a small act of defiance. For the only thing I have left is the silence.
And I will not break it.
Not yet. Not ever.
