The Untold - The Man In My Room

The sun had set a long time ago. I always have liked the way the dark night's cold felt on my neck. I felt like it cared for me, like my apprehensive and unpleasant existence was enough to make it want to care. It was nice. 

It felt like a breeze of relief blowing away the blanket of anxiety and distress that I was wrapped inside of. There was a thin mist from my lawn all the way to the trees in the black forest. The fire from my candle burst in a pattern only I could understand. It was like a gesture of hope despite my seemingly inevitable and lonely fate.

The flames had never been more alive and it was like a declaration of peace and positivity.

But the thoughts kept rushing through my head, and I just couldn’t take it.

I desperately tried to deny what I knew was the truth, but with all that had happened to my mother, I knew that I didn't have it in me. The room had gotten colder, I thought, it was almost freezing, which happened whenever the thought of relief suddenly seemed appealing. 

I moved the thin little candle aside. My heart started to beat when the scraping sound of the metal holder against the wooden desk filled my room. I froze. My mom had always told me not to wake up the mind-men with sound, although she wasn’t home very often.

I gently moved aside the curtain only to reveal the abnormal emptiness of the outside world.

The darkness slowly sank deeper and deeper in me, and my spine shivered as my conciseness flew out the window followed by the heat from my candle...

  The door to my room closed with a distinct creaking sound. Not very loud, but enough to recognize. I opened my eyes slowly and didn’t move a muscle with the intention of not making noise. 

I was on the floor bleeding from the back of my head, ice-cold and scared for my life.

I could feel the presence of something unknown and smell the odor of what appeared to be a man. I crawled forward just enough to get a clear look of every corner of that room, and there it was. A dark figure, a silhouette going back and forth in the corner room- chair. The room, which prior to was only lit up by a candle, had now gone completely dark. My heart was beating and a tear ran down my cheek. The leaves outside my windows threw shadows on the wall, and the noise of them hitting the window was the only sound filling the room.

I tried to move but I couldn't. It was like my mind was playing tricks on me, and it felt like two hands were tightly gripping my arms and preventing me from moving. I guess I should thank them, but I didn’t have it in me to see past the pure stress and anxiety in my head at that time. Laying on the back, facing the ceiling, I found the courage to yell out: “WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?”. 

My heart was now beating like never before and I struggled to breathe, as the creature in my room broke the window and disappeared out into the abyss. The hands-on my arms released, but the trauma on and in my head was too much. My vision got blurry and I collapsed.

 I sat up. It seemed to be some kind of hospital. Everything was so bright.

“Hello?” I yelled out. A nurse came running. 

“Hi, I see’ you’re up”, she gently wetted my forehead with a cloth. The water was cold.

“How are you? Sounds like it has been quite a dramatic weekend for you”, I didn’t laugh, just looked at her.

“How did I end up here, was it a dream?”, I asked. 

She replied: “No, some neighbors reported hearing screaming from your house at night, so they called the police. When they found you, you were bleeding from the head, so they brought you to the hospital. 

“What about the man?”. I almost couldn’t speak. 

“What man?”, she asked. 

“The man in my chair, who broke in”. I was desperately trying to get my word across, but so many things were going through my head.

“There were no traces of anyone even being there with you. I’m sorry. What we do think you have is a disease called Schizophrenia”.

“What’s that?”.

“Basically what it is, is a disease that makes you see, hear and feel things that aren’t there, so whatever you thought you saw, don’t worry, it’s just your imagination, even though it can be quite convincing.

“No, the man was real. I saw him with my own eyes”. I desperately wanted to believe the nurse, but something just felt off. Eventually, after enough convincing, she talked me out of the idea that it had been a real person. 

On one hand, I was kind of releafed, but on the other hand I was afraid of it happening again. 

After the nurse had left me, my arm was itching, but when I rolled up my sleeve, I saw something that I wish i didn’t see. Red marks from two hands. 

I froze