#86 The House On Fire

Age: 50 years

Hidden or Lost?: Hidden

History: Something is wrong. The house is on fire. There are flames in the windows, and it's all your fault. Such is the siren song of guilt and blame that draws the sad, lonely, and tortured to the mysterious House On Fire.

As the name suggests, the House On Fire appears as a simple two-story home engulfed in furious dancing flames that never seem to consume the charred walls. The enigmatic flaming building has no fixed location, but often appears to the guilty and paranoid, whether or not they have actually transgressed. Often the house will first appear to people as a distant, indistinct flame, caught out of the corner of the eye. Then it reappears again and again, closer each time, until the person seeing the house finally gives in to curiosity or fear and passes through the front door.

Within, the House On Fire is a surreal purgatory. Each room of the house offers a terrible new impossibility. There is the Pain Party, a claustrophobic room holding a full-swing party populated by the eyeless husks of loved ones scorned and friends betrayed. None speak, all judge. Or at the end of an impossibly long hall is the Chest of Unloved Gifts, a trunk that holds all of the objects one never appreciated and the small kindnesses that went unregarded. More and more they pour from the chest until you are smothered in heavy pangs of regret and shame. There is the Parlor of Mistakes, a room where you've done something terrible, everyone knows, and you can't take it back. Your only option is to use one of the many weapons lining the walls and remove yourself from the world.

Beyond the degradations of the burning house’s cruel chambers, there is also a presence. Often glimpsed among the other taunting specters of familiar figures created by the house, there seems to be a leering, grinning, intelligence peeking out from around the door frame or behind a smoldering curtain. Whether it is the master of the house or just another victim that refuses to leave is unknown, but it appears to revel in the pain, rage, and hopelessness of the guilty.

Few who have seen the House On Fire have ever lived to describe the experience. Those who survive come back changed, claiming to have been cleansed of their guilt and sins. Unfortunately, each becomes hopelessly homicidal as well, the very concept of guilt and empathy having been burned away by the house’s flames.

1. Portal of Acceptance

2. The Picture Book Library

3. Parlour of Mistakes

4. Memory’s Crush

5. The Pain Party

6. The Blame Room

7. Shame’s Oasis

8. The Closed Doors

9. Swords of Damocles

10. Consequence Conservatory

11. A Hole. Dark. Forever.

12. Pearl of Grace

13. Chest of Unloved Gifts

14. Sinchewer’s Throne