We never should have bought this old house.  We sunk all our savings into it plus we took on a mortgage so huge that at this point I would have to pay out money just to get rid of the place.

I hate the sounds this house makes.  I hate the way it smells.  It’s a completely different house than it was the first day I walked in here.  That first day it was sunny.  This house at the top of the hill looked glorious even though it obviously needed work.  Sun sparkled off the windows and it was surrounded by green, lush trees.  Sam and I walked through it, room by room, amazed at the open area and imagining all we could do with it.  That perky realtor encouraged our dreams.  She thought our offer might be accepted.  It was all we had.

Champagne and chocolates were our celebratory dinner when we closed and the next day the movers brought our furniture then box after box.  Pictures were hung, beds were made, fluffy pillows were thrown onto the couch.  Cable was hooked up, and we snuggled in front of a real fireplace enjoying the heat as fall closed in. 

But the changing season brought more than just cold.  Sam shivered and coughed at first.  Simply a virus, we thought.  A few Tylenol and a good night’s sleep ought to take care of it.  But his breath caught in his lungs and he could get no oxygen, struggling for air until only an ambulance could handle his transport to the hospital as he lay groaning.  Pulmonary embolism, they said.  Many people recover - but not him.  That was it.  Our lives together were over.  It is just me now.

Back at this house, after the funeral, it seemed so gray and unbearably lonely.  I heard the walls shudder in the wind and the sound of my emptiness echoed in the hallways.   The house tortured me.  It was as if it enjoyed my misery.

Pounding on the walls with both fists I wanted to remind this damn house I was a queen to Sam’s king and as the queen, I still rule.  But the house doesn’t believe me.  It knows how weak I am.  Without Sam, I have no power.  The house is closing in on me.  It gets darker and darker.

I bring in flowers but they die.  I adopted a cat a few months ago, but he ran away.  Somehow a door was opened, and he was gone.  I know it was the house.  The house let the cat escape.  I put music on the radio but it gets drowned in static.  I hate this house and it knows I hate it.

There is a sledgehammer in the garage.  The house knows it’s there and is afraid.  I can feel its fear.  Last night the house creaked and groaned.  It laughed and ridiculed me once the lights were out and my head was on the pillow.  I cannot leave this house.  I can’t afford to live anywhere else.  I can’t afford to sell this miserable thing.  But I can subdue it.  I can teach this house a lesson. 

The sledgehammer feels good in my fists.  It’s too heavy to lift easily, I have to heave it and swing but the resounding thud as I punish the walls is like music.  There! See who is stronger now, house!  I swing and swing until I have no strength to swing again.  The living room walls scatter about and the house whines with fear and grief.  Good.  Perhaps it will quiet now and torment me no more.

But it seems even louder as I toss and turn at night.  The groans are deafening and it’s cold.  Perhaps it has shut down the furnace.  I don’t wait until morning; the sledgehammer punishes the dining room as I wield its force.  “I’ll kill you, house!  I’ll kill you!”  Gaping holes appear as pieces of wall fall to the floor.  It looks like a face screaming and I swing again. 

I hate this house.  It laughs at me.  It won’t let me sleep.  We should have never bought it.  But I am stronger.  I will keep swinging and swinging this sledgehammer in every room and on every wall until the house is subdued and repentant.  Until this house is silent forever.

Bio: Luann Lewis is a Chicago native who has spent the last seventeen years mostly writing legal documents and correspondence but is now in semi-retirement and pursuing her MFA at WVU.  Dabbling in Fiction, Flash, and Poetry, she has had over a dozen pieces published in print and online and had one professionally performed in a studio podcast.