Chapter 13.

When I opened my eyes, I found myself in a rather peculiar situation. I tried to remember the events that lead up to the present, but I was drawing a blank. I found myself standing in my apartment, but it felt like my body wasn’t my own.

When my vision focused, directly in front of me, what I saw left all the hair on my body standing on ends. At least, that was the sensation I had; but when I looked more closely at the extended arms in my field of view, they were fair, feminine, and devoid of any hair. In a bathtub full of water, where the hands reflected in my eyes were extended towards, my body laid unconscious inside the tub. The hands that reached out towards the direction of the body in the tub were wrapped around my neck. My head was fully submerged inside the tub, below the surface of the water. There wasn’t a single reaction from the body in the tub, it simply laid lifeless, listless and unmoving beneath the surface as though it had already accepted death.

I didn’t have any control over the body that I shared this perspective with and I wasn’t able to pull my body out of the water despite wanting to. The only thing I could do was watch the events unfold powerlessly before my eyes.

A few moments after watching my own murder transpire, a blinding light entered my eyes.

…

Splash!

“Haaaah! Haaaaaah! Haaaaaaaaah!”

My eyes shot wide open as I desperately gasped for air. At some point, my body had slumped down into the water while I had that strange nightmare. If I hadn’t woken up just now, I would have definitely died. At least, that was what I presumed to be the case at first.

When I focused my attention, I realized that although my body was wet and I was freezing cold, the water that should have been in the tub was nowhere to be found. When I looked at the drain, the plug was missing and I couldn’t find it anywhere in the bathroom.

My body was tingling all over, half from the cold, while half was from the tinge of fear that lingered inside me towards the unknown. What was really going on here? Was somebody playing a prank on me?

I immediately exited the tub and glanced into the mirror to examine myself more closely. Thankfully there were no strange marks or signs of strangulation. I relaxedly close my eyes and breathed out a sigh of relief when I confirmed it was just a nightmare after all; however, that relief didn’t last very long. When I reopened my eyes I noticed the glass had fogged up from my breath and I discovered a written message in the fog, “this is only the beginning.”

Why?! Why me?! I didn’t even watch the damn VHS tape! Doesn’t this defy all sorts of laws in horror movies? I followed all the steps to avoid this, didn’t I?

“Haaaah! Haaaaaah! Haaaaaaaaah!”

Thanks to my heavy breaths, more fog accumulated on the glass which revealed a few more lines below it, “It only ends when you look my way. You can not look at any other but me. My boyfriend can only have eyes for me.”

With my extensive experience with girls like this, those were definitely the psycho girlfriend lines I was quite familiar with.

“Real psycho girlfriends are scary enough, I don’t want a psychotic ghost girlfriend. Can’t you please just find someone else?”

“No.”

I rapidly turned my head right in the direction I heard the whisper only for my gaze to fall on empty space. The only thing that met my gaze was a door with nothing else of significance in visible sight.

I backed up to the towel rack, grabbed one, then wrapped it around my body before I ran out of the bathroom and jumped under the comforter on the bed. I wrapped my entire body up tightly in the shape of a worm and felt like a child afraid of the monsters under the bed, who also somehow thought the flimsy little covers were invincible shields that couldn’t be penetrated.

These covers were the only solace to me in my present situation. It was truly the only thing I felt I could depend on.

While under the covers, I heard a long drawn out quiet whisper reminiscent of something straight out of a snake-like house from a certain famous story of witchcraft and wizardry.

“Hoooow cuuuute. He… he… he...”

Nope! Nope! Nope! Nope! I heard nothing! I see no evil! I hear no evil! Zip! Nadda! Nothin! I quit! Leave me alone!

Like a worm who was cut in half, I curled myself into a ball and clutched at my head in fear while wrapping myself tighter in the sheets as a sort of defense mechanism. Even if I left the hotel room now, nothing would change. I was just insane, that was all. I’d lost a few screws. I was just hearing, seeing, and feeling things that weren’t really there.

Of course, things would be far too easy if my night just ended at this though. I felt a strange sensation at my foot; through the sheets, it felt as if there was a hand resting on it. As time passed by, the sensation grew more and more distinct; until slowly, but surely, the sensation inched its way up my leg and approached my body. It passed over my hips and eventually stopped on my upper arm. It felt like someone’s body was crawling up mine from the bottom up.

After several more minutes had passed, I felt an arm wrap around my chest from behind. The pressure from the arm around my chest only became more firm as time progressed. Eventually, it was no longer just the sensation of my upper body being hugged from behind, but I felt another limb intertwine itself around my legs as well.

After half an hour passed in silence, the sensation of an entire body pressed against my back grew more and more realistic until my sense of perception grew twisted and warped. It felt like I couldn’t distinguish between what was real and what was fake anymore. I kept telling myself it was all in my head, but no matter what I thought, I couldn’t shake off the slight possibility of it not being a figment of my imagination.

What am I thinking? I’m an atheist, there is a very simple explanation and it is just psychological pressure. Maybe I’ve unconsciously been feeling lonely and my brain has unknowingly decided to create an imaginary girlfriend of some sort.

With the setting of my new apartment, such a turn of events wouldn’t be impossible, would it?