Sanctuary a short story

Sanctuary
Antonio Grasso
The room invited him to death. It was ruled by shadows and overtaken by the darkness of all that hated.
He walked into the room with his eyes wide open. The light shined and blinded him him striking him with a devilish idea.
The room beneath the house was what he came to know as the loneliest place on earth. It was also his paradise. The path to Hell was entered down those stairs, it was the one place he felt he belonged.
He lived with no one and for good reason. The coal heated furnance burned day and night without question. It didn't matter the season, coal was always burning and the chimney was always puffing out white smoke, which should have cautioned his neighbors, but seldom did anyone ever take an interest to anything but themselves anymore.
When he did venture out the world would cast stare upon him that would label him an outcast. No matter how hard he tried in his life to make friends or meet new people, he always failed. He would call day and night his so-called friends, trying to fit in. But soon after calling and speaking with them suddenly their numbers would change and he would never hear from them again. He could never figure out why and always thought maybe he had misdials. After awhile he grew weary of calling and decided it just wasn't meant to be. So he would just go back to the room under the stairs.
His basement was his sanctuary, his cave away from the hell he lived in above ground. Many times early in life, he would have an opportunity to go somewhere or do things with other people that could be his friend. He would look inside himself and would wonder why this person would want to sit across from him, what could he possibly have to offer. Was it out of pity? Were they getting paid for it? When he looked in the mirror, he saw a man that had no future and no past.
"The world is a cruel place that has no time for people like me." He often said to himself. He tried to be funny, entertaining company, often practicing in the empty house in the living room. He would play other personalities trying to get over his anxiety but always felt the same in the end. That he didn't belong.
He only found this need fulfilled down the stairs, the one place he was always welcomed. At night around eight o'clock, he would give up trying to meet new people and be "normal" and go down to his sanctuary and speak with his mother. She was the only person that ever cared about him. She let herself become the coal that warmed his home every day.
He would call to her in chant to replenish this supply, to revive herself from the ashes in the furnance. Within minutes a green mist crawled along the damp concrete floor flowing to a small gathering of ash. There he would magically stare with a blank expression as one by one her bones were replenished. When all of her was revived he heard a voice come forth. This voice often told him to take another inch off or continue the work on his thigh or hands that he had begun long ago. In a trance he blindly followed the orders he was given. The green mist lingered in the sanctuary gently flowing around the darkened room which suddenly ignited candles as it flowed past.
His mother loved him, he killed his mother. He walked over to the furnance and shuffled in a few bones. The mist grew heavier.
The self mutilation brought more voices of his true friends. And this night friends were found everywhere. He felt no pain for the first time that day. Despite the efforts of his mother his world had long since crumbled. She treated him with the untmost care. Everyday there would be a gift awaiting for him when he came home from the nightmare he lived. A new toy car, the latest video game or in his younger years a teddy bear.
He would take these gifts with a false happiness. He would give a smile that held no meaning and this led to more unhappiness. He put all gifts given to him in the basement where they would stay for all time. Nothing could help him, he was doomed from the very first pity present, he would le no one buy his love.
At the age of twenty-two, still living at the home his mother perished in. The table of knives still lay sticking up out of the concrete ground, where her final fall brought about her demise. The body decayed for years until the mice ate the last of the flesh away. When the mice began she was alive, he sat and watched playing with his toys for the final hours of her life.
The green mist lingered over to the closet door in the corner of the basement. Behind this door contained his key to the past. He never knew his father had died and never asked where he was.
His mother had been all he ever needed, or at least she tried to be. Unfortunately the path she took failed. The voices were there to sooth his pain, they would always be there. The only voices he considered his friends he was never able to a face to. He listene to the voice with undaunting loyalty. He gave all he had as he looked over the bones where he thought of his long dead mother.
He heard the voice directing him to the table in the ground. The green mist hovered around him with candles blazing. With a sudden roar the closet door flew open just as the green mist wrapped around his legs and them out from underneath him, and just like his mother he fell upon hell.
As he lay bleeding and in pain, out came a man stumbling towards the furnance. A scurry of mice could be heard on the concrete. The green mist hovered about his body for a few minutes and then lingered over to the bones where it met up with the man. The bones started to arrange itself being wrapped up in the mist which became a fog.
As mother and father stood over the body as the mice continued their feast into the night.