Empty Barrack

They came just before dawn, slinky and quiet like a shadow. Eberhart did not see them coming, had no idea, really, that anyone knew what he kept beneath his floorboards. They must have worked quickly, efficiently because everything was completely cleaned out before the sun cast its first rays into the house. Before he woke to feed his five chickens in the pen in his backyard, before his creaky muscles rose in the creaky old house to put the coffee on, to brush his teeth, before the morning paper came. 

It must have been hours before Eberhart discovered the nothingness that awaited him underneath where he slept. A devastating nothingness, his life’s collection completely disappeared right under his snoring nose. It continued to stay there, the blank canvas of the concrete room loud in its barrenness, not even an echo to fill the desolate space. 

The lonely room waited patiently for him as Eberhart went about his morning like usual. A rigid man pushing 60, his routine had gone unchanged for the last 50 or so years. See, he was structured even as a child. Wake up, get immediately out of bed – no time for lollygagging, no time for daydreaming, no time for snoozing, as his ex-military father would say. You could be dead in an hour, what are you doing wasting your time? 

The only daydreaming Eberhart had ever indulged in was from this elusive statement. How could he be dead in an hour? He imagined a meteor crashing into his house, straight from the sky, burning hot, just big enough to cover his bed and nothing else. Or perhaps a gunman would burst through his front door while his parents were gone out and, thinking that the valuables would be in the master bedroom, mistakenly enter his own and find him, a wide-eyed kid, there. Not wanting witnesses, the robber would have no choice but to shoot him dead. 

Then there were the accidents he thought of, all sorts of things that could go wrong. Anything from a simple tumble down the stairs to an accidental gas fire if he was using the stove. Or maybe his mother would put water on to boil and he would accidentally tip it over, melting his skin to the ground or melting his lips together so he could not open them in a scream. Possibly an overtired truck driver could end up on their suburban street, lose control of the wheel, and crash into the living room, trapping him between the front grill and the wall. Maybe his mother’s chandelier was not installed properly and it would break from the ceiling at just the moment he would walk underneath it, crushing his body into a pulp. 

These unlikely events took over more of his mind as he went about his life, turning into a sick obsession and preventing him from wanting to leave the house as he grew older. 

The sudden death of both his parents just shy of adulthood only increased this deathly fear of death even more. 

That is why he started stockpiling. As far as the city was concerned, the house that Peter had always lived in, his parents house, did not have a basement. 

See, his father had illegally carved out a room underneath where they lived in case of emergency, he said. Eberhart's father possessed the same irrational fear that he passed down to his son and was convinced at any moment that armageddon would happen, the end of the world would come crashing down, and he had to build a place for his family to hide. 

Unfortunately, he and his wife died just after the barrack was completed, and before it was stockpiled. Eberhart took it upon himself to finish the job; despite the contents being much different from what his father might have imagined it to be, he felt a twisted and misguided pride that his father would be proud of him. 

Eberhart reflected on this fact as he reached the bottom floor of the modest house, the only photo in the entire place staring at him at the bottom of the landing as he paused for just a moment to stare at his parents blank gazes, slippers silent against the white, carpeted stairs. 

It was the same brief moment he took every day to be nostalgic, nostalgic of a time when he actually talked to people other than strangers on the internet, the people in movies, and the occasional voice in his head. 

He was halfway through his routine now, reaching the door and opening it to find a child, no more than 13, crouching down in front of his doorstep and reaching for his beloved paper.

“Hey Ebbie, how’s it cracking?” the kid said, smiling a large, braces-filled grin, his voice cracking with the first signs of puberty. 

Eberhart only grumbled, snatched the paper, and slammed the door. He never said a word to the neighborhood kids, but they continued to tease him. Especially in the summer months, they loved to play ding-dong-ditch, throw eggs at his front door, and occasionally try to enter through the back. Mostly harmless pranks with the objective to get the cranky old man to speak. It never worked. 

On the other side of the white door and the white house the barely-teenager giggled to himself and ran off to join his friends. It wouldn’t be long now, he thought to himself, eager to share his appearance with the other kids. 

Meanwhile, Eberhart put a pot of water on to boil, then two pieces of bread in the toaster. With that prepared, he walked to the back of the house and out the door, the only door he ever exited from, and went to feed the chickens. 

They were extra rowdy today, he noted with discontempt, running around all wild for the grain and clucking incessantly. He prided himself on how well behaved they could usually be, a trait he believed he instilled in them – although this would not actually make sense, so one could imagine they were more likely a bit overfed and lazy. 

Sighing in annoyance at the display, he quickly grabbed the eggs they had laid and headed back inside, definitely not taking the time to pause at the bright sun, the first rays in weeks after wet, overcast weather. 

The water was boiling now, so he dropped the eggs in, and the kettle was whistling for his instant coffee. First sugar, (he used far too much), a scoop of coffee, then just a splash of unpasteurized, sour milk he got from the farm up the hill, delivered promptly every Friday. He poured the water in and then waited patiently for it to cool, staring at the eggs for the entirety of the six and a half minutes it took to get them the perfect amount of runniness. 

With his toast perfectly burnt to a blackened crisp, he took his meager meal over to the latch in the back room that always stood open. 

Perhaps he had a feeling that something was wrong, that someone had maybe been there at this point, or maybe it was the excitement that came with an addiction, for Eberhart felt his breath quicken and his heart beat a little faster as he approached the stairs. 

These ones were not carpeted, they were cement and cool, and the blackness of the cold air underneath prickled at his skin before he even took the first step. 

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. Eleven skinny steps and he was at the lightswitch, flicking on with an air of someone who has done this thousands of times, perhaps millions, day after day for decades he took this journey. There was no pause this time, nothing out of the ordinary from the other times he had done this. 

Until the light was on. 

His body registered first what his eyes did not register, a wave of nausea taking over as he grew faint with fear and confusion. Eberhart leaned forward, but there was nothing to lean on but an empty shelf. Dozens of them, in fact, lining the walls of the bare concrete room, empty and devoid of even dust. 

The wooden shelf almost did not support his weight with nothing on it to secure it in place, and he stumbled again at the surprise of how flimsy the wood seemed to be. 

Blackness took over, his eyes no longer registering the emptiness of the room, but his mind could not forget – he became clouded in rage and let out a blood curdling, croaking, gurgling scream from scarcely used vocal chords. 

He was still screaming as his body thumped to the ground. 

Across the street a group of neighborhood kids, the one with the mouth full of braces included, huddled around a tiny television in the shed of one of their parent’s houses. It was silent except from screams and moans from the meager speaker, stacks of DVDs piled around the place, more trash bags of them waiting in the corner. 

“Where did he get this stuff?” One kid broke the silence, but not breaking the attention of the adolescent boys, wide-eyed, staring attentively at the first pair of tits any of them had ever seen, bouncing, grainy and rhythmically across the screen.