( Operation Strike-out! )Day 11 → A photo of you taken recently
Day 12 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 13 → A fictional book
Day 14 → A non-fictional book
Day 15 → A fanfic
Day 16 → A song that makes you cry (or nearly)
Day 17 → An art piece (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.)
Day 18 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 19 → A talent of yours
Day 20 → A hobby of yours( And the rest of the month ... )
My plan in posting everyday has been foiled, thanks to those no-goodniks at streamyx. I was online for about 20 minutes yesterday, until I got disconnected for no apparent reason. Since then, I haven't been able to reconnect. Router spits out my long-lost friend, Error 678, whenever I reconnect, so it'll be another two more frickin' weeks or so - as per previous experiences - before I can get back my Internet access at home. What utter fucking shit. Thanks a lot, streamyx, for ruining my holidays!
In the meantime, while I continue to curse this blasted ISP of mine, have some
Sway.
The parental units don’t believe it; to them, haunted houses exist as bargains, because realtors want to offload them as soon as possible, since no one wants to risk living in a house that’s turned up dead tenants, even if “there’s no such thing as ghosts”. But I do believe, and I have ever since I did some prompt research online on our new house’s past, after they came home and told us we were moving into a place that seemed to make its former owners tear up the deed even before the dust could settle.
God bless Google.
Apparently, the last time this house had a permanent occupant was in 1932. He lived here for more than a decade, but no one knows who he was. People do know, however, that he was murdered in 1944 … in this house. In the living room, to be exact. But that was the extent of their knowledge. No one knew who killed him and why, because people then were more occupied with the advent of the end of the Second World War than the death of some man. But whoever he was, he did leave an impact the police would have never expected: after his death, no one lived in this house for long, never lasting more than a couple of weeks before calling it quits. The former residents reported some real messed-up stuff, like furniture moving around on their own accord (which happens with me too, sometimes), disembodied wailing, and the sound of hurried footsteps, sometimes punctuated with a (male) scream and a gunshot, all occurring in the dead of the night.
It comes as no surprise then, that the longest someone’s lasted in this house, besides that man, was two months – about three decades ago. That same person was the house’s last tenant until we came along, thinking it was the most awesome deal ever since Dad found that place that sells his favourite kind of pants for a fraction of the usual price it was selling for at departmental stores. In fact, Mom told us he cried like how he did when he found that store, after the sales agent told him the price of the house, which its woeful past drove to the bottom of the barrel. (I think it even created a hole in that barrel, so it could penetrate the ground if it continued diving.) I was both amazed and terrified at the same time when she related that to us.
I find it so ironic that he haunts me, the one who believes he exists, instead of the others who don’t. And it sucks, because I happen to be afraid of ghosts. I hate them. I can’t stand sleeping in absolute darkness, whether or not I’m alone; I have a nightlight, where turning it on every night has become as natural as breathing to me. And now that I have to sleep alone, since this house has more bedrooms than our previous one, and Charlotte, the sister with whom I shared a room then, forbade me to continue bunking with her because of the nightlight thing (“I can’t sleep with that thing blinding me the entire night!”), I make our dog, Lola sleep with me. Dogs can sense spooks, after all.
I also avoid horror films about ghosts like the plague. Give me gratuitous violence over longhaired women in white and evil children any day, please!
Speaking of which, maybe I should watch one later to help me relax. I mean, nothing sounds more calming than watching a movie about people being disembowelled, with a bowl of popcorn in one hand and a pillow in the other, and feet tucked under Lola’s immense fur.
I did a mental checklist of the slasher flicks that we own as I put the cap back on the bottle of moisturiser and return it to its rightful place on the shelf beside the mirror. There was
Hostel,
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,
Scream and its sequels,
Saw …
I am interrupted, however, when I feel fingers brush against my neck.
Cold fingers.
I scream; it comes out as a short burst of voice from my lips. I almost drop the moisturiser (which bottle is made of glass!), but I decompress and chuck it on the shelf without a moment’s hesitation.
I hear a “Honey, what’s wrong?” from downstairs. It’s Mom. Despite the fact that the door is closed, and I uttered a mere yelp earlier, she still has a good pair of ears on her.
“Nothing! It’s just a spider,” I shout back. I also hope that voicing out the less eerie alternative would make it true.
But the other face I see in the mirror, with its lips drawn into a smirk, shits all over that bit of optimism.
It’s him.
Tags: / 30-day challenge, tech, writing
Current Mood: 
aggravated
Current Music: Maroon 5 - Sweetest Goodbye
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