DARK PARADISE ━━ short story

2

That night I woke up at exactly 3:00am from a terrible nightmare. I layed wide eyed in my sheets, coated in sweat. My throat felt dry, like I had been screaming, so I crept over to the kitchen. As I drank from my glass in the dark silence, I was startled by a creaking noise, coming from the laundry room.

The door slowly crept open on its own, and I stared in horror. Slowly I stepped into the room, turning the small lamp on. It looked just as it usually did, but suddenly, both the dryer and the washer started to rumble loudly, and I dropped the glass from my hand. It shattered onto my bare feet, and I cuss under my breath. Blood oozed from my flesh and the burning pain seared.

I limped over to the bathroom, rinsed my foot in the sink, and tugged shards of glass from my own toes. I began seeing stars when I finally finished bandaging my foot. I went back to the laundry room to clean the broken glass and blood off the floor, but they are both not there. The tiles were spotless, and the machines continued to roar.

Confused, I turned off the machines and went back to my bedroom. I bit my nails, taking a seat on the edge of the mattress. I will have to be awake in less than two hours for work, and I knew I would not be able to fall back asleep, so I laid in bed with my notepad and a pen. Still stuck with writer’s block, I decided to start writing about my nightmare I just had.

The pain in my foot never ceased so I took some pain relief, and when the alarm clock rang, I started my routine by taking a shower.

While in the middle of my shower, the lights went out and the water became immensely cold. The power must have gone out, so I scrambled out of the shower, shivering, and wrapped a towel around me. I searched for a lighter in a drawer, and then lit a candle stick on the sink counter. I looked up at myself in the mirror, and my entire body froze when I saw a pair of eyes and lips hiding in the shadow behind my shoulder. My eyes were wide, staring into its eyes in the mirror, and my heart pounded heavily in my chest. I wanted to scream, and my mouth was wide open but no sounds were able to come from my throat.

Suddenly the pair of lips from behind blew out the candle in my hand, and I gasped, running out of the bathroom in my towel.

I ran to my room, closing the door and putting a chair in front of it. Shaking, I dial 911 on my flip phone.

“911, what is your emergency?”

“There’s someone in my apartment,” I whispered.

“What is the address?”

“444 Southeast 7th Avenue, apartment number 33.”

“Is the person armed?”

“I don’t know.” I brought my knees to my chest, trembling in my wet towel.

“We are on our way.” They hung up.
I sat on the floor for what felt like an eternity. The entire apartment was so silent, it was almost deafening. Then there was a pounding on the front door. I jumped to my feet. The door broke open. It was the police. They searched every room in the apartment and then came into my room. They said they could not find anyone.

“Are you sure? Did you check the bathroom?” I said, voice raspy.
The policeman nodded. He said there was no sign of anyone breaking in either, and then even turned on the light in the bathroom. He then left quicker than he had arrived, so I slowly finished getting dressed.

I got to work late, which was unusual for me, so people were surprised I had not died. Although I did look dead after all that happened that morning. I hoped no one noticed my small limp.
The days and weeks to come had been replete of these sorts of ordeals: rotten dreams, eerie hallucinations, haunting phantoms, and uncanny illusions. Nightmares led to insomnia; fear led to paranoia. And after every calamity, I would record them in my journal.

One day, my boss woke me up when I had fallen asleep on my desk. She threatened to replace me if I would not get any work done. She demanded that I stay later that night in order to write some more. I insisted I could not, but was unable to give a reasonable excuse. Well the real reason is because I was afraid. After what had happened that one night I stayed late, I never wanted to stay late again. I had adopted a fear of darkness, and carried multiple flashlights in my purse with me. I begged her, telling her I would write at home, but not here. She did not listen, and as soon as I was alone in the office, my computer stopped working. The screen turned all gray with static, and I began hearing things. Doors opened on their own and objects moved along the desks. I thought I must have been going insane, so I left immediately, leaving everything behind.

The morning after that, I returned back to work and found that my boss had taken my journal from my desk and read through it.

“People are really liking it,” she said, when I found out she had published my passage without permission. “You have not been writing anything; it looks like you finally got through your writer’s block. Although this does not seem to be your usual writing style, I like it.”

I was speechless. And irritated.

“Do not be upset,” she said. “I have already received plenty of emails about it. People seem to like this sort of short horror story. You should be happy, this could be your breakthrough.”

Horror story? She had to be joking — turning my personal experience into a horror story!

“It is not a story,” I told her finally. By her confused expression, I explained: “It’s my journal. I write about myself in there — like a diary.” She still did not understand. “Those are my dreams and my, um, hallucinations.” When I said it out loud, I realized how stupid I sounded.

My boss looked at me with a strange expression. “Well, if that is true, then maybe you should talk to someone about it,” she suggested.

I swallowed. “Not hallucinations,” I clarified, “they’re more like . . . episodes.” I did not want my boss to think I was on drugs.

The truth is, I did not know what was going on with me. Everything was very real and I did not believe they were hallucinations or episodes, it was the only way of explaining it, because no one would believe me if I told them that I was being haunted by phantoms. And it wasn’t as if my apartment was haunted, or the office, because it — whatever it was — followed me everywhere I went. And it could not have been my mind playing tricks on me; it just seemed too real.