Room & Board

Part 1

You wake up late that morning with a groan, sunlight trying to force its way in through your closed blinds.

Everything hurts. Your legs, your arms, your back, your head, your neck, everything throbs. Still groggy, you try to remember what happened last night. You're still dressed in what you remember wearing yesterday. You're even still in your shoes.

Thankfully, you're in your own bed as well, you eventually realize as you push yourself upright. The sight of your familiar rumpled comforter and room eases some initial concerns warbling about your brain. But there's still more to have.

Partying or anything strenuous hadn't been on your calendar last night, so what hap-

Your fingertips graze over something on your neck. Something that feels suspiciously like a bandage. Narrowing your eyes, you force your wobbly legs from the bed and duck into your darkened bathroom.

The lights buzz overhead after you hit the switch. An anticipatory horror swells in your chest as your eyes settle on your reflection in the mirror. A bandage is wrapped around your throat. The image reminds you of an urban legend about a woman whose head falls off after the removal of a lifelong bandage.

Your shaking fingers touch it as the faintest memories shift in your mind. Last night, you went to see a movie! It was an old black-and-white movie at the vintage theater a few blocks away. While your friends had all declined to go with you, there had been quite a few bodies in the theater seats last night. And on your walk home...

Your eyebrows furrow. On your walk home, it had been dark. Strangely dark. Like the streetlights had failed to come on well into the evening dark.

And you had been walking.

Then running. You remember the sound of your sneakers scuffing desperately on pavement.

And the echoes of something behind you.

Movement behind you startles you. It takes a short second to realize it's the bathroom door that caught your attention. It's not even moving!

Well... until it does begin to swing.

Your eyes widen, stomach dropping, as a clawed hand reaches around the edge of the bathroom door. Survival instincts spin you around, hands fumbling for anything nearby, as the door latches closed.

Everything in your floundering mind stills as the thing behind the door is revealed.

It looks like a person. It is distinctly person-shaped. A tall and lanky person, dressed in layers of musty-smelling disintegrating fabric; the cloth so ruined, you couldn't discern its original color. Over everything, it wore a large and far more well-kept trench coat that barely hit its knees.

But its spindly fingers are still inhumanly long, still tipped with curving claws that you remember grappling against. And how easily it restrained you. And you remember - you remember - its face shifting in the dark. Its mouth widening, its teeth growing into vicious little points, its nose becoming flatter and ears growing large and pointy and its eyes glowing red.

The sudden rush of memories nearly topples you over. This had been the thing you'd been running from last night! Your heart races just remembering it.

Oh, you had no clue when you started to run. Of course not. You thought someone was stalking you, intent to mug or sexually assault you.

"Many apologies. This mus-" The thing reaches a hand toward you, spindly fingers and claws crooked.

You scream, grabbing the nearest items from the bathroom sink to wing at the creature. Empty and full bottles of a number of toiletries hurtles in the air at it. It doesn't even budge. Even as a toothbrush and a hefty bottle of mouthwash and a stick of deodorant and more come flying at it. The most it moves is a wince as a hairbrush smashes into its face.