Chapter 12.

I pressed the play button and an image of four cheerful teletubbies appeared on the screen. They frolicked about happily full of pure innocence; in fact, there wasn’t a single scary thing to be found in the footage and it was like chicken soup for my weary soul.

However, perhaps I’d spoken too soon. After a minute watching the footage, things took a strange turn for the worse. The baby’s face in the sky bled from his eyes, ears, and nose, while the teletubbies fell to the ground as the skin on their faces peeled back and revealed twitching muscle tissue beneath their face. They rolled about on the ground, letting out painful agonizing screams of anguish and despair as a brown burn mark appeared from the bottom corner of the screen. It was an effect that appeared as though the tape was burning. Slowly, but surely, the world was engulfed in flames and the picture on screen inevitably disappeared with nothing left behind but a strange burnt smell that pervaded the air.

I was startled by the overly dramatic turn of events and looked over to Rick, but he didn’t seem fazed in the slightest and it was like nothing strange had happened at all.

When I turned back to the TV, the picture was back to normal, the burnt smell had vanished without a trace, while the four teletubbies and the babyface sun were perfectly fine like nothing had ever happened to them.

A slight chill ran down my back and I naturally needed answers so I asked, “Hey Rick, did you notice anything strange just now?”

“Was there something wrong with the footage just now? It’s just a recorded episode of the teletubbies, right?”

“No… never mind, you’re right, there wasn’t anything strange, I was just asking for a second opinion. Sorry for the weird question. You can return to what you were doing now.”

Now that I was officially creeped out and certain that not even my workplace was safe like I’d once thought, I kept my head down and stole some work from a few of the junior technicians to keep my mind off of things. There was no way a spooky ghost girl who haunted me really existed, I was just losing my mind due to extenuating circumstances. I was more inclined to doubt my sanity than believe that spooky ghost girls with nothing better to do were stalking and messing with me in their free time.

Of course, no matter how I tried to forget about it, the video from earlier was playing on repeat in my head. When the end of my shift arrived, I didn’t want to return to my new apartment right away, so I invited Rick and a few other coworkers out for drinks.

It was a sausage fest, but we still had a good time. It wasn’t normally my style to do such things, but I’d read that holing up by yourself all the time could lead to a deterioration in your sanity. Maybe the strange things would just disappear if I became more social, that was my line of thinking this time.

I was the stick in the mud who never drank though and I was also stuck as the designated driver anytime I went out anywhere. For the guy who suggested the drinking excursion, I was probably the biggest party killer in their eyes.

They were all in their early to mid-twenties, while I was already thirty. It wasn’t so large that there was a generation gap, but I just couldn’t bring myself to kill off brain cells unnecessarily by drinking; after all, that might just increase the speed at which I lose my sanity in the event I really am going crazy.

At the end of the night, I drove the four drunk deadbeats back to their homes. Rick was the last person I dropped off at his place. When he was getting out though, he glanced back in my direction and had a strange look on his face before he shook his head and said, “bro what’s that? Ah, never mind. Haha, sorry I must be seeing things and my eyes are playing games with me. I’m really way too wasted right now.”

I was confused by his words and skeptically turned my head to check behind me; but as expected, there was nothing there. Like that, the two of us parted ways.

I was still a bit antsy about returning to my apartment, so I decided to rent a room at a hotel for the night. I wanted to spend at least one day away so I could cool down a bit and recompose myself a bit.

I checked in at a nearby hotel only ten minutes away by car and got a room at a moderate price. When I arrived at the room assigned to me, I first thought to take a relaxing bath. I filled the tub up with hot water and poured in some bubble bath to soothe my tense nerves. My thought was that, by taking a nice relaxing bath, the stress would just melt away into nothingness and it would allow me to fully unwind.

When the water level was high enough, I slid into the bathtub and submerged my body fully below the water. Slowly, the strange and unusual events that transpired today sank to the back of my mind. I’ve always hated overly stressful situations more than anything, so a change of pace like this wasn’t so bad every now and then.

As time went by, my eyes grew heavy and I found it difficult to stay awake. I knew I should get up and at least get to bed first, but somehow, I didn’t have the energy to move anymore. My eyelids slowly closed half shut while my head slumped to the side. Directly before me was a mirror that reflected the side of the bathtub. I was truly relieved to find there were no scary little girls reflected in the mirror.

When my eyes closed fully I reopened them slightly one more time… there definitely wasn’t a little ghost girl in the mirror when I reopened my eyes either. I closed my eyes shut firmly one more time and chose not to resist anymore. My body was so relaxed I was reluctant to move anymore in fear of growing slightly uncomfortable… again, it definitely was not because I saw something that couldn’t have possibly been there.

As for what was really in the mirror, my memory was a bit foggy now. It really felt like a bit of an incorporeal memory if you know what I mean. The only thing I could somewhat vaguely remember was the feeling of being pat on the head, along with soft cold breaths beside my ear.

Those were definitely the sounds of my own breaths and the cold sensation was probably just a draft from outside the bathroom seeping through the cracks of the door…