Avarice
A big red-lettered sign outside the house pronounced it CONDEMNED, and still I ventured across the creaky porch into the dark abyss that lay beyond the doorway.
The sign should have been enough.
The sagging roof should have been enough. The busted windows, the weeds grown waist-high against the steps, the porch boards soft beneath my feet like wet bread. Even the silence should have warned me, that heavy silence of a place no longer waiting to be lived in, but waiting to fall.
Still, I entered.
At first, I told myself I only wanted to look.
I stepped carefully through the doorway, one hand out before me, the other trailing along the wall, my fingers gathering dust as thick as ash. The air inside was stale and sweet with rot. Somewhere in the walls, something skittered. Somewhere above me, a loose shutter tapped in the wind, though no wind seemed able to reach that far into the house.
I walked slowly, carefully, among the rooms, savoring the cobwebbed pleasures each one offered.
In the parlor hung a beautiful chandelier, dimmed by dust but still glittering faintly where the sunlight found it. I stood beneath it for a long moment, imagining it cleaned and lit, imagining its crystals throwing stars across a ceiling that was already splitting.
In the dining room, half-buried beneath a fallen curtain, I found a gold-embossed vase. I turned it in my hands, brushing away the grime with my sleeve. There were cracks in it, but not enough to ruin its beauty. Not enough to keep me from wanting it.
In the kitchen, beside a rusted sink, I found a silver spoon.
I slipped it into my pocket.
That was the first thing I took.
It was so small it hardly seemed to matter. A spoon from a dead house. A little rescued thing. A little reward for courage. No one would miss it. No one could want it now.
And yet, once it was in my pocket, I began to see more.
A brass candlestick. A framed miniature. A blue glass bottle on a windowsill. A cracked mirror whose tarnished edge still caught my reflection and gave it back to me in fragments. Every room offered something. Every corner whispered, take this too.
The house, for all its ruin, was rich with forgotten beauty.
I forgot the sign.
I forgot the porch beneath me, the warning in red letters, the dark mouth of the doorway through which I had entered. I forgot the sky outside and the field beyond and the clean air I had left behind.
There was only the next room.
And the next thing.
And the next.
I began to move faster, less carefully now, my pockets heavy, my arms full. I no longer savored the rooms. I searched them. I pulled open drawers swollen shut with damp. I kicked aside fallen plaster. I tore through the dust as if the house owed me what it had hidden.
Then the house gave a lurch.
It was not a sound at first, but a movement, a deep shudder traveling up through the floorboards and into my bones. The chandelier trembled. The walls groaned. Somewhere above me, a beam cracked like a rifle shot.
I froze.
For one foolish second, I clutched the vase tighter.
Then years of rot began to cascade down around me.
Plaster fell in pale sheets. Wood split. A rain of dust poured from the ceiling, thick and choking. The rooms that had seemed so full of treasure became suddenly full of teeth. The beautiful chandelier swung once, twice, then tore free and crashed behind me in a glittering explosion.
I began to run back through the rooms, oblivious to their ancient beauty in my haste to reach the spot of sunlight that spoke of the doorway and safety.
The vase fell from my hands and shattered.
I did not stop.
The brass candlestick dropped from beneath my arm and rolled away into darkness.
I did not turn.
The spoon in my pocket struck against my thigh with each step, a small, hard reminder of what had first persuaded me that stealing from ruin was not theft.
Beams landed beside me with thundering crashes as I ran, sending up clouds of choking dust. I began to cough uncontrollably, each breath tearing at my throat. My eyes watered. The doorway vanished in a smoky haze.
For a moment I could not see anything.
I stumbled into a wall, felt old nails bite into my palm, and cried out. Something sharp tore across the top of my foot. I kept moving. There was no thought left in me but air, light, escape.
The house groaned again, deeper this time, like some enormous animal folding in upon itself.
I ran toward where I believed the door had been.
Or where I prayed it had been.
Suddenly I burst through its frame and out into the field as the house fell with a great crash behind me.
The sound rolled through the ground and up into my chest. Dust billowed outward, swallowing the porch, the windows, the red-lettered sign, the rooms, the chandelier, the vase, the mirror, the bottle, all the small treasures that had called to me from the dark.
I fell to my knees in the grass and coughed until my ribs ached.
For a long while I could only kneel there, bent over, my hands pressed into the dirt, breathing the open air like a man newly born.
I had escaped certain demise with few scars, save the bloody scratches from nails on my hands and feet.
But they would soon heal.
I told myself that as I stood.
I told myself that as I brushed the dust from my clothes.
I told myself that as I looked once more at the heap of timber and plaster and ruin that had almost become my grave.
Then I felt the weight still in my pocket.
My fingers went to it before I could stop them.
The silver spoon was bent now, scratched and blackened, but it was still there.
I drew it out and held it in my bleeding hand.
Behind me, the condemned house settled into silence.
Before me, the field opened wide and clean beneath the sun.
I should have thrown the spoon into the wreckage.
I should have left it there with the rot and the dust and the red-lettered warning.
Instead, I wiped it on my sleeve and slipped it back into my pocket.
After all, it was only a small thing.
Originally written June 16, 1987, expanded June 2026
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