The house was dead and had been for a very long time. It's walls sagged, leaking pus and flies into the stale air of hallways and corridors whose floors had tried to withstand the decay and failed. Wallpaper had peeled in countless tiny flakes that littered the mould-ridden floorboards like the first moments of a snowstorm and gathered in high piles in the corners of every room.
From the outside it was barely recognisable as a house at all, the upper floors having sunk and collapsed under the weight of too many storms and whatever foliage had tried to take root on the roof. Now it resembled something like a block of clay after a toddler's fist has tried to make it into a bowl.
The air around the house was permeated with the scent of rotting meat and flies swarmed about like dogs on patrol, driven mad by the smell but finding no food alongside it. Whatever was leaking from inside the house (call it pus, call it stagnant water, call it whatever as it stained everything it came into contact with) seemed to be the source, catching the flies and sucking them in before propelling itself further outwards and closer to the front door.
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