My Room - Serena Axel (grave mercy TXT) 📗

My Room

I turned on the light and descended the stairs to my room, not forgetting to call back and say I'd be right up again. I did this out of habit and protection from whatever might be lurking down there in the shadows. Making my way down the hall a short distance, I turned again and my bedroom door was in front of me. I grabbed the knob and hit the light switch, continuing to go in, looking around to see if I was alone.
The basement use to be an apartment my parents rented out, but there were new laws and we had been rezoned for single family homes. Our renters had been forced to move. Since the once-living room was the biggest space, my two older sisters and I shared it.
We even had a fireplace for those cold winter nights that Chicago is so famous for.
I was eight years old, the third child in a family of nine kids. When my brothers and sisters were home and I went to sleep I was okay. On those nights when they were out babysitting, or at a school function, I would hear noises. My imagination always got the best of me. I would grab my cat and take him to my room, and then shut the door so he couldn’t escape. After I had gotten into my flannels and pulled the covers over my head, I would hold Tiger tight (much against his wishes) until he settled down and I fell asleep. If I was lucky there would be no frightening intruders or scary games tonight, and I would wake well rested.
On one of those bad nights I can’t remember what woke me, but there standing at my bedside was a dark figure. Not wanting to see him I tried to just close my eyes and make him go away, but that didn’t work. Pulling the covers over my face, I peeked, and there were bloodshot eyes held open with toothpicks, his long hair all mussed and hanging down. He’d stuck the toothpicks between his nose and his lips distorting the visage into an unnatural face illuminated by his cigarette lighter. I wanted to scream but instead I froze.
Why did he do this causing me to feel such dread? Nothing was said, and he eventually left, closing the door behind him, leaving me in tears and shaking. Tiger was gone.
That is all I remember, and I don’t know how I fell asleep and just sheepishly accepted my life, my deep fear of entering that room alone.
I looked at him in the morning—his face so different then, when my dad asked me what I wanted for breakfast.

Text: (c) Serena Axel, 2010
Publication Date: 11-14-2010

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