I feel myself lying in bed as I enter that in-between place of sleep and awake. I'm still seeing the rainbow tire irons and waterslide cartwheels of a vague dream, yet I also start to take notice of my trembling fingers clenching my pillow, my knees curled into my taut stomach. Then, of course.
I don't need to expend the physical torture that would be wrenching my eyes open to know that I've got to get down. Now. Who thought it would be a good idea to put bunk beds in a college dorm, anyway? Didn't they take into account the dummies like me who would neglect to pay homage to the porcelain throne before resting from their labors? I begin slowly, slowly swinging my legs around to the ladder, wishing I could will my body to move faster. The technicolor distortions of my dream are gone and all I can see is the increasing urgency building in my eyelids.
My foot lowers itself to the ladder. I feel the cool metal against my nervous toes, groping feverishly so I can regain my balance. I catch the next to last step and almost fall off the bed entirely. Something in my brain quietly wishes to know the time as I stumble to the door, even though it's completely irrelevent at this point in the morning. I find my phone and check all the same.
4:18 AM.
Lovely. My bladder's about to rupture.
I open my door and pause. This always happens. Nothing is as simple as I'd like it to be. Why did I open my eyes? I stare into the blackness of the hall and even my half-asleep delirium can't dispell the fear I feel snaking its way into my lungs. The bathroom is all of three feet to my right, but I can't push myself through the doorway. I just know that the darkness holds the nightmares I fight so hard to keep in check.
Monsters under the bed were never an issue for me as a child. No, I was golden until I learned about panthers. Their eyes which glow a malignant yellow in the night; their perfectly black bodies that blend seamlessly into the nocturnal abyss; their insatiable need to rend human flesh from bone, to devour you alive. But, worse than all of that is the way they scream. Some say it sounds like a woman shrieking, but that is no human noise. To me, it was the noise of pure terror, of all that was to be feared in the stillness of the dark. As is privy to a child's imagination, panthers lurked in every unchecked corner of my house. I slept many a still night just waiting for the beast to sink its daggers into me, screaming all the while into my petrified ears.
From there, the creatures of my nightmares evolved with my imagination. The panther became an African demon bent on kidnapping me in his sack of Wind, which became a yheti, which became a murderer with a shotgun, which became a murderer with a machete, which became Samara.
Behind the door, I expected either instant death or an image so terrifying that I'd either go insane or suffer cardiac arrest. Nothing. I slowly step out the door, creeping because things are less likely to attack/maim you if they can't hear you. I practically run to the bathroom and simultaneously turn on the light and shut the door. I quickly check the mirror to make sure there's no murderer or ghost behind me. Nope, they didn't think to hide behind the door this time. I can only hope my luck holds.
I finally do what I woke up for in the first place, although the relief isn't enough to dispel my tremoring. I pull back the shower curtain to ascertain whether or not my demise has chosen to hide in the tub. I'm lucky again.
I can't bring myself to check the bathroom closet. Even if I don't find a creature bent on my destruction, I'm almost positive I'll find the mangled body of one of my roommates. Afterall, why wouldn't murderous something go after one of them too? I leave it be, hoping that I'll find all three of them alive and well in the morning.
I wash my hands, never letting my eyes leave the mirror. If I look away for even a moment, that would give my attacker an opening. Once your guard is down, it's all over.
I face the bathroom door. It's time to return to the darkness, to expose myself to whatever it is that hunts me so stealthily. I wish I'd thought to turn on the hall light. That would have kept the demons at bay. Oh well, let's get this over with, I think feverishly as I grasp the knob.
I wrench open the door, turn off the light, run back into my room and shut the door behind me in almost one fluid movement. The whole thing hasn't taken more than two minutes, but my heart is racing and I'm now wide awake. Sweat pours down my back as I stumble shakily my ladder once again. I scramble up, afraid that the killer has snuck into my room and is waiting just below me so that he can grab my ankle as I ascend back to bed. I make it back up safely and throw the covers over me, as it's more difficult to be murdered when they can't tell exactly where your body is beneath a mass of blanket.
I bury my head in my pillow and jam my eyes shut. Chances are, I won't remember this in the morning. I'm safe until my next death walk into the dark.
rating: 2
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