THE UNKNOWN
A/N I wrote this about 2 years ago for school when we were doing a science fiction unit and this is also under crossovers b/c its based on a picture from a book of collections. A little bit after i subbmitted it there i was watching a Twight Zone marathon and realized that the over-done persona (come on i was a 6th grader cut me a break) worked for this section. so yay. and pleaseeee review. it feels so great to recieve any comments and im not all that defensive b/c ive changed so much as a writer. So ill shut up now:
-papermate 2
He came home from work at the usual time. When he reached his apartment door he uncomfortably balanced his brief case on his knee and fumbled awkwardly for his keys. After finding the right one, he walked into the modest apartment and tossed his coat and brief case lazily on the kitchen counter. He grabbed a stiff TV dinner from the freezer and put it in the oven to heat. While he waited he undid his messy tie and grabbed a fork from the drawer. A glass was also fetched and filled with water .When the meal was ready he sat down at the table to eat. He thought over how the biggest touch of irony in his life was that he ate TV dinners at the kitchen table, not in front of the television. The thought of TV reminded him of his shallow sister. No doubt she was already mesmerized by one of her endless sitcoms.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw an incongruence in the carpet. It had the same light tan color as the rest of the carpet, and the same tread marks that occurred no matter how lightly he walked, but it was different. It had a raised or elevated look to it and appeared to be moving. What was it? Probably just his tired eyes. He had worked all day staring at columns of numbers and his eyes must be tired, but after surveying the lump more closely, he saw that it indeed existed. He was not worried, not really. Yet his breathing became irregular until he was keenly aware of every breath. Although he would not turn to face the lump and therefore acknowledge its presence, he continued to monitor it from his peripheral vision.
If he were to look toward the lump and scream, he would have accepted its presence. He would not. He was a respectable man and would not admit to anyone, least of all himself, that he was afraid of a lump in his carpet. And so he went on with his meal and afterward read the newspaper just to prove that he was not concerned, but his fear was growing. He fought desperately to stay calm but he knew it was fruitless; he could not ignore it anymore-- the lump was real!
A grown man afraid of a lump in his carpet was a preposterous situation, and yet true. The lump scared him more than the communists that Senator McCarthy was hunting down. The lump had an edge: In the newscasts, it was obvious who the enemy was and what it could do, but the lump was a mystery. It was subject to his imagination, where some of the most frightening thoughts were born.
Perhaps it was a dead corpse, twitching ever so slightly. Or perhaps a rabid animal had tunneled in under his carpet. His mind filled with terrors so gruesome that he became paralyzed. His own thoughts seemed to crowd around him, suffocating him. Within a matter of minutes, he found himself huddled in a corner, perspiring and aware of every grasping and piercing breath. He clumsily reached toward the phone with his shaking veined hands. He dialed his sister.
Her pleasant chitchat immediately sprang out of the receiver, "Oh, hello darling. We haven't enjoyed a decent talk in simply forever. I had the rudest thing happen to me at the department store today…"
Her voice droned on. It irritated him that she talked of everyday subjects at a time like this. As usual, he found her ignorant and monotonous. Yes, as a child she had been convinced that a monster lurked under her bed, but she had never suffered real terror. The absence of the terror that forms wisdom had fixed her as a constant; there was never any real variable in her life. He realized now that before tonight he too had belonged to the same branch of ignorance; ignorance of that beyond symmetry and congruence.
"Laura, there is a lump in my carpet!" he interjected.
There was a silence before she answered. "What? I don't quite follow you.""There is a raised shape in my carpet!" he yelled into the receiver.
"Darling, it probably just got there from a sloppy vacuuming job. You know that's why it is so important to use a quality vacuum like the one I just got from Sears,""No! Laura, it is twitching, it's alive!" A bead of perspiration slowly slid down from the elevation of his nose to the plateau of his lips.
"Twitching? Did you buy a puppy? You know I adore puppies."
He hung up. His idiot sister would be no help to him. It was not in her nature to accept other worldly ideas.
He had to leave the apartment and the accompaniment of that hellish bump. He uncertainly made his way to the door. He stepped into the rain. He climbed into his used 1957 Plymouth. In the vague moonlight he shuffled through his keys and upon finding the correct one he thrust it into the ignition. The car roared to life.
He swerved the wheel wildly in no particular direction. This was New York and hotels were not exactly considered a rarity here. He drove without caution and though aware of the elapsing space between his car and the lane parallel to his he was unconcerned and made no effort to stop the development. He had always been a cautious driver, but tonight had changed him. He no longer shrank away from risk.
He found a hotel where he parked his car. He walked into the lobby in a daze. Perhaps he looked intoxicated; after tonight's occurrence, he would not doubt it. He made his way to the front desk where he found a blond lobbyist with a glued on smile.
"How may I help you?" she asked in a cheerful voice.
"I would like a room for tonight," he answered.
"Alright, we have room 233 available." She marked something on her clipboard and handed him a room key.
He was directed to a hallway where he found a green door with the number 233 painted in gold at the top. He turned the key and walked in. The room included a bathroom with the obvious appliances, a double bed, a sink, a table with chairs, a couch, and a TV. He made a point of not noticing the color of the carpet. He went into the bathroom where he splashed cold water on his face.
The room was quiet and seemed to echo his thoughts. He needed something superficial and shallow to calm himself. He turned on the TV. An old sitcom rerun was showing, but he automatically flipped to the news. The newscaster, a man with dark eyes and thick eyebrows, was relating the McCarthy trials to the viewers.
"Klaus Emil Julius Fuchs is accused of disclosing atoms secrets to the communist party. Before charges were pressed Fuchs's occupation was as a scientist at Harwell Atomic Research Establishment."
The newscaster continued his story of paranoia and anxiety over who lurked beneath the surface in our own country, but he was not listening to the account. He was staring at what he now recognized to be a permanent lump in the carpet.
Two weeks passed and it happened again. This time he was not in room 233 of the hotel. He was in cell 972 of his asylum. He was looking at the cold tiled floor while being interrogated by Dr. Hertz, a brown haired psychiatrist with blue eyes behind wire framed glasses.
"Now George, I need you to focus. Did you receive mounting stress that you tried to ignore around the time you started to see this shape in your carpet?"
He slowly lifted his head up to face her. A faint smile formed on his face as he noticed a small twitching lump in the carpet behind her chair.
"Nope, nothing except what was swept under the carpet," he said.