Draugr Chair

My housemate is a haunted rocking chair. His name is Axel Bloodwood. He feels Scandinavian to me. I named him that after finding out he’s actually something ghastly living in a rocking chair. He seems to approve of his use of physical language. Rocking approvingly at the sound of his name.

Axel is a rocking chair made up of wood and leather, with some really nice padding and a goat's skull headrest, horns included. Its armrests end with skeletal hands. Gray fur covers the seat and the armrests. The leather is a pristine black, and the wood is a beautiful shade of olive, with the rockers being dotted in a reddish tint. The previous owner left him in the house when I bought it. He took everything else but the chair, claiming there was something off about it.

Took me a while to realize the chair was, in fact, autonomous. Even sentient to an extent. I remember thinking I’m imagining it rock on its own during my first night in the house. Over time, I’ve seen some oddities in him. For starters, I think it teleports to me whenever it feels I need a rest. I pass out from time to time, somewhere, without noticing and end up waking in the chair. It is quite comfortable, so I never really questioned how I ended up in the chair. Another odd thing I should’ve suspected about it was the fact that it sings.

The chair sings, well not literally. He rocks itself back and forth in a certain way that produces this really pleasant scrapping and rubbing noises as its rockers grind against the floor. At first, I thought it might be coming from one of my neighbors or something because of how faint it sounds

The chair doesn’t move on its own or do anything strange when I’m not alone, so no one’s ever seen the chair display its personality.

The other thing I should’ve suspected is the strange liking I took to it the moment I saw it. There were almost sparks the moment I laid my eyes on that chair as it stood in the corner of the otherwise empty room. Its black leather and olive frame had contrasted sharply and beautifully against the white walls.

It was then that I realized I like this chair, and the chair likes me too. So much so that it apprehended an intruder into the house on its own and cleaned up the mess, too! Whoever took up residence in that chair, I salute you; you are a perfect housemate!

I woke up one night feeling strangely cold - in the middle of the summer. It was so cold the hairs on my body stood up and I was shivering. Running my hands across my body, I heard a faint moan. I opened my eyes and there was nothing there, thankfully. The sound of choking and grunting echoed beyond the bedroom walls. My body stiffened and my heart and mind started racing. I fixated my gaze on the door. Hoping to be stuck in a nightmare or sleep paralysis or something that was not someone or something breaking into my house. Yet everything felt incredibly real and I felt perfectly lucid.

When the door started slowly opening, I thought I was going to piss myself with fear as the wood creaked eerie, contrasting the night’s silence. These couple of moments felt like an eternity as I started at the ever-widening gap forming in my doorframe. A thick cloud of black smoke wiggled its way into my room. It danced and swayed in space as it grew and expanded. I stared at it helplessly, hoping to wake up from the terrible night terror.

The smoke slowly took on a shape of a person. The figure grew larger and drew closer to me, appearing a massive shadow looming over my own diminishing form. In those moments, I wasn’t paralyzed per se. I could feel my body, but fear had taken over my mind, pinning me in place. I stared at the shadowy thing as it ballooned over my bed before slamming into it with its entire weight and dispersing into the nothingness. My bed and body trembled under the impact. I laid there for a few moments, trying to make sense of it all. A sliver of light spilling through the doorframe interrupted my train of thought into the hall. A high-pitched scream followed the light pollution. It put me into overdrive, and I got out of bed and bolted towards the source of the light without a thought. Singularly focused on the unknown that had jolted me awake.

I stopped only when I saw the mess in my kitchen; the light blinding me, and the screams of the masked man pinned to the wall didn’t make the situation any easier. What was pinning him to the wall shocked me the most; it was the rocking chair. It stood unfolded on two of its wooden legs, taking the shape of a grotesque praying mantis made up of fur, wood, and leather. The masked man was screaming incomprehensible words as the rockers sunk deeper into his chest. Its wooden arches functioned like the raptorial legs of a mantis. The goat's head headrest turned to me and almost smiled before turning back to the masked man and groaning at him. His screams started turning into ever-weakening gargling noises.

The scenery was disturbing enough to make my head spin, especially because the man seemed to shrink and shrivel right before my eyes. His cries grew hoarser and eventually fainter. Before I could even fully comprehend what was going on, the man was nothing but a layer of dried skin, and half a second later; he was nothing but a shimmering flicker of reddish rainfall that disappeared right before my eyes.

I felt really dizzy, and the next thing I know is that I’m sitting in the chair that was rocking me… for me… Trying to process what I had just seen and how it even got into the kitchen - I looked at the chair. I studied it. Mostly, it looked just like before, but there was one exception, its rockers had red dots all over them. Blood red dots.

The ghost in the chair absorbed the blood into its current furniture of body. Sometimes it makes me wonder how did it get the rest of its unique features...