The latest Storytelling Mentorship project described Here - and this is my post for it.
My Bedroom
The bedroom is supposed to be the safest place in the house. No, I don’t mean the most secure, I mean the place where you feel safe. If you’re on edge or scared, you’re not likely to have a good night’s sleep are you?
Yeah, that’s what I think too.
My bedroom used to be my sanctuary. I used to go there when I wanted a little peace and quiet, a little time to myself or if I wanted to be alone with my thoughts.
No matter where I’ve lived – and I’ve moved a LOT – my bedroom, where I lay my weary head, has been a sanctuary.
It was the same here too… for a while.
Six months ago, I moved in with a couple of friends. We decided to split the rent three ways equally and we all got a turn of ‘first choice’ on a number of benefits.
The biggest bedroom was not an en-suite but the second-biggest was.
I let the other two have the first and second choice with regards to the bedrooms and I got landed with the smallest room, but the other benefits overwhelmed that small matter. I don’t need a large bedroom.
I get to use the main bathroom first in the morning. I get first choice on TV if there’s ever a debate on what to watch (we’ve got Tivo, so no one misses out on their shows) and I get to use the garage for my car. It’s a shit-heap, so I let Matt use the garage for his car and he pays me $10 per week for the privilege.
We share the laundry – if there are clothes in the machine, hang them up to dry, if there are dry clothes and they’re yours, take them and put them in your room and if there are dirty clothes, chuck them in the machine, add powder and switch it on – that works better than you’d think.
We throw in twenty dollars per week for food but if we buy anything specific then we don’t steal each other’s food – that’s disrespectful, man!
Everything was going great – so good, in fact, that when the landlord asked if we could afford to stump-up a full year’s rent in one go in exchange for a significant discount on the rent – 9 months’ rent for a full year contract – we jumped at the chance.
Matt’s parents are wealthy and they agreed to let us continue to pay monthly and after 10 months, we’d be quits, paid up on the ‘loan’ and we’d have 2 months rent free so to speak!
Happy Days!
We were five months into the year when I started to notice I wasn’t sleeping so well.
It’s not something I needed to talk about with Matt or Dylan, I didn’t think much of it, but I wanted to know for myself what was happening to my sleep.
I used an App on my phone that records whenever something makes a sound.
There’s nothing in my bedroom to speak of. My bed is a mattress on the floor, I have my laptop and a couple of charging points and a clothes rail to ‘hang’ my stuff.
But there’s something odd about the far corner. The room is not entirely square, there’s a door-width indentation at the corner. It’s papered over, but I suppose it looks like there was a door there once. Maybe a disused closet or possibly a door up to the attic. It didn’t bother me, it’s not been used for years by the looks of things.
At first, when I checked the sound on my sound-asleep app, there’d be something like static, but each night it got clearer.
Last night, I also had a dream.
The room is decorated differently in my dream. There’s a dresser, with an enamel bowl and jug on top of it. The dresser has a mirror and a small rail for a towel. The room is bright, like it’s day time and there is a short corridor in the corner. It leads to the attic and I smiled to myself when I realised my guess was right.
Then I stopped smiling.
The door to the attic creaked open and the hairs on my arms stood on end like I’d rubbed myself across a hundred balloons. I couldn’t move. I lay on the bed – bed? I have a mattress on the floor, not a bed! – and a small, thin, naked guy looked around the corner of the room. The guy was about the same size as a 10-year-old boy but it was a guy, he looked older than my parents and his eyes skittered about like he was on some serious mind-altering shit.
He crept out from the corner, into the bedroom as I know it. He walked in a creepy cartoon-exaggerated-sinister way, like on tip-toes, hands out in front of him like claws reaching to grasp anything. The fact that he was naked was disturbing. I could see every rib, his muscles wasted though they were, stood out in stark relief from his grubby, grimy skin and his fingernails were chipped, broken and filthy. His hair was wild and matted. It stuck out at all angles from his head, like spikes of filth.
He looked over at me and his eyes opened wide as though seeing me startled him and he stopped walking. Then he leaned toward me, put his finger to his lips and said, “Shhhh”!
I didn’t want to ‘Shhhh!’ – I wanted to scream but I couldn’t move. Part of my mind told me I was having a night-terror, like I used to when I was a kid, but back then, as soon as I told myself that, I’d start to wake up and be able to move.
The creepy guy grinned when he realised I was trying to wake myself up and his mouth widened across his face. My mind screamed! It deafened me inside my head and I tried to close my eyes.
He stood there and he laughed. Great rolling belly-laughs, head thrown back, hands clasping his gut as though he’d never seen anything so funny, but it was all in silence. I heard nothing.
Then he suddenly stopped laughing and looked toward the door and he continued his creepy cartoon-exaggerated-sinister walk, opened the door and went out.
When he came back, he was bigger. He stood taller, his bones were not so prominent and his belly was distended. I could no longer see his ribs or his muscles. He no longer walked in that creepy cartoon-exaggerated-sinister way, he strode through the room like he owned it.
He ignored me, but as he entered the doorway up to the attic, one arm curled around and he snapped his fingers, like a hypnotist bringing his subject out of a trance.
That was a few hours ago now. I daren’t leave my room. I’m sitting here on the mattress, looking at my phone. I daren’t listen to it in case I hear that creepy-ass “Shhhh!”
Matt and Dylan should be up by now, but I haven’t heard the shower going. I can smell something like metallic, coppery and I’m getting worried.
I’ve checked the corner. The wallpaper hasn’t been disturbed. Whatever the wallpaper covers hasn’t been disturbed. Perhaps I should take a look for myself?
Pictures from giphy.com
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