Alone in my Room

All I needed was the last thing I wanted, to sit alone in my room and take time to reflect about my life. For the past few years I've been leading a very stressful life, serving in the military and developing unhealthy habits due to my job requirements. Right now, caffeine is the only thing that keeps me going in my every day life.

Recently I can't even get any proper sleep, being plagued by horribly realistic dreams about the Plague. I know it's probably going to come off weird as hell, but I reassure you that I have these reoccurring dreams about being a Plague Doctor. With each night the dreams get more realistic; I swear the sights of medieval Europe seem to become more and more disturbing with each passing night. In my dreams corpses decorate the streets, the living are clinging onto life just barely. It is as if I am surrounded by the decaying alive in my dreams; people's digits and noses are colored black due to gangrene, they carry around swollen lymph nodes under their arms. The sights, the sounds, they all make sense in a dream world, but the smell… I can wholeheartedly say I can almost, no, I can most definitely tell apart the sweet herbal scents in my dream plague mask from the ones of decay in the world that surrounds my dream self.

Seeing people who vomit their own blood into streets filled with death and shit, while slowly succumbing to the progressive necrosis of their own bodies does not bode well with my sleep. I don't recall having a peaceful night's sleep in the last few weeks.

I am constantly tired and my body aches as a whole from time to time, granted temporary release only by the consumption of caffeine or alcohol from time to time.

Seeing as how I do not usually work Fridays, last night, after taking my post-work shower, I've decided to stay up later than usual. One cup of strong black tea later, I was deeply immersed in the world wide cyber spider net that is the Internet, a couple hours later, I've become bored with surfing the net and donned on my Soul Combat headphones and turned on my playlist which mainly consists of a bunch or Rock music by various artists. Quickly enough, I was so into the music, lip syncing to myself to avoid waking up the neighbors.

I was completely zoned out of reality, trapped inside my mind – enjoying my own silly groove when something plucked me out my proverbial happy place and sent crushing down back into reality.

A loud screeching sound came out of nowhere, bombarding my earlobes, bypassing my headphones startling me so much I had knocked my knee into the table.

With the headset still positioned firmly around my dome, I turned around, hastily scanning my room for any external threats as I curse at the pain radiating from my knee to the rest of my leg.

I was alone.

Completely alone.

As I was beginning to recollect my thoughts and looked for a logical explanation for the screeching sound a sense of dread overcame me. That slow, steady, flowing like sensation of intensity that builds up in a stressful situation sent shivers down my skin. I shuddered for a moment before convincing myself that the sound came from the chair that I must've moved while I was enjoying the music.

At that moment, Space Dementia by Muse was playing in my headset and once I've made myself comfortable in my seat once more, I've come to notice how the stress had heightened my senses; the sounds became clearer, more refined and my dark room well while it did not seem to be any less dark – the details were clearer to me.

That’s when I saw something move tiny move in the corner of my eye. Reflexively I turned my head to the direction of the object and there was nothing. Yet again, I found myself alone in my room, I was completely alone. At this point, my heart had begun racing on itself for seemingly no good reason, I took a good glance around the room – still nothing.

Deciding I just need to chill out, I put my music on pause and headed to the kitchen to grab a cup of cold, refreshing water. With my heart and mind still racing, on the verge of a panic attack I drank a cup of water, and then another one. Three being a lucky number, I filled myself a third cup of water to calm my nerves, drinking the third cup of water I felt a hand touch my shoulder.

The feeling made me jump and drop the glass cup on the floor, breaking it, I yelled out, "What the fuck?!"

My ears were ringing, my heart was blasting its way in my chest cavity and a mixture of terror and rage drove me to turn on the lights in the kitchen, nothing, there was nothing but me in the kitchen.

Call me mad but I had to reassure myself that my tired mind was just playing tricks on me, and thus I went from room to room in the house turning on the lights, looking around hoping to find nothing.

Nothing is exactly what I had found in each and every corner of my house, I was alone.

Turning off the lights in the lights in the living room rest, I was about to splash some cold water over myself to shake the possible tiredness away, at least for a bit, but once the lights went off I saw a figure standing at the end of the room.

It looked like a shadowy figure of a woman in a fancy Victorian dress.

Freaked out once more, I began fumbling my way around the switch, not breaking my gaze away from the figure for what seemed like the longest moments. Once the lights came on – the figure had been with the curtains flailing about in the wind.

I was sure that I am losing my mind at this point, and hence made my way cautiously towards the bathroom where I proceeded to place my head underwater for a few moments.

The feeling of unease did not leave me after doing so, it did subside a bit but it did not fully go away, I still felt tense and my neck and shoulders started aching due to the tension. I somewhat managed to distract myself from my own paranoid thoughts by surfing the Internet for a while until around 3 AM, that’s when I felt tired enough to be able to actually get some sleep.

After turning all of my tech off I've let myself fall onto my bed, and just as I closed my eyes that feeling of a presence crept up on me again, I've tried ignoring it for a few moments – but the dread only grew stronger forcing me to open my eyes and scan my room only to find once more nothing but nothing.

I've closed my eyes and got a few moments of peace, only for that feeling of something, just something being near me to hit me once again, I shot my eyes open and nothing was there still. The feeling of dread went away as soon as I looked around the room. I tried falling asleep again, but the vicious cycle of my paranoia induced insomnia wouldn't let me fall asleep for an hour or so, after which I broke down and began weeping.

I'm not ashamed to admit it, but I was crying myself to sleep over the fact that my mind was fucking with itself and my overall exhaustion.

Finally, after god knows how long, I felt myself drift asleep when the Hypnic Jerk came about jolting me wide away.

My eyes shot open to the sight of a mangled old man's mug, almost zombie like, staring at… no… not staring at me.

It felt like it was staring straight through me.

I jumped out of my bed screaming and fell onto the floor.

Turns out that the face was nothing but a pile of clothes and objects on a chair next to my bed.

Knowing as how my body was way too high on adrenaline, and fueled by my own almost delirious paranoia, I ran to my closet and pulled out a baseball bat, swinging and cursing at the air as if there was some sort of demonic intruder in my temple. I knew I was completely alone in my room but I still did that.

I've spent the rest of the night huddled with the bat close to me, darting my eyes from one side of the room to the other like a mad man while whispering to myself that I want something to crawl from under the bed, or one of the closet sections so I could bash its skull in.

I did not want to lose my sanity, even though I am pretty sure that last night I lost my sanity, at least temporarily.

Sunrise made me ease up, the intensity and fear went away with the darkness, and I am not even suffering from Nyctophobia, just like that everything went away, or perhaps my body just gave out on my mind... Throwing my bat angrily to the floor, I dove back first onto the bed in hopes, closing my eyes I felt my right side, right under the arm itch.

I'll have you know that I haven't slept in over twenty-four hours.

I scratched the itch away, but by doing so I've come to discover a tiny black lump under my arm where a birth mark used to be.