rissy stories

Hey guys,

Here’s a very short “list essay” that I wrote for a creative nonfiction course. To give you a little background so you’re not confused when reading it: it’s told in a second-person perspective, but it’s basically a list of very consistent and very inconsistent events that occurred on a weird Monday night when I was in middle school. Nothing about that night ever happened again and I still have no idea what actually happened or if I was just losing my mind.

I thought it was entertaining enough to share, so here you go!

The rhythmic sound of a pencil tapping on paper combines with the repeated sound of falling rain on the roof of your house to give you a feeling of relaxation, spreading down your spine and through your limbs. You love consistency.

You raise your eyes from your homework sitting on the kitchen table, the only thing illuminating your paper being the light directly above the table. You’re looking at the sliding glass door in front of you in an attempt to peer into the darkness of the outside after a lightning strike, but the light outside disappears as soon as you look outside and you only find your reflection staring back at yourself on the glass door.

You blink at your blue-eyed, slightly morphed reflection as the thunder booms in your ears mere seconds later. You suddenly feel less alone – less startled. You relax again.

The light tapping of untrimmed nails on hardwood floor and the grunt of your large, black, furry dog causes you to look down at your left side. She is now lying on her left side on the golden oak floor next to your white, wooden chair with her long, pointy jaw laying on her paws. Her brown eyes stare into the pitch black hallway behind you, but she strangely appears undisturbed by the thunderstorm outside.

You bite your lip and think to yourself that this is unusual. She always whines, cries, and paces during a storm, as if the darkness and chaotic loudness of the outside were causing the world to cave in on her.

However, you hate inconsistency, so you look back at your eighth grade English homework on the table in front of you and begin tapping your pencil again on the piece of paper to forget about the unusual occurrence.

You read another question about Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” and love the fact that you’re studying such work during a thunderstorm.

You begin to write, listening to the light scratching of the lead on paper and remembering that you have exactly one hour until your parents come home. They normally left the house to you on Monday nights, but they always return at eight pm.

And that’s when you hear it. You look towards the ceiling and hear consistent, loud thumping noises directly above you from the second floor, upstairs. Again, you think, “This is unusual,” and turn to your left.

You feel your heart drop as you peer beyond your dog and into the living room, where the table light barely reveals both fully grown house cats, sitting on dark red couches a few feet from you, sleeping. Those are all of the animals that live within the house. They are sitting right there beside you.

You sit straight forward again as your palms begin to sweat and your mind spirals out of control: “I’m the only one home and all of the animals are here, so what’s going on? My house can’t be haunted, it was recently built and no one had died in it – so that means there is someone in my house.”

The thumping noises continue up and down the upstairs hallway, as though someone with large feet were pounding on the floor. You look towards the animals again, but notice another change. The cats are now awake and alert, and the dog has switched to a sitting position with her ears perked.

You turn fully around in your chair to stare into the dark hallway that connected the kitchen to the foyer and the stairwell. Your slippery hands attempt to grip the back of the chair and you stop breathing as you hear the footsteps make their way towards the stairs.

You now hear rhythmic stomping down the carpeted stairs, as though this person were wearing working boots. You flinch at each step.

You don’t move until the footsteps travel to the hardwood foyer floor and sound as if they were turning the corner and heading into the kitchen. You scoot your chair back as you stand straight up, the screeching sound of wooden chair legs scraping against the floor, startling the pets enough to stand with you.

Then the footsteps abruptly stop.

You stare into the dark hallway, waiting desperately for someone to appear out of the darkness.

After one minute of deafening silence, you tip toe to the hallway and turn that light on, but it reveals nothing.

You tread into the foyer with your dog in tow and you turn that light on, seeing nothing.

You don’t stop until you’re running through the house, turning on every single light, and you still find absolutely nothing.

You will keep the lights on until your parents return home an hour later and explain the story, but they won’t believe you. “You were just spooked, honey. That’s what happens when you’re doing Edgar Allan Poe homework during a thunderstorm.” This won’t matter because you’ll know that it was real. Even your pets heard it.

You will think back on this event for the next several years and wonder why, to each extreme, very consistent as well as very inconsistent events occurred in that one night.

You’ll wonder what actually happened, and obviously, why it never occurred again.