Haunting
In the style of the Valdez'
Rosa woke up and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, yawning. When she blinked enough that the world around her was clear again, she gasped and nearly screamed. Most of the furniture in her room was upside down.
Her dresser was upside down so that its content must be horribly mixed up and thrown around. Her closet doors were leaning against the frame upside down, nuts and bolts laying on the floor neatly with a screwdriver. The curtains were hanging over her door. The pictures usually hanging on her walls were upside down. Her bedside table was flipped, but the lamp and book and tissue box that'd been on it were still there, at the exact same place she'd left them.
She screamed.
Rosa sighed when she entered her kitchen. The curtains were tied into knots. Again.
She checked the drawer. The spoons and the knives had switched places in the cutlery tray, and there were no forks. She was sure that she'd find them planted in her front lawn or something equally inconvenient again.
Her fridge's magnets had rearranged themselves to make a smiley face that was creepier than anything she'd ever seen.
She turned around and found the forks, all stabbed into various fruits in the fruit bowl.
All of her shoes were tied together by the laces with handy knots, some even held together by wire that had been welded. Her belt was one enormous bundle of knots.
Rosa sighed when she came down the stairs. She was running late and tired, and when she nearly slipped on the main story's floor she nearly groaned when she saw the course.
Mustard and mayonnaise and ketchup had been spread all over the floor; arrows were marking the way towards the door and writing out the names of different articles of furniture at their feet.
Okay: for the last few weeks she'd been assuming that she was doing some kind of trauma-induced sleepwalking as a result of Esperanza's death. But there was no way she hadn't been covered in condiments when she went to sleep if she'd done this herself.
It was a rainy day in Houston, and a breeze had come through the open windows making everything chilly. It was the weekend so naturally Rosa had the day off. She was wrapped in a bath robe coat, and she wanted to crash at the kitchen table and read the morning paper and sip her coffee, but that plan was immediately foiled.
All of the chairs were on the table, and the table's legs had been removed and were bolted onto the ceiling.
She came home from a long day at work, where she'd dealt with some snotty students, and groaned.
All of the couch's pillows as well as the accent pillows had been pulled off. They were forming a neat pyramid in the middle of her living room.
She tried to undo the pyramid but the pillows were sewed together.
She unlocked the door and let herself in, followed closely by Joshua. He was one of her student's fathers, but tonight they'd been out on a date. Rosa really liked him, and she was hoping that maybe they'd go out on another one.
All of the blankets in the house, even the spare ones, had been stripped off the bed and guest bed and spread throughout the first floor to cover everything up. Towels and dishrags patched up the bare spots, and so her whole house looked like some game of Candy Land.
"Ummm…" He said behind her.
God damn. This definitely can't be sleepwalking.
She opened the bathroom door and ran into a wall of saran wrap when she tried to walk through. She shrieked and batted it away from her face.
The same thing happened with every door in her house.
Her house had a lot of doors...
She reached for the shampoo bottle as she took a shower, and squirted some into her hands, eyes closed, and then into her hair. The shower suddenly smelled strange. Like…
"Laundry detergent!" She said. In a rush she hopped out of the shower, pulled her robe on and quickly cleaned the detergent out of her hair. Once that was over, she decided to brush it all out. Which worked fine until the brush got stuck in her black locks. She had to pull it away and something sticky remained. Something like…
"Honey," she realised.
She couldn't get her email typed and sent to Maddy Murphy's parents. She would push a key and another letter would pop onscreen. She was getting very frustrated and some choice vocabulary usually associated to Esperanza (God bless her late sister) was coming out.
She tried reading through her laptop's user manual and suddenly noticed a picture of the keyboard.
The 't' wasn't at the same place on hers as it was in the picture.
But how could all the letters have just magically changed places?
She sighed.
She went to open the door and go to the bathroom before getting dressed, and looked up and realised that her doorknob was way above her head, and that somehow the door was still locked.
Damn it.
She was sleeping peacefully when she heard the noise start. She woke up so hastily she nearly fell out of bed.
It didn't stop, so she put on a bathrobe and went to look all over the house in frenzy. She couldn't figure out for the life of her what it was, but it was loud enough to wake up all the neighbours.
Finally she checked outside, where a few neighbours were also poking their noses out at five in the morning.
There was an airhorn with a taped-down trigger on her front lawn.
Rosa woke up feeling uncomfortable. She tried to sit up, but soon realised she couldn't.
From head to foot she was duct taped to her bed.
When she started her car she heard quick firing shots like… like a shotgun!
She squealed and ducked into the shotgun seat of her car, letting go of the steering wheel and knocking the key out of the ignition. The noise stopped, but she lied there shaking like a leaf for a few seconds.
Gingerly she sat up and looked around the street. Nobody else was panicking…
She got up and examined her car.
"Son of a… how?" She asked herself.
Bubble wrap was taped all around her car's tires.
She woke up and noticed that her door was gone.
Very typical and usual.
She groaned. Her lawn mower was brand new, and all of a sudden it refused to work!
She fussed with it for a while before calling one of the guys who worked at Sammy's Workshop and demanding a family favour.
When he checked the motor, he asked why it was completely re-rigged.
She needed a mental health break before she kept correcting the pile of English essays from her remedial class. It was a discouraging brand of fresh hell. She pushed the TV's 'on' button before crashing on her couch.
When Rosa picked up the remote control for the television's volume, a vase fell from the fireplace mantel and she screamed in surprise. The two were tied together by transparent string. She picked up the remote for the TV to turn it off while she cleaned up, and a flower pot tumbled from an even higher shelf. It was rigged just like the first remote.
Opening the broom closet's door to get the broom and dustpan, she caused a decorative plate on her wall to fall. Also rigged.
Pennies were jammed between the doorframe and the door, locking her inside of her bedroom.
"I'm telling you Rosa," Uncle Diego who worked at the family mechanic shop said. "You have to get something done. I'm not going to keep coming back at 8:00 AM with a ladder to keep getting your clothes off your roof. I've been doing it for six years, and I ain't going to do it for a second longer."
"I don't know what is going on," she said clucking her tongue. "I bolt the windows shut, it's not my sleepwalking because there's no way to get to the roof without your ladder…"
"This house is the damnedest place I've ever seen. The place needs more of Jesus. It even smells like a sinner." Her overly religious mother yapped. Uncle Diego had dragged her with him.
"Mama, this place isn't haunted." Rosa said.
"It's not haunted, it's damned. Aren't ya listening to me, Rosa?"
"Thank you Uncle Diego," Rosa said finally. "I'm already running late, I'll talk to you tonight." She said kissing him on the cheek before closing the front door.
She leaned against it, sighing. This was ridiculous. What on earth was going on? Nothing logical came to mind…
Oh gods, maybe her mother was right. Maybe the place was haunted.
"Okay," Emily said. "I know that we have a no-questions-asked clause, but what the hell is it that you do during the five hours a day that nobody sees you?"
Esperanza looked up at her roommate and smiled cheekily.
"I have a sister who called by son a devil, blamed him for my death, and refused to take him in like she should as a godmother. I'm still pissed, and have a master's in engineering."