[Set of Rules/ROH] A Set of Guidebooks || Oneshots

Some strange events start occurring in my neighborhood.

I live in a small neighborhood in the outskirts of a city, it's not very noisy and the people there are quite friendly. Actually my family moved here several years ago due to the distance from my school, and there might be some other reasons that led to my parents' decision. I'm not the one to complain anyway, besides there's nothing to complain about. It's just that, sometimes one of the neighbors would party the whole night, with their colorful lighting on their porch and all, but that's not enough to disturb my sleep. I used to go to bed on time, and I've been a very heavy sleeper, unless someone opens the bedroom door so hard it's loud enough to wake me up.

Well, at that time there's nothing out of the ordinary at all, nice people, nice pet dogs barking at me over the fence, nice everything. I was still a kid at that time, still studying in primary school. It was until very late years that I started staying up late to play games past my bedtime. Still, there was nothing else besides peaceful nights. I moved back to sleeping with my mom and my brother when I was in grade 9 because we're saving electricity bills. The third AC in the house won't be used unless necessary. I started coming downstairs to do late night activities then, from drawings to playing games, busted several times but being persistent I still kept coming down at night after days had passed from the day I got caught.

Now I'm getting into college soon and might have to leave this neighborhood for several reasons, that's when.. things aren't right.

Recently I just noticed that one of the neighbors' porch lights are capable of changing colors. Maybe they changed the bulb? Has it ever happened before? I never noticed them until I came home that one night and noticed both the lights being pink and purple, which is out of the ordinary since I recall them being orange warm lights. I gave it no attention. Few days later all the lights on their porch were still orange, but one of them gave out a slightly different hue.. almost red. I was a little concerned but tried not to think much about it. But my inner paranoia, the anxieties started to feed up on me when my father told us that they'll need to leave the front door light and the bathroom light open. To be honest, it sounded ridiculous at first because it would be a waste of energy, but then I started to get more unsettled the more I thought of it.

That didn't stop me from coming downstairs at night, I have nothing better to do at night, trying to sleep had become my problem since the start of high school — so I decided to benefit from it instead. I often stayed in the room across from the kitchen, and the room is slightly across from the stairs. There's a fridge inside the room, convenient? I think so, but not when I'm on a diet. I always sit at the table facing away from the glass door behind me, because this way I'll be able to see the stairways from where I'm seated. Then again, being an anxious freak I am, I always draw the curtains closed before seating myself and get to my business. You know.. when I get paranoid, I write. A LOT actually, it calms me down. But this time it's totally different. I will not mention what I saw that night.

I've decided to remind myself of what to do and what not. I have observed, examined, EVERYTHING I have to do to avoid bringing myself into that situation again.

1. Keep the front door and bathroom lights on. If any of them go out, immediately shut the door to the room and lock it. Be quick, but quiet. I won't risk waking up my parents too.

2. Remember about the neighbor's lights I mentioned earlier? Good. There have been just three occurrences with them so far;

• If the lights are orange, warm light. Everything should be fine for the whole night.

• If one of the lights is red, or ALMOST red, things haven't gone south, at least that's what I assume. Stay vigilant, things will certainly occur, we just don't know when.

• If the lights are pink and purple, I.. don't know about this one. It only happened once and nothing had happened. Maybe because I didn't go downstairs that night. Who knows?

3. The lights on neighbor's porch won't change for the whole night. But if at any point I see the colors changed, I will better off go to sleep and leave things undone.

4. I should not under any circumstances leave the curtains open for a long time, and they should be completely closed. No gaps, at all. If I happen to notice it after sleep time, immediately refer to rule 7.

5. If at some point I start growing hungry, take a bar of chocolate from the fridge. If there's no chocolate bars, just take a gulp of water. It will suffice eventually. I must not take more than one bar per night, else my father will know.

6. I sometime hear noises, it is high-pitched, similar to a laugh. Actually I've heard this before the strange events occur. It is likely harmless I assume. Either I respond to it or not, nothing will happen.

7. If I felt like being watched, or maybe it was just some gut feeling. I might have screwed the curtain part. Turn off the lights and move out of the room, maybe seat myself at the living room instead (with a chance of being caught because there's a CCTV camera facing the living room), or I could seat myself at the stairs. There would be some light from the bathroom to help with seeing.

7.1. If one of the lights (front door or bathroom) go out at this point, GO TO SLEEP. Move fast and quiet, I should be upstairs before roughly 20 seconds passed. How did I know this? I was upstairs about to open the bedroom door when the bathroom light went off, then I heard something shuffling, knocking the contents I assumed on the shelf in front of the mirror into the sink. I kept quiet and turned the doorknob as silently as I could and pretend nothing happened, went to sleep with my earphones still sticking in my ears. Pure luck. Pure luck..

That's all the stuffs as I remember, I still keep my habit of going downstairs at night nonetheless. I could have stayed in the bedroom, but my mom and brother will be disturbed so I tend to go somewhere else instead. Besides, I can't predict when my father will come out of his room at night. If I'm downstairs, I could come up with more excuses, you know?

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PS. I posted this on Reddit a day ago, and this is inspired from my own neighborhood. I had fun writing this, and I do hope that you'll enjoy reading this too.