I’ve been having a rough year, I’m an 18 year old. Who’s finally grasping and dealing with the struggles of how harsh life can truly be.
Jobs aren’t working out, close relationships seemingly becoming more and more complicated. Life as a whole, was becoming quite the bitch. It kept feeling like I was hitting new emotional lows
Now I don’t want to drag on, and on, about my life. I doubt that many people care about it. But I felt like it’d be nice to mention my low emotional state.
I’m really just writing this to help me calm down. Anything to distract me from what I am about to detail. I just need someone, anyone. To know this.
Maybe I can help someone. I truly hope so. I’m not much of a writer, but I’ll try my best to describe this fucking nightmare.
It was night, around eight. Dark, almost pitchblack. The glow of the microwave being the only source of light that barely lit up my cramped apartment.
I pressed the button before it beeped. The noise usually gave me headaches. I grabbed my cup of noodles and walked back to my room.
I was more than ready to dig into this delicacy. I’m not too proud to admit I’ve eaten more than a hundred times at this point. When I noticed the TV. Static.
I have an old-ass TV. Not any of the smart, or large ones frequent nowadays. It belonged to my mom, I recently got it a few months back. it’s just a noisemaker honestly. And I’m pretty sure it just plays the ad channels
But, I don’t mind that. It helps me stay focused while studying. Pure silence just creeps me the hell out anyways.
And plus I was too drained to bother with it. So, I slurped down on the cheap and comforting noodles. Once that was out of the way it was study time.
I turned on my lamp. And pulled out a few necessary items. Study soon began, my mind. In it’s tired and exhausted state trying it’s best to spit out anything.
Things were going surprisingly smoothly. Considering I decided to torture my brain before I eventually passed out. But then, something happened. That just caused me to be confused.
Probably because I couldn’t fully comprehend it. I still remember these words clearly. Jesus. Writing these words, explaining it all.
It makes me feel like I’m there again. . Hearing these words for the first time.
The noise of the comforting static was interrupted by a simple phrase.
“Do you want to see?”
When this was said. For a solid minute, I heard nothing. Not even the static. I was in silence.
I heard this crystal clear. Like a person snuck into my bed. And whispered it against my ear. At first I thought it was a hallucination, or my brain piecing together a strange sound.
I was trying to rationalize. I couldn’t deal with going crazy, everything in my life seemed rigged from the start. The last thing I needed was to be taking pills or some other shitty medication to deal with voices.
My father was addicted to diet pills. And they did little but make him a worse person. And my mother? Nearly the same way. So I don’t really like taking pills
After hearing the voice I just thought for a while. I don’t know how long it was exactly. Felt like five minutes. But eventually I shrugged it off. I needed to. I had more important things to do.
I didn’t want to spend the entire night worrying and panicking over what could just be an imaginary voice. So, I cleaned everything up, and put things back where they belonged.
In the morning, once I got done with my normal routine. My gut told me to do something, and I did it. I managed to fix the TV, and returned it to the regularly scheduled programming of boring old granny shit.
The next week was back to business as usual, nothing interesting to note.
That week, and two more days went by before the next oddity. .
It was a similar night like the previous one. I got something to eat, decided to try and wrap some things up before sleeping.
The TV wasn’t static this time. It was playing some jewelry nonsense. Again, I just liked the noise. I was stumped with studying this time, constantly trying again and again to make sense of anything. Studying was a no go tonight.
I turned my attention to the TV, paying attention to the programming for the first time in weeks. In an attempt to calm my brain down. Right when the man reached for the jewelry he was about to show to the curious woman. It went back to static.
Really? This again? I stared at the static.. I made something out. Something was behind the static.
The more I looked, and squinted my eyes. It was becoming clearer and clearer the mare I stared. . It appeared to be a woman. One that had a wide grin.
It was extremely difficult to make out. But she looked familiar to me. That’s probably what made me stare at it for so long.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the TV, the static, that sound. It seemed like it was getting louder and louder. But I needed to know who the woman was. Who was she? It was becoming clearer and clearer the more I looked. So I continued to stare. .
“Fall.” I heard. It was that same voice again, speaking in the same manner as last time. Feeling like I heard her right next to me once more.
At that moment. . An extreme wave of exhaustion and fatigue hit me. . I was becoming more and more drowsy, finding it a real struggle to keep my eyes open. .
Fear started clouding my mind rapidly. I heard my heart, everything wasn’t making sense. I tried to take my eyes off the TV. Desperately, I could feel the slightest movement. I tried, tried everything in my power to get my eyes to move. Nothing worked, fear and panic just intensifying. . I couldn’t move. Couldn’t change my gaze away from the TV. The image of the woman becoming more recognizable to me..
But I was frozen, stuck in place. My eyes were getting harder and harder to keep open. My heartbeat, it was beating so fast it felt like I just sat down after running several miles. This hell, in this hell. A second felt like an hour. The woman on the TV was becoming clearer and clearer every second. And then it hit me, the figure, the woman.
It was my mother.
“Why do you persist?” She spoke. Again, it sounded like the voice was whispered right in my ear. But this time it sounded as if it came from all directions.
“We can be happy.” She continued.
But, this voice. I know my mother’s voice, her sweet voice. Her caring voice. This. It wasn’t her. Something was pretending to be my mother..
This thought. The idea. It made most of my fear turn into anger. Pure anger. In that moment, all I could feel was anger. And maybe that was what released me from whatever the hell was keeping me trapped.
I could move. I could move again. So in a panicked dash, I rushed over to where the television was plugged in.
My heart sank. Fear consuming the anger, it felt like they were battling. The fear won over the anger. Spreading across my mind in a wave.
It wasn’t plugged in.
The TV. It wasn’t plugged in. Swears, and my poor attempts at making logical sense of the situation filled my head. I got it four months ago. FOUR DAMN MONTHS. Was it unplugged the entire time? My mind was a mess of disorganized thoughts and the worst things anyone could think in this situation.
This realization put me on the highest edge, I began to listen closely to everything. The breaths I took, the sound of branches banging against the glass window. I was afraid to move, afraid to do anything.
But, I took deep breaths, and after what felt like an eternity I gathered the courage to swiftly poke my head back up and stare at the TV.
It was now turned off, the lamp in the back of my room shining upon the TV. It allowed me to see my reflection. I had a wide grin on my face, just like my mother had. I stared intently at the screen, looking at my features. Looking at my eyes. Or, the lack of eyes. They were missing. . Bloody tears rolling down my face. This caused a reaction out of me to say the least. I freaked out, I really did. I delivered my fist to the TV so hard, it just shattered.
That was the end of it.
I tried to settle down, it was hard. I had no evidence of anything besides a broken TV.
Nobody would believe me even if I did tell them, I don’t even believe it myself. My mind keeps telling me I went crazy. It was the stress of the situation, my deadlines, my lack of sleep. So many possible reasons for seeing such things.
But. I’m not so sure.
Whenever I look in the mirror, whenever I’m not concentrating on my face. I see it. The same face. The same me I saw in the reflection of that TV.
Something is attached to me. I feel it.
If anything else happens, I’ll try to write it down.