Like a Ghost Story
I woke up, heart racing and gasping for breath.
Again.
This wasn't the first time I had woken up in the middle of the night due to a nightmare, and it's a feeling one can never really get used to. I didn't remember the dream this time; I just knew I had one, and that whatever it was about, it really scared me good. I shook my hair away from my face and laid down again to try to go back to sleep. Just moments after I closed my eyes, I heard light footsteps moving across the carpet in my room. When I heard the footsteps get closer to my bed I immediately sat up again.
Nothing there.
'I need to stop scaring myself,' I thought.
I couldn't for the life of me, shake the feeling of being watched though. I did another scan of my room, this time using the flashlight on my iPod for light, and again came up with nothing. Well, except for the shadow up against my closet door, but I didn't think much of it, figuring it was just because of the street lamp outside my window, and I tried once more to go back to sleep. A few minutes later, I began to hear the footsteps again, and again, I sat up and looked around but saw nothing. This time I reached over and turned on my lamp. As expected, my room was empty. I turned the light off and tried to get back to sleep as now I was starting to get agitated. My eyes were closed for no longer than a minute before I started to hear creaking on the floor again. Frustrated at this point I sat up and yelled,
"Look, if you're gonna scare me, fucking do it already!"
The light bulb in my lamp suddenly burst, lighting up my room with a white flash and my closet door slid open so hard it nearly bounced off its track when it slammed into the wall. Outside my room, I heard every door in the hallway slam shut, one after another, and upstairs in the kitchen something fell over and shattered, followed by the faint giggling of several children from somewhere in the house.
"Okay," I breathed, "I'm scared now..."