Night games nosleep

My mother liked to play games with us when we were small children. They were unusual games; games we played only when my father was at work, and it was just the three of us in our cramped apartment. I didn’t like these games at all; they were nothing short of terrifying. They started at night, when she was tired, and made us all scramble into the big bed at the edge of the apartment. When I look back on it now, this event seemed to coincide with primetime television. Time slots that aired shows she enjoyed making us watch: The X-Files, The Outer Limits, and documentary specials on serial killers.

My brother and I did have our own room, but my mother insisted that we sleep in the big bed with her during our nights alone. To most small children, this would have been a comfort, but for us it was a sinking dread that gouged its way through our chests. Once we were in the big bed we could see across almost the entire apartment except for the tiny once-nursery that we claimed now as our bedroom. That room was adjoined to the presumptive master, the only other room in the entire apartment with a door except for the bathroom. At the opposite end from the supposed master bedroom was the kitchen, the apartment door, and beyond a dividing wall that jutted out behind the cabinets, the door to the bathroom.

I imagine now, as an adult, that this floorplan was ridiculously tiny. After living in several different apartments, the area could not have been much bigger than seven hundred square feet. But to a five year old, it was an expansive place with locations that remained uncharted. And at night, when the lights were turned off, the apartment appeared to stretch on for miles. But, the lights were not turned off until our mother told us to do so.

That is exactly how the first game started, “Who is going to turn off the lights?” she would ask. “Is it going to be John or Michael?” We both would shake our heads and cling to the sheets, edging toward the corner of the room the bed was pushed into.

“Come on,” she would laugh. “Which one of you is braver? Let’s see who the braver one is: is it John or Michael? What are you, afraid of the dark?”

One time Michael went instead of me. My mother howled with laughter as he bolted across the carpet toward the kitchen light. I chuckled along with her, starting to find the humor in my brother’s erratic cries as he lept up to reach the light switches.

“Why are you laughing?” my mother asked me. “Your brother is braver than you and he’s a year younger! Aren’t you supposed to be the man of the house when your father isn’t around?”

I quieted and hung my head in shame. Michael found himself relishing in pride that night, and I marinated in jealousy.

“Ooohh, wow, you’re my brave little boy,” she said, stroking his hair.

Another time, I noticed she had left the door unlocked.

“Mommy, mommy, the door! You didn’t lock it,” I cried. It hung open, just barely, with a small enough crack I could see the dark shadows of the entrance creeping through.

“So? Lock it!” She did not move or break eye contact with the television.

I obliged, with fumbling hands, recognizing the necessity of the situation, but still uncertain if something, anything, would suddenly push against from the other side, attempting to get through. I succeeded in doing both the lower locks, and because I could reach them, every time the door was unlocked once my mother was in the bed, she volunteered me for the job.

For a little while this choice worked well to pit us against each other, each of us vying to prove to our mother our fearlessness and to avoid being mocked. There was however, an instance where I asked my little brother to help me. We ran together holding hands, me half dragging him as he struggled to keep pace. We realized aside from none of us going, this was the more preferable option. In the back of my mind I thought, if something did dwell in the darkness, there was now only half a chance of being taken by it whereas before when we were each alone, it was certain. My mother didn’t like this though; if we felt safer, she got less enjoyment.

“No, you can’t take your brother,” she she said. “You have to go alone, it’s against the rules.”

“No,” we would cry, defiant.

“If one of you doesn’t go, and just one of you, then you both get the belt!” she snapped. And so we were forced to return to the old game. We reverted to turning on every light switch we passed in order to avoid walking behind the dividing wall all alone without any light to guide us. That is, at least, until this strategy also was against the rules.

I sympathized with the prey animals from nature documentaries. Baby antelopes with shaking legs too stiff to move forward and too inexperienced to make any other decision than remaining motionless. As if they stood still for long enough in the center of the field they could avoid having their throats torn out, but instead wound up with just a little more time tacked on to their lives.

I thought of myself as the antelope when she chose me. That within the darkness lurked a lioness, but if I ran fast enough I would avoid it, beating it at its hunt. Every time I climbed into the bed I claimed a small victory for myself. This was short lived, however, for whenever my mother brought food into the bed, she would make us take it back to the kitchen.

The second game happened after she turned the television off. The apartment was quiet, only broken by the creaking age of the building settling into itself. She would take the time to tell us her version of stories of alien abductions and monsters that would drag you into the sewers and people with the red eyes of satan. Of course, all of this was real and pulled from her own childhood.

When she was done she would say, “Now let’s see who can fall asleep the fastest. Now that is the one of you who is the bravest!” I’m still in awe as to how we never wet the bed. I’m sure if we had, maybe she would have reconsidered her little games. Instead she kept prodding at us every ten minutes as we tried to vanquish the images of aliens slicing us open while we were conscious or being eaten alive by creatures that slithered in the night.

“John, John, are you awake?” She would ask directly into my ear. If I admitted that I was, she waited quietly in the dark and then shook me violently giving out her best impression of a monster roar. At first I wept in terror, clawing back at my surprise enemy. It never worked, she always had the upper hand, and she found it hilarious.

“You're a little wimp,” she would lay back. “A little wimpy wimp.”

As this went on, I became annoyed, and decided to feign sleep. She snuffed out my acting right away, and I received more belittlement.

“You're a liar!” She constantly accused. “Nothing but a little liar!”

There was a night when the news was on, and all three of us were awake, trying to generate interest. Suddenly I felt a bit of a jump from behind me, and I looked behind myself to see my startled mother raise her head.

“Steve?” she asked. There was a long pause. “Steve, is that you? This isn’t funny.” She propped herself up, slowly inching back, bunching up the sheets and making the space evident between us. She faced the kitchen, mouth agape as if she didn’t quite comprehend the situation, but not entirely terrified or confused.

“Steve,” she started to laugh. “Are you, are you home early? They sent you home five hours..?” It was a nervous laugh, fading into small broken pauses that slowly evaporated into silence. It was different from the way she laughed at us, in fact, what I saw in her, was exactly how I felt, exactly how the antelopes on television looked.

Across the darkness, the apartment door was slightly ajar, reverberating a bit as if a small breeze was causing it to creak back and forth just a centimeter. Someone was there, though. Right next to the door loomed a large dark figure. It was what it looked like when my father came home at night, opaque and blocking the filtered view of the refrigerator. The shadow was taller than my father, broader too. If it was a person it-he-it said nothing. It didn’t even move. It stood there silent, perhaps it was facing us, or perhaps its back was to us. In the darkness at our angle, we could not tell.

“Daddy?” I asked. Nothing. No movement, no words.

“John, Michael, go see if it’s Daddy,” she whispered to us.

“No,” I whimpered. I began to roll back into her, but she pushed me forward. Michael attempted the same with no results. His little face contorted to match my mother's expression.

“John,” she hissed at me, “Go to Daddy. It’s Daddy, you need to go to him and ask him why he’s mad at me.”

I said nothing. I barely breathed. I didn't believe that was my father. My father would immediately say something, rush to see if we were awake, and above all else, turn the lights on. He would never stay still under the cover of darkness for this long. The sinking feeling I had every time she made me turn off the lights made my arms heavy and weak as if I was unable to move, praying, hoping that maybe there was the small chance this was my father. That maybe he would start laughing, turn on the lights, and shout, “Boo!”

There was still no movement from the kitchen. My heart dropped.

“No,” I whispered.

“I said it's Daddy,” she said. I didn’t answer.

No one spoke a word. We didn't take our eyes off the shadow for as long as it remained there, and I lost track of the commercials playing in the background.

“Michael, go to Daddy,”she ordered. Michael did nothing. He paled in the silver white luminescence, hugging a crumpled blanket.

The figure moved towards the door.

Good. Go away, I thought. Go away, go away. Don’t move closer.

We heard no footsteps, no scuffing, no words. It just moved backwards, almost maybe if I looked hard enough, with some sort of gait; one side half of its lower portion disappearing and then reappearing with each bit it moved. When it disappeared into the hallway, the door slowly followed along with it until it just hung open just a little bit.

“You forgot to lock the door for me,” my mother growled. She kicked me off the bed with her shin. I landed on my hands and knees at the foot of the bed. I sprung up, bouncing up onto my feet, rushing at a blanket which sprawled onto the floor.

She grabbed the blanket up, and pushed me down onto my butt. “You’re not allowed up on the bed until you lock the door, now go. I said, go. Or else you get the belt.”

I didn’t know whether or not to try the bed again or to keep my eyes on the kitchen. The feeling inside when something out there was watching me wrenched my insides. My face was wet, my lips were trembling, and I was threatening to cry. Standing there, cut off from the safety of my my mother I realized there was only one way she was going to let me back on the bed. I took one step forward.

There was no sound, and no movement from the kitchen. I shuffled forward toward the light switch located in the center room. I held my breath watching the shadows from the blinds dance across the walls. They sprung forward from the breeze only to be sucked back in with clacking. The noises chipped away at my nerves, and my hands started to shake. My whole body was shaking when I reached the light switch, close enough to the door that whatever was out there could get me before I could scramble away.

I swung over the other side of the wall to grasp at the other light switch. There was the apartment door, in the dirty fluorescent light. It was almost as though I could hear the light in the background, whining louder than the refrigerator. I crept toward the door, the chills that ran through my body making it hard to breathe, and the tears streamed harder down my face. I was going to die. The reality of the situation doomed on me. I was walking to my death. My unknown death where I faced horrible tortures.

I slammed my body into the door, pushing my entire weight into it. I felt something jostle forward much like a person had been waiting on the other side. As quick as my clumsy hands could muster I flipped the lock screaming internally at the tremors slowing me down. When I had successfully locked the lower locks, I stepped back away from the door.

The door knob turned. It was slow and paced, but it turned. I watched it with wide eyes, unable to speak at this point, nearly frozen solid until I bumped into the kitchen table. An impulsive notion that something was grabbing me from under the table rushed into my head, and I screamed.

That’s when the pounding started. It was a deep thudding all across the door. RUN, RUN, I thought, and visions of the antelope flashed through my mind. It was coming. This was it. This was my death. I ran screaming straight into the bed without turning the lights off. I buried myself under several blankets, still suffering from a pounding heart and relentless tremors. By the time I reached the bed, the noises stopped.

For the first time in my memories my mother finally rushed to the phone terrified, and called the cops.

“OH MY GOD. OH MY GOD. OH MY GOD. WE ARE GOING TO ALL DIE, DO YOU HEAR THAT?!” she screamed the whole time, her shouts continuing well after the noises subsided.

When the cops arrived, they found no evidence of a break in. The building door was locked securely and there were no other tenants. Even the roof was empty. My father was proven to be at work the entire time.

That was the last night my mother played her little games with us while living there.

Submitted August 05, 2016 at 06:21AM by Colonialchelonia http://ift.tt/2aEnoNR nosleep