All this happened over the summer of 1992, back when I was still 12. Ugh, that makes me sound old. Anyway, my dad had just gotten laid off because Bill Clinton was sending all our jobs overseas. As a result, I was sent to live with my uncle in rural Pennsylvania until my parents could afford to have a son again.
It was the loneliest summer of my life. My uncle worked all day and spent his nights at the bar, leaving me with no one but his dumpy old dog to keep me company. To make matters worse, my loneliness coincided with the confusion that comes with early adolescence: My voice was dropping, my armpit hair was beginning to sprout, and both of my testicles were growing in. The worst part was, I had no one to talk to about this, not even the dog, because she was a girl.
Nevertheless, I managed to make the best of this situation, filling my days by watching soap operas and eating sandwiches with wild abandon. Hell, before long, I got used to my solitude and even came to enjoy it. But on my second night there, things began to take a terrifying turn.
It started when I was awoken by the sound of my bedroom door creaking open at 3 in the morning. I got up to shut it, and I even locked it for good measure, but a few minutes later it creaked open again. Well, you can bet your sorry ass that I slept with the lights on for the rest of that night.
The next day, when I was in the bathroom (and no, I wasn’t sitting on the toilet – I was merely getting out of the shower), I was jolted by what sounded like a pair of angry fists pounding on the door as I watched the doorknob twist back and forth. This went on for nearly 5 seconds, which in the moment felt like an eternity, although in retrospect it wasn’t.
After that, things soon escalated to the point where it became commonplace for doors to slam shut behind me -- or even worse -- open just as I was reaching for the doorknob. I’m no scientist, but it seemed to me that every type of door in the house was possessed. When I walked into the kitchen, the refrigerator would casually pop open, and the cabinet doors violently fluttered as if greeting me with sarcastic wooden applause.
At that point, I was terrified. But suddenly I remembered that for all my uncle’s faults, he was still a card-carrying member of the NRA. I summoned enough courage to haul my ass upstairs and open his gun case, which he always kept unlocked in case of emergencies. And then I began the simple task of sending the doors’ evil spirits straight back to Hell.
From the basement to the attic, I exercised my constitutional right to put a bullet through anything that could possibly be considered a door. I tore the cabinets a new one. I showed no mercy on the fridge. I took out the washer and dryer, and I even blew a hole through my uncle’s vintage collection of Doors albums. When my uncle finally came home that night, he took one good look at the damage done to his place and nearly shit his sweatpants.
“What the fuck did you do to my doors?! Them were good doors!!!"
But the thing was, they weren’t good doors. And once I explained what I’d been through over the past three days, he immediately changed his tune.
“Well, shit. You may have ruined my home, but you also had the balls to Stand. Your. Ground. I’m proud of you, boy!“
And at that, my uncle swept me up in his arms and held me against his warm bosom as we laughed and cried for hours without shame.
Submitted September 11, 2016 at 04:25AM by KennyEmmy http://ift.tt/2czTjl6 nosleep
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