Under the Rug

Under the Rug

Harris Burdick

Under the Rug

It was a cold winter afternoon and I had just gotten off from work and was heading home. Snowflakes descended from the sky and settled on the ground, where much snow had already piled up.

I sighed and a white cloud of my breath escaped out. I grinned to myself as the puff slowly disappeared and vanished into the thin air. I strolled down the sidewalk and glanced around. Children laughed happily as they slid down on sleds on top of the fresh snow that was falling to the earth. I smiled again. In a few months, Margaret and I would have our first child and I would be taking my son here to the park.

I walked down the street with snow crunching beneath my shoes. As I reached our moderately sized house, I noticed something peculiar. The window was wide open and something was burning.

I hurried inside, but luckily, there was no fire yet, just smoke. I called out to my wife, but heard no reply. I dashed into the kitchen where a pot of soup was burning, along with the bread in the oven. I quickly turned the appliances off and carefully opened the stove so the smoke would leak out.

Perhaps Margaret had been outside, tending to the plants and had forgotten to turn the stove off. Yes, that was probably it. Hope still lingered in me, but in my heart, I knew that something terrible had happened to her. I rushed outside, waving some smoke away. I called out to her, but heard no reply. I dashed around, in hope to know that she just hadn’t heard me. But still, I couldn’t find her.

Around the house I went, turning the couch in the living room over, kicking around the messy laundry had forgotten to pick up the day before, but still, there was no sign of her. My palms began to sweat, I began to shake, but still, a slight trace of hope lay inside me.  Alas, I reached the living room.  

It was the last place I had expected her to be. I wept buckets of tears at the horrendous sight. Who could have done this to her?

“No,” I choked out. “Margo, no!” I had used the familiar nickname before, but strangely, it now felt foreign to my tongue.

There laid my wife in a pool of blood. She was clutching a knife and her eyes were dull and emotionless. Oddly, there were many open, ripped, slits in the carpet. But I pushed that thought away and hurried next to Margaret and cried.

It had been two weeks after Margaret’s death, and I still wasn’t used to it. Every now and then, I would call out to her, only a few seconds later to realize my mistake. Sometimes, I would be walking around the house, suddenly to burst out into tears and fall to the ground. Margaret’s death had scarred me for life.

It was almost midnight when I had settled down into the living room with a nice book in my hands. Stars twinkled brightly outside in the night sky. The fire lit the room enough for me to read and kept me warm and cozy. But before I could start, I noticed something strange. There was an odd bump, I should say, in the middle of the room. But I ignored it; after all, I could be just hallucinating. I had done that yesterday, seeing my wife up and around the house. Every now and then though, I would peel my eyes off the book, and stare at the bump. But before I could process anything I fell into a deep sleep.

Two weeks passed and it happened again.  I was simply crossing the living room to close the window and I tripped and fell face flat. At first I had thought nothing wrong about this. I was still upset and lonely since Margaret’s death, and since, I became very clumsy. Just last week, I had tipped over a vase with dry soil and a dead flower and I had also knocked into the wall a few times, causing pictures hanging on the wall of me and Margaret to fall and shatter. So of course, I had thought that I had merely tripped over my own feet and continued to walk. But on my way back to the kitchen, I tripped again. 

Well, this time, I got up, brushing my pants, and looked at the object. It was the strange bump again. I didn’t think I was hallucinating again, no, this bump was real. I thought a moment. What should I do? I cautiously stepped closer to the strange bulge in the rug. I lifted my leg up and sent it smashing against the carpet. But my foot met the soft carpet and I frowned. The bump and just moved aside a few inches and dodged my foot. I used my other foot to step on it again. The bump did the exact same thing.

Ten minutes passed with the war with the strange bump. I repeatedly attempted to step on the bump, but still, I came out with the same result. It was like an endless game of whack-a- mole.

Suddenly, an idea popped into my head. I grabbed the chair nearest to me and hurtled it against the rug. At first I thought that I had gotten rid of the bump, but a few seconds later, it reappeared to the surface. I had tried everything, even causing my lamp to be knocked over and broken.

I threw my hands up in frustration. I was finished with the battle with this bump under the rug. The darn bump could stay there as long as it wanted. I was going to bed.

Exactly two weeks passed and the bump reappeared. It was a pattern. Every two weeks, the bump would reappear and have another crazy battle with me. Sadly, it always won with me collapsing onto the ground.

Suddenly, an image popped into my mind while I was eating breakfast, replaying the events last night. Margaret was lying on the floor with a knife in her hand. Perhaps she was battling the strange bump too, while crossing the living room to close the window. Perhaps it was the bump that had killed my wife.

That was it! That was the answer! It was the cause of my wife’s death. I finished up my food and cleaned the plate. And with that, I went upstairs to pack.

Two weeks later, I was moving into a new house that my uncle had let me use until I found a better place to stay. I thanked him as he handed me the keys and drove off. I entered the fairly large house and began to unpack. But soon, my eyes felt heavy and I fell asleep on a chair in the living room.

A few hours later, I woke up. It was nearly midnight. I gathered myself up and headed to my bedroom when the most feared thing happened to me again. I tripped. I brushed myself off and faced the object that had made me fall. I couldn’t take it anymore. I raced into the kitchen, grabbed a knife, and then returned back to the living room to face the bump.

 “I can’t take it anymore! I'm coming to you, Margaret!” I yelled as I plunged the knife deep into my heart, burying it into my body.

And the last thing I saw was the bump disappearing back into the carpet as I fell to the floor.

The End