The MiddleRooms Part 3

By Francesco Armada

Chapter 3 

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Trauma 

I remember waking up the next morning in a sweat. I have not woken up in such a frenzy for quite some time. I was never the type of person to get nightmares. I would hear about how scary they were and how some can symbolize your worst fears. They say that the grass is always greener on the other side, but I’ve enjoyed my lack of traumatic experiences. So waking up dripping in sweat was a different experience. I supposed this was what it was like to wake up from a nightmare. I slowly got up out of bed, attempting to process what had happened to me after finding that book. 

“That book!”

I remembered that the last moment in my memory before waking up was standing with a book. I frantically ripped my sheets off the bed, trying to find the book that I had vaguely remembered standing with. I tried to remember where I had been when I passed out.

“The door!”

I ran out of my room, passing by Father’s room. I almost tripped over what was probably a knot in the carpeting. I had been running as fast as I could when I stopped. Out of breath, I asked myself.

“Just how big is this mansion!?”

The back of my mind seemed to answer the question, I was looping. I had seen in movies how people go down hallways and the same room passes them multiple times. It’s a movie trope, obviously, and I would always wonder how someone wouldn’t notice until whatever entity had grabbed them, leaving you, the viewer, in suspense. It was repetitive and quite annoying. Yet I found myself coming to that same conclusion. I finally caught my breath, and  I began running again. This time, I noticed that in the 30 seconds that I would run, I would pass Father’s door 4 times. I opened the door to Father’s room, but he was nowhere to be seen. Realizing that I had not checked to see if my brothers were in the room with me when I woke up, I walked backward. The reason is that if I run, I might just get caught in a loop again. So to avoid that, I walk very slowly. As I walked, the thoughts that would plague my mind when I panicked started forming like a fungus on the back of a tree. 

“Were my brothers in the room when I woke up?”

“What time had it been when I woke up, and what time was it now?”

“If Father’s room is empty, and I’m looping, what is happening to my brothers… and Father?”

I walk into my room to a sight that would bring a grown man to his knees. Something that no thirteen-year-old boy should ever see. It was only for a split second, and I didn’t even react at first. I walk into the room and smell for less than half a second:

“BLOOD”

The powerful stench was horrific, invading my lungs like a fleet of bombarding ships. In the split second that it was there… were the corpses of my brothers, Father, and what worried me most of all, the corpse that seemed the worst out of all of them, myself. Rotted and decaying was a corpse that moved along with me. It was like a mirror, as if to move in unison with me and foretell a future I was not yet aware of. Just like that, they were gone, but the smell still lingered in my nostrils like the fallout of a nuclear attack. I finally awoke and realized that it was all a dream.