The Gloom

In a hot July night that slowly cooled into a dark morning, we
slept silently in a large and long dormitory. Among the array of
double-decker beds that ran along the left and right of the room,
creating a large corridor between, I lay meek in my bed that was five
double-deckers from the entrance on the lower bed of the
double-decker. The heat was too much that I was soaked wet in my thin
blanket, so I rolled to let it slide slightly down to my chest. I
tried to sleep but the silence was so loud I could hear creatures
haul from the forests. Sleep was but alien to my eyes.

Drenched in my thoughts, I was stuttered was the stiff and
stagnant hot air in the dorm was rapidly pushed up and out as the
large main entrance rammed in twain both doors running to the wall.
For seconds, the door remained open but no one walked through.
despite the cool and refreshing breeze that rushed through, my heart
raced in fear worried of what was to walk in. I pulled my blanket to
cover me entirely leaving just enough space for breathing and sight.
I kept my eyes glued to the entrance waiting for the next scene at
the door. It was only a few seconds that felt like days, my armpits
were flooded and my chest was socked as I waited silently rolled in
my blanket like a mummy. I couldn't help but notice the
proliferation of silence in the dorm as I could no longer hear anyone
turn or even breathe.

Suddenly, there were knocks along the veranda of the dormitory.
The knocks that sounded like stilettos approached the entrance of the
dormitory in slow intervals. Now focused on the sound coming from
outside, I had taken my attention from the entrance and focused on
the knocks, when they suddenly stopped. Before I could comprehend the
sudden stoppage of the knocks, I heard a wave of low hauls of fear go
through the dorm, and before I could try to understand what the hauls
were about, a faint image from the entrance shadowed my icon forcing
me to turn my attention back towards the entrance.

There stood a shadowy figure so tall it could almost reach the
top of the seven feet tall entrance, and so slender it seemed to fade
in the deem light from the outside. The figure had abnormally long
arms, even longer fingers and finger nails that seemed to stretch
further down its body. The figure cackled as it slowly walked along
the center of the corridor sniffing and turning its head left and
right up and down.

The air in the dormitory quickly cooled to freezing cold I started
to shiver. Fuming steam dusted off the creature's body as it
continued along the dormitory. As it approached bed by bed the
occupants seemed to hold their breaths, no one made a sound. Then it
walked further through the dormitory and closer to my double-decker,
I froze still and covered up the little opening I had felt for my
face and waited stone still under my covers. Now right close to my
feet, I held my breath and remained still as the creature stood much
longer next to my bed than it did on other beds before mine.
Suddenly, it moved on slowly walking by radiating a benzene whiff. So
smooth and seemingly oily, was the creature's dolphin like skin
which smoothly reflected in the deem dark blue light of the moonless
night. The creature stopped and turned to look down at my bed
with its large glittery almond eyes and at that moment I was sweating
buckets. My heart pounded my chest like mice trapped in a box but I
endured the terror. Slowly it proceeded further along the long
corridor and out of sight but the knocks went on.

Suddenly, the knocks stopped and I waited to hear them continue
but the next sound was a sniffle that gradually turned into a low cry
and then a scream. Within the screams, I could hear cloth tearing,
kicking and squeaking then suddenly it all stopped. There was grave
silence in the dorm not even a breath of sound whispered. A light
wind then blew out of the dorm slamming the dorm's doors shut. Then
relief at last I felt. We all remained froze silent in our cocoons
like statues in an abandoned warehouse waiting for the grace of the
dawn to incinerate the long night. The cooled morning dried the sweat
on my now calm self bringing relief with the sound of the morning
birds. The melody of nature was then polluted by the morning bell and
for the first time I was grateful for its destructive sound. Usually
the wide dorm corridor flooded with sleepy teenagers in their
nightwear trying to get to the wash rooms but this time, it was
silence only the sound of cool air sipping through the narrow gap at
the bottom of the entrance doors and across the dorm floor. My heart
seemed to punch out of my chest when the door once again slammed
open. To my reprieve, it was the short chubby mass of our dorm matron
screaming; "wake up wake up ..."

Relieved, the entire dorm sprung out of their beds that had become
coffins to embrace the loud scream of the matron. The matron then
illuminated the dorm when she switched on the light, abrupt silence
simultaneously followed by multiple high pitched screamed rattled
from further in the dorm. A crowd quickly formed around the source of
the screams as the matron struggled to get through to the inside of
the crowd. The traumatized matron and students crowded a
double-decker as I watched from my bed. The tension and curiosity
over whelmed me that I was forced to rush to the scene.

I squeezed my short slender figure through the compact mass to the
front. My heart and eyes almost parted from me when I looked down at
the bed.

Strips of torn bedding socked red in blood and mixed with body
parts of what seemed to be the body of a fourteen year old girl laid
on the blood drenched bed. The falls of the now thickened blood
slowly oozed down the edges of the bed to flood under and around the
bed. The insides of the girl's corpse hang gruesomely out through
the deep cuts that run diagonally across her entire cadaver some so
torn they seemed to be part of the thickened blood pool. Looking
closely, it was my best friend, Natasha, shocked and grieved, I
quickly gripped both my palms horizontally over my lips to avoid
screaming but tires still filled my eyes and eroded my fleshy chicks.
A few minutes later, I felt a strong hand pulling me away from the
scene; it was a group of school guards and male teachers who were
pulling away the traumatized kids leading us out of the dorm. I
looked back at the scene in shock as one of the guards gently led me
to the exit. I watched two other men cover the horror with a number
of bed sheets pulled from nearby beds but the blood still soaked
through them.

We stood outside the dorm in shock curled in any warm clothes we
managed to exit with waiting helplessly in the cold twilight as we
watched teachers and guards walk in and out of the dorm.

By now the news had spread across the school through all the other
dormitories like summer fires and within minutes, a crowd of curious
kids and school staff had surrounded us and the entrance. We had
become an attraction. I struggled to look across the crowd for him
but all I could see was a sea of unfamiliar heads. Then, I saw a tall
muscular figure cutting through the crowd, it was him. With out
saying a word, he rushed towards me as soon as he saw me and he
embraced me into his strong arms. I rested my head on his thick chest
and he wrapped his arms around me. Closing my eyes to embrace the
warmth of his comfort, for the first time since the sighting I was
safe.