I’ve never written this down before though several people know the story. I guess I never found the right forum - and I’m still not sure this is the right one. Was it a glitch, a haunting, or just an unexplained/unexplainable occurrence? In any case, here goes.
It was 1990 - before cell phones, email, internet…all the stuff we’re used to now. I was just out of high school and was taking some time off before starting college. I got a crappy job and a cheap sublet for six months and struck out on my own. A good friend of mine (we’ll refer to him as “Andy”) lived in the same town and we would hang out a lot. Of course, we were both dirt-poor (or at least didn’t have a lot of disposable income) so neither of us was paying for cable. The over-the-air reception at Andy’s place was slightly better than it was at mine so we would spend more time there than at my place.
It was in the fall, though I can’t remember if it was October or November. In any case it was cool outside, though not cold or stormy. Andy had stopped at my place on his way home from his job and we decided to pick up some fast food and go over to his place and watch TV and play cards - like most teenage single men without girlfriends or connections for beer might do. We dropped Andy’s car at his apartment and went out for dinner.
On the way back, the sky went…well, pink. I’ve never seen that particular shade either before or since. Where a typical sunset would fade from west to east, this was a uniform pink the entire way across the sky. I’ve seen similar skies after a significant storm, particularly in the winter, but never like this. Everything seemed to have an outline of haze and we actually pulled the car over to the side of the road to get out and look at the sky. It lasted for maybe ten minutes and then faded to a “normal” evening sky.
The weather may have had nothing to do with what happened next, but I included it because everything happened on the same day.
We settled in with Andy’s 13” black & white TV in the background and started playing gin rummy. Like I said, we were poor and single. So we’re chatting and playing and paying little attention to the television when it fades out. Those familiar with TV’s and getting your signals from an antenna will remember that your signal, if it wasn’t very strong, could fade in and out to be replaced by white noise, and this is pretty much what happened, except for the signal faded completely and the noise level went up by several decibels. It got loud, though not loud enough to prevent conversation - just loud enough to be an annoyance and distract us from our card game.
Andy looked up from his cards to the TV and paused in the act of getting up to adjust the set. “Lolly, does the TV look odd to you?”
That was a strange question to say the least and I curiously looked over my right should towards the table where the TV lived - except the TV and the table weren’t there. They were still in the room, but several feet further away than they should be, but not as if someone had moved them - as if the room was somehow larger than it was.
This was a very small apartment - combination living room, dining room, and kitchen, plus a bedroom and a bathroom. You could practically reach out and touch two walls, and rearranging the furniture wasn’t something you really could do even if you wanted to - at least not to the extent that a television that sat less than six feet away was suddenly ten feet away. We had been facing each other on either end of an old couch with the cards in the middle and Andy reach over and grabbed my wrist. “Look at the refrigerator!” A full-size fridge sat on the opposite wall from where we were in the “kitchen” but that wall had moved away from us. It seemed to have changed proportion as well because we could see the top of the fridge from the couch. Thinking I was going nuts or having some sort of fit, I asked Andy if he could see them as well. We went back and forth naming the things we saw - phone book, blue pen, green pencil, toy from a Happy Meal, etc. Had we been standing next to the unit, the top would have been at eye level for me, and three to four inches below that for Andy. In other words, there is simply no way for us to have seen what we saw from where we were, and yet we did. I remember feeling somewhat like I did when we stopped the car earlier - as if everything had a slight hazy glow around it. We looked around the now much larger room. I asked Andy if he thought we should leave. “Do you think we can?” he asked me, pointing at the door which should have been just shy of an arm’s length behind me and now wasn’t. We got up slowly and took too many steps to get to the door. I remember being terrified that it wouldn’t open but it did and a blast of cold autumn air hit me in the face. I looked behind me and I saw Andy resolutely looking forward as if denying everything in the room behind him. We ran (literally) into the driveway and jumped in my car. Everything outside seemed normal again. Steering wheel, gearshift, etc. all where they were supposed to be. I told Andy he hadn’t completely shut the door as I could see a crack of light on one side. “I did. I slammed it. Just go.” As I had no intention of going back and securing the door myself, we left.
Andy took the couch and I went to my room - only several feet away. We left the lights on and the TV off. I’m not sure either of us slept very much. We talked about it several times over the years and it’s starting to fade as most memories do. We’re older and I hope wiser than we were but neither of us has ever been able to come up with an explanation as to what happened that night. Andy claims nothing like that ever happened again, but he also found a new apartment shortly thereafter.
I’ll add, for the record, that neither of us were on anything - not even cold medicine. We had nothing out of the ordinary to eat or drink. The heating system and stove were electric so no gas leak could have been involved.
Submitted September 11, 2015 at 09:16PM by lolly_lolly_lolly http://ift.tt/1NtReov Glitch_in_the_Matrix
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