The MiddleRooms Part 4 - The Beginning Before the End

By Francesco Armada

Awake in my bed, I was sweating profusely. I knew that what I had seen in my “dream”- I say in quotation marks because I wasn't fully sure- was fictional, and no such thing could have even the slightest possibility of happening. I was so oblivious to what is now obvious. I had no idea why I was seeing these things and feeling what I felt. The most disturbing part might have been how I didn’t react until the moment I woke up.

When I did react, it was only from the powerful stench that whatever I saw was giving off. Attempting to shake it off as a horrible dream, I walked through the door, into the hallway, and down the spiral staircase. I turned right and then left to get to the dining room where my brothers, who are not dead, are playing Spider-Man on their newly set up PS4.

Father - who once again was not dead - was cooking some scrambled eggs. I went up to Father and looked him in the eyes just to double-check that they were normal, and that's when the paranoia kicked in. I had the urge to talk to Father about my dream and the book that I couldn’t find anymore. That was, until I noticed the look on Father’s face.

It was a stressed one, the look parents gave you when they were fed up with your shenanigans. My brothers got that same look multiple times with their ceaseless begging for anything they ever wanted. More often than not, they would get their way. This might seem like a bad trait to have; the persistence that lets them guile anyone into doing whatever they want.

This is not a good trait to have when you are a kid,-do not get me wrong, it's very annoying- but once you have grown, it is quite a different story. This later becomes a good bargaining tool for brokers or real estate agents. Alas, the truth is the following: Kids are the same reason why I do not want kids in the future, although that might change. Kids -especially young teens- are very smart. They will find flaws and exploit those same flaws. If you tell a teenager not to go onto the internet and turn your back, 9/10 odds say that they will rush to the nearest technology and access the internet just for the adrenaline. The truth is quite painful. The truth hurts, and that is the truth. 

The face Father was making was not normal, he looked pale. As if he had seen a ghost. When I asked him why he looked so stressed, he replied, “I saw Axle and Eric as corpses last night. You were there as well.

The worst part was my corpse moving in unison with me.” I commented saying that I had the same dream, but instead of Father moving, I was the one moving. A nervous Father asked,  “Should we ask Eric and Axle if they had the same dream?”.

I replied with a slight shake of the head. I didn't alarm my brother as they were playing peacefully, and I was hoping it would stay that way. Another reason why I believed that it was better to leave them alone is because if they did have the same dream-which is already extremely unlikely-then at the very least, Eric told Axel or vice versa, and then one of them would have told Father or me. All this was very stressful, even if I had not known what was to happen to me or my family.

I was still asking questions that only led to more questions with no answers available. This is when my life started its dizzying descent into hell. There was no way to go back to a normal life at this point. What still causes nightmares to this day sends shivers down the people who would pass the street where the mansion lay. The next day was my final day in the place I called home. It was also my final day when I could breathe and not still look over my shoulder.