I n d o м ι т a в l e

(26)

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"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

― Eleanor Roosevelt

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{Chapter: 26}

Unedited ✖

{ A S P E N M O N T G O M E R Y }

A soft breeze blows over the side of my face causing a flyaway hair to land on my cheek, tickling my nose.

My eyes flutter open slowly, my gaze blurry as they try to concentrate through the darkness, barely able to make out a few blurry shapes. For a moment everything feels normal. The temperature is normal, the sheets beneath me are soft and cocooned around my body like a second skin while the pillow under my head creates a perfect cushion.

I'm laying on my stomach, one hand resting above my head while the other is splayed out across the mattress a few inches from my body. As my vision clears and begins focusing, everything rushes back to me and the comfortable temperature suddenly drops to a terrifying degree.

I spring from my laying position, my back popping at the sudden notion making me groan in slight pain. I don't pause to stretch out my sore and aching muscles, my vision going in and out for a seconds in response to my sitting up too fast.

As my sight returns and I roughly rub the sleep from my eyes, I take note that the room was not the comfortable place I thought it to be.

The walls are a lifeless gray color and made out of solid concrete with a small window perched ten feet above me casting queer shadows against the dreary room. Bug remains are scattered in the corners along with mouse droppings, a sign this room mustn't have been used for some time. Dirt and grime cover the ceilings, cobwebs dripping from the open crevices of the cracked concrete like morning dew.

A single light bulb hangs from the dreary ceiling by a thin cord but it gives off no light. The dirty floor beneath it has multiple dark spots, stained with an unknown source and I figure I'd probably rather not know how it got there, and if not for the thin, jagged lines creating a rectangular shape on the wall farthest away from me with two hinges above and below, I'd never know there was a way out of this haunting room.

I draw in a ragged breath, my heart thundering against my chest and bursting throughout my eardrums, almost as if the sound was bouncing off the uncared walls and back into my ears.

I press my body against the wall, the cool surface igniting shivers to ripple down my back.

Where am I? I think in panic, question after question zooming through my mind at a rapid pace as my breathing hitches. The last memory I can recall was me hitting the ground before everything went dark, my mind a bleak desert full of unanswered questions.

I let out a scream whenever a shadow begins crawling over me, sporting eight furry legs and twelve beady eyes. I fight to throw the creature off of me, lunging off the small bed and running to the opposite side of the room, the frosty floor causing a chill to run through me.

I frantically turn around and begin searching for the cursed spider, shivering in disgust. The creature is nowhere in sight but I continue to press myself further away from the bed, still not believing its safe, my eyes darting back and forth, under and over and then repeating. 

I breath out a sigh of relief after a few minutes, accepting that it was only my imagination. That is until another shadow begins crawling over my toe.