Horror - Short

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. Little House on Prairie Street Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

LITTLE HOUSE ON PRAIRIE STREET

He’d forgotten to bring a towel to the gym. Sweat sprouted and trickled from his hairline as he pulled his hands into the sleeves of his coat, avoiding direct contact with the door handle. Two fat drops streaked down his forehead as if targeting his eyes and he squinted hard against the salty sting as well as a strong gust of cold winter wind. Blindly, he shuffled toward where he’d parked.

The lot and walkway were smoky ice. One step, two steps, three steps—his right foot shot out from beneath him and he thumped backward, hard against the slick concrete, gasping and shaking. Blood bloomed through a rip in his coat where his elbow nailed the cement lip of the sidewalk. He couldn’t move more than a tense vibration, could only blink at the sweat in his eyes and the snow falling on his face.

“You okay?” a voice said, a young man by the sound of it.

“Yeah. Think so.”

The young man had him by the armpits and was pulling him up. “The ice is all the way around the building; deadly, huh?”

The gym building also featured a bank, a cannabis store, a Panago Pizza, and 42 apartment units. The young man had been sitting there out in the cold for a while. His many boxes and reusable grocery bags all had a three-centimetre layer of snow riding atop them like cake frosting.

“What are you doing out here?”

The young man had turned down his face to speak into the collar of his jacket until he backed away a few feet. “Got evicted for updates, but my new place isn’t ready for a week. Was supposed to be ready last week.”

After bending to pick up the keys and the small backpack housing his gym gear, he assessed the damage to his elbow and his coat. “That’s kind of crazy. You…” he trailed, his mind falling behind his mouth. “You need a ride someplace?”

“Nowhere to go and I had to do first and last and a deposit at the new place. I have twenty bucks that has to last me three weeks. Boss cut my hours way down.”

“Oh, shitty.” He assumed the pandemic; it had been very hard on a good many people. He reached into his coat pocket and withdrew his wallet. There was a ten and a five in there, he thought about which to give and decided to give both. “Maybe you can get warm for a few minutes,” he said and held out the cash.

“Uh, okay.” The man accepted the money.

After a nod, he was in his car, his elbow really singing at the gentle rise in heat. He started the engine and pulled away. He didn’t live far from the gym, probably should’ve walked, but the weather had been crazy all week.

Out of the parking lot, he immediately stopped for a red light and put on his left turn signal. The snow was really coming and the heat emanating from his body had the windows fogging. Across the intersection was a stubby dead-end street and snow had spackled the backside of a stop sign, something about the way it looked gave room for a memory, but rather than letting the thought climb up and take hold, he switched the signal and took a right through the red. At the parking lot’s other entry, he hooked another right.

The man sat with his boxes, snow piling around him. The driver’s side window came down.

“I have a garage. It’s a lot warmer and drier than out here…couple sleeping bags you can use, too?” It came out like a question, almost a plea, but it cancelled any guilt he’d started to feel.

The man looked at the back of the car. “Okay, pop the trunk.”

—

“Thanks, eh,” the man said.

They’d spoken little, but the man had said his name was Lawrence and he had nowhere to stay because he’d only been in town six months—which was why he had no friends—and had moved from far out east. Lawrence had come right to the coast because he’d never seen an ocean, and he stayed because he got a job at the Staples store, though they’d recently cut his hours back to part-time thanks to the virus. The failure to match up the availability of the two apartments was simply bad luck.

“Well, uh, knock if you need to use the washroom. I’m going to lock the door,” he said.

“Makes sense,” Lawrence said.

After the deadbolt slipped home, he hurried through the kitchen and past the living room to the washroom. He needed a shower. As the hot water pattered, guilt began festering anew. He lived alone and had a couch in the living room and even a spare bedroom—though it was about the size of a walk-in closet. Still, anywhere inside the house was more comfortable than the cracked cement floor and cob-webby walls of the garage.

Once dried and dressed, he hurried back to the door. The deadbolt slipped in reverse and he switched on the light. Lawrence was amid his stuff, wrapped in a sleeping bag, his nose gone Rudolf red.

“You won’t kill me in my sleep if I let you inside?”

Lawrence blinked at him in a way that suggested he might’ve already fallen asleep. “No,” he said.

“I’m not gay, so it’s not like…”

Lawrence shook his head. “Yeah.”

“Okay. You hungry?”

“Nah, I had crackers and things from before,” Lawrence said.

“Okay. The couch is pretty comfy.”

“Thank you. I don’t know if I’d do it, if I were in your shoes I mean,” Lawrence said as he kicked out from the sleeping bag. “So, thanks.”

—

Only one day until the weekend, he left behind the hapless Lawrence and parked in the library lot because work had its demands. Lawrence handed over his driver’s license as a sort of guarantee, the only piece of collateral available that fit into a pocket. And he’d hold that and go to the cops if something happened. A skid-steer piled the several centimetres of snow from the night before, revealing a good deal of ice upon the lot’s asphalt. He guessed the library would be slow today; was almost always slow since COVID arrived.

At 9:15, the call came in that Aileen, his co-worker, couldn’t make it. She lived out of town, up the mountain, and had gotten much worse weather. Feet of the white stuff had piled overnight.

“No worries, so far the only person who has come in was a teenager b-lining for the can. Stay safe.”

“Great. You in tomorrow?” Aileen asked.

“Nope.”

“When do you work next?”

“Wednesday.”

“Lucky,” Aileen said. “See you then.”

The conversation ended and the library remained stilled for a couple hours until he went to the washroom and discovered the young man had not departed, was in fact sleeping next to one of the toilets in a stall. A sad whistle escaped his lips. The snowmelt around those sopping grey Adidas and the cuffs of the kid’s blue jeans…he could only shake his head. He did his business quickly and left without a word to the boy.

Once into the hallway, he stopped and backtracked into the can. He withdrew the wallet from his pants pocket and found he had a five and a ten. He placed both bills on the floor by the kid’s legs, having to reach under the stall door to do so.

The next time he entered the washroom, after lunch, all that remained of the boy was a mostly dried puddle of salted water and black road grime.

—

“So, you from here?” Lawrence said.

“No. I’m like you, came from out east.”

Lawrence nodded as he chewed. He’d found a roast in the freezer and texted to ask if he could make it for supper. A great idea. “I guess I should’ve…I don’t know, practiced my people skills in college.”

College was probably the best time to do it. He began to think of his own time at college, but Lawrence continued.

“I don’t know. I got in a dorm and everyone in my hall was ESL and I just played online poker and…” Lawrence sighed. “Hope this isn’t too much info, but I’d had these huge plans of starting new and becoming someone else. I was going to get laid, like how it is in every movie where a guy goes off to college, but college wasn’t like that for me. I freeze up…I’ve never even kissed a girl. I’m twenty-three and never kissed a girl. How sad is that?”

Plenty sad, but there was nothing to say.

“I even went to therapy for a while and the therapist tried to suggest I was gay and then maybe I was trans and then maybe asexual. All these things had to do with my true self not getting to live. He tried to get me to blame it on everyone but me, so I stopped going,” Lawrence said, eyes pinned hard on his empty plate. “Accountability is important.”

The openness was uncomfortable and got him to thinking about his own life and how he’d wound up being a thirty-five-year-old bachelor himself, but the thought stopped as he gazed out the window and to the street. The boy from earlier was out there, huddled up, walking.

“That kid was in the library today.”

Lawrence turned. The kid had stepped from his view. “What kid?”

“There’s a homeless kid.” He kicked out his chair and stood, started toward the door. Lawrence followed him, even as he slipped on his shoes.

“…fuck outta here!” the neighbour on the corner shouted as the kid spun from the doorway and rushed to the bench at the bus stop across the street. The neighbour slammed their door.

They stepped back inside and Lawrence said, “That’s tough, huh?”

He nodded. That kid was soaked earlier, if he spent the night outside, that wet, he’d be dead before sun-up. “I’ll be back,” he said and grabbed his coat.

“I’ll start dishes,” Lawrence said, and then switched on the TV to listen to the news.

—

“I thought she was waving to me,” the kid said and swiped a sleeve beneath his nose. He was doing a good job not crying, but he hadn’t yet warmed up. “I went over because of that. All I said was can I sleep on your floor and that guy flipped out. I thought she was waving to me and I knew I was gonna die if I sat on that bench any longer. I’d seen the sign for Prairie Street and decided I never been on a Prairie Street and started walking and then I had to sit again because of my feet.”

They looked at the kid’s feet. He’d taken his shoes and socks off, and the skin looked like oatmeal—grey, pebbly, puffy.

“What were you doing out there?” Lawrence said, not accusatorily only curiously.

“I ran away,” the kid had his face turned to his hands, which sat in the lap of his dirty jeans. “I ain’t going back. I ain’t getting hit no more.”

“It’s okay. You can stay. We can figure this out.” Standing, he took the kid’s coat, inside was the name Nathan in black marker on the tag. “Nathan, is that you?”

The kid nodded. “They get us all the same coats and we have to write our names… If you’re gonna call the cops, I’ll just go now.”

Lawrence grimaced at this.

“No way. Just asking. I’m going to fetch you a change of clothes and wash all this. I won’t call anyone.”

“He’s a good one,” Lawrence said.

—

The typically silent home was suddenly lively. He’d slept in and had only awoken when Lawrence and Nathan were laughing. The TV was on YouTube and they were watching fail videos. The noise was a bit much and he decided after breakfast, he’d take a walk. He needed to think this through. It was one thing to invite a couple stragglers into the house for a night or two, but what did he do with them long-term? And how had they become his problem?

“Hey,” Lawrence said.

“Hi.”

Nathan nodded and then said, “I can go whenever.”

He put out a hand. “Go where? It’s okay. Y’all eat?”

—

He left the house. He had on a toque, mittens, and his cat-print face mask. Immediately he felt better in the quiet. Nathan and Lawrence were easy to get along with, but they both had baggage, both triggered questions in himself that were simply beyond him to answer. The biggest being why was he doing this?

The chill had the path at the sea wall mostly empty, but he left his mask up because it kept his teeth warm. Out in the water, sealions bobbed and watched him—more dog-like than lion-like. They caught up a few times, never losing sight of his movements for long. If it were warmer, he might’ve sat, let the simple wonders of wild animals take his mind away.

The walk to the end of the sea wall and back took only half an hour so he detoured further and stepped into Kingfisher Books. He had dozens of unread books at home, but it was something to do.

The bell jangled overhead. The curmudgeon at the desk didn’t turn to look at him. He never did.

In the mystery aisle, he began scanning the titles. Among the letter Bs was a single title stuffed upside down, written by an author named Joanne Fluke. Blueberry Muffin Murder had a blueberry skull face in the centre of a muffin on its cover. Too cutesy for his taste. He put the book near where it should fit with the Fs and browsed for something more in tune with his preferences: Block, JCO, Westlake, maybe Abbott or Flynn or Ardai or Gran or Langan.

He left emptyhanded after burning half an hour. He’d come to no conclusions beyond that he liked the cover of the Fluke book and that getting a cake might be nice. He hadn’t had proper cake in probably ten years.

—

Though he had Nathan’s health card as collateral, he trusted Lawrence more, so when Lawrence said he could go to the store too, pay for at least part of the cake or the pizza, he quietly asked him to stay behind and keep an eye on the house.

The streets were eerily barren of traffic and there were three employees and one other customer in the FreshCo grocery. He stepped to the baked goods display counter and grabbed a round layer cake.

“Need candles?” the woman at the till asked from behind her mask and a clear wall of Plexiglass.

“Candles?”

“Not a birthday cake then?” she said.

He shook his head twice and withdrew his debit card. He rolled to the Panago and gave his name to the employee manning the counter. The two medium pizzas were ready and boxed. He paid with his debit again, the entire trip so far taking less than ten minutes. When he turned to leave the pizza shop, the world had gone mostly white.

“Holy,” he said and then stepped outside.

Huge flakes drifted lazily from the sky like volcanic ash. So much so that he blew off the pizza box before he closed the car door. Wipers on high, he crept to the street. He tried to recall if he’d ever been out in these bad of conditions and thought maybe, one time, way back—he had to slam the brakes as a flash of navy blue bolted in front of his car. He hadn’t stopped in time and the figure fell from view on the tail of a thump.

He kicked open the door after putting the shifter in park. In front of the bumper, splayed out was a small pale boy in a bathrobe several sizes too big. He had no shoes on.

“I’m cold,” the boy said, whining it out, hitching into a sob.

“Holy,” he said and tried to help the boy up.

“Don’t touch me!” the boy shouted, clutching the robe tight to himself.

“Do you need a ride somewhere?”

The boy began sobbing harder. “I-I-I got nowhere!”

The snow was so thick he could hardly see the shape of the big house on the corner of Prairie Street and Joyce. Better to take the kid home than to get in an accident on the way to the police station, or further yet, the hospital.

“Get in. We’ll figure it out.”

The kid had no questions and seemed to know, almost instinctively, that he had to ride in the back seat—cake and pizza up front.

—

Nathan played kid to kid and got the nine-year-old to open up immediately, doing the old, “My name’s Nathan and I ran away, too. What’s your name?”

“Ben.”

“How come you ran away?”

“My uncle. And my mom. She works the nighttime shift at the restaurant and my uncle babysits me and he always makes me take baths and I don’t want to anymore,” Ben said.

“Your uncle makes you take baths? In front of him?” Nathan said, incredulous.

They were in the kitchen, sitting around the dining table. Ben had on borrowed sweats but did not want to give up the bathrobe. They’d all eaten some pizza.

“He rubs my wiener and makes me rub his and I doh-doh-don’t wanna! You can’t make me go back!”

“Hey, maybe let’s stop—”

Lawrence cut him off. “Nobody’s taking you anywhere. I had a bad uncle, too; nobody’s taking you anywhere.”

Nathan punched his leg. “Fucking bullshit! Look at this kid, somebody always fucking with innocent little kids! It fucks them up forever!”

Ben went on crying. Nathan went on yelling. Lawrence went on making promises that weren’t really his to offer or keep.

He couldn’t listen anymore and retreated to his bedroom. Everything about these people was too horrible to think about and he refused. He’d let them stay, but only in his home, not in his head. He crawled into bed and withdrew his cellphone. He brought up Tubi and put on one of the recommendations: Do You Know the Muffin Man? that Fluke book still on his mind. He made it through the first twenty or so minutes, the voices beyond his door boisterous and emotional, but he fell asleep anyway.

—

“What’s your story?” Lawrence said.

In bed, he sat up and looked around. Three sets of eyes banked the light coming through the window above him.

“What?”

“We told you ours, what’s yours?” Nathan said.

“Be fair,” Ben said.

He licked his lips and sat up further, draping one leg out from beneath the covers over the edge of the bed. “What?” he said again.

“What’s your story? You know why we’re here, but how come you’re here? Alone in this house, taking in strays, how come?” Lawrence said.

“Yeah,” Nathan said.

“Yeah,” Ben parroted.

“Why do you need to know?”

“It’s important,” Lawrence said and flipped the light switch. “You have to face your demons,” his voice continued, but it came from Ben’s little mouth.

“No…what?” he said, his foot touching down and his other leg sliding to the edge of the bed.

“Demons,” Nathan’s voice said from Lawrence’s mouth and then, in a voice that belonged to some hidden place in time, all three mouths moved in unison and said, “Demons.”

He popped up then and backed to the wall. He still had on jeans and a sweater but had removed his socks while he slept. “What is this?” he said.

“What’s your story?” the trio said together, as if choreographed. “What’s your story? What’s your story!”

“I don’t have—no!” He burst forward and slammed a shoulder into Nathan before continuing out of the bedroom.

“Face your demons,” the trio said.

No time for much of anything. He slipped into his slippers and pulled open the door to the startlingly cold night air. The snow had slowed, but the damage was done—big lazy mounds covered everything.

“What’s your story?”

They were right behind him. He didn’t have his keys. He jumped and attempted to run, kicking aside great clumps of snow, trying to gain distance.

“Face your demons, ----,” Lawrence said, the final word undefinable.

Once to the street, he could almost really run. His mind was frantic, panicking over…what? Their request or the trick of their voices?

“Demons!” Ben said. “You can’t run forever, ----.”

He shook his head, taking a left off Prairie Street and onto Pacific Avenue—the route to the ocean.

“Demons!”

He started down toward the sea wall, brain too busy to take him somewhere useful. The crashing waves and the heavy winds seemed to call him, seemed to conjure, and a memory began unravelling—

“Demons!”

They were right in front of him, coming at him fast. He slipped on the gravel as he put on the brakes. His hand plunged into cold, cold snow. “I took you in! Why are you doing this to me?”

“You can’t outrun us! Just tell!” Nathan’s voice said, monster truck match loud.

“What’s your story?” Ben shouted then.

He got to the street again and there was Lawrence in front of him, walking calmly toward him.

“Face,” Lawrence said.

No good. He turned right, and down from a snowy backyard came Nathan.

“Your,” Nathan said.

No better.

“Demons,” Ben said from right behind him just before he reached out and grabbed him by the arm.

Worst of all.

He broke left and raced to reach a rusty ladder atop a shed that led to an unmanned lighthouse. He leapt from the higher ground, clearing a metre-wide gap, and coming down on top of the shed. Hands and feet on the freezing rungs, he climbed. Anything to be away from those voices, that demand.

The trip to the top was short. He pressed his back against the cold wall of the lighthouse and rubbed his arms. The town was grey from there, totally devoid of colour, all but the little house he’d purchased on Prairie Street. That yellow paint shined in the dark and he understood then that was because that home was his sanctuary, or at least it had been until he invited these—

“Face!” Nathan called from midway up the ladder.

One step, two steps, three steps, four, he stopped. Coming around the walkway was Lawrence.

“Your,” Lawrence said.

He gasped and spun, almost bumping into Ben.

“Demons!” Ben said.

“No more running,” Nathan said as he crested the ladder. “Face your deeeemusss.”

“Deeeusss,” Ben said.

“Usss,” Lawrence said.

Two options: do what they said or…he climbed onto the railing and leapt down onto the snow-covered gravel fifteen metres below. The fluffy white padding helped, but it did not let him off unharmed.

—

“Says he doesn’t remember,” the paramedic said to the nurse working the emergency overnight shift.

“Okay. Maybe he hit his head. Drugs?” the nurse asked.

The paramedic teetered her head left to right, right to left. “Could be, but I don’t know.”

“Okay, I’ll run a tox’,” the nurse said.

The paramedic held out a wallet. “Name’s Benjamin Nathan Lawrence. I already called it in. No priors.”

“Benjamin Nathan Lawrence,” the nurse said as he typed it into the computer. “How’d you find him?”

“A man on Pacific Ave. heard him through the closed window, shouting about demons. When he stepped out to check, guy was doing a nosedive from the old lighthouse.”

The nurse nodded. “We’d be doing a psyche eval’ anyway,” the nurse said, looking at the license set on her clipboard. “Benjamin Nathan Lawrence,” she said then through a sigh, then stood. “Okay.”

XX