Imagination

It was approximately 2:28 in the morning when I had to pee. My eyes opened slowly as comprehension formed in my brain. I would have to get up. And so I did get up. I’m not a paranoid person, my imagination just grabs me sometimes. I started thinking, “Oh god, what if there was someone in the house waiting to kill me? I wouldn’t feel safe defending myself in my underwear; what if he had a knife?”

I went to the bathroom cursing my imagination and my conspicuously loud heartbeat. I wondered if the man sneaking around my house heard. Then I cursed myself again, because of course, there was no one sneaking around my house. I sat down on the toilet, door open, just in case he was hiding in the bathtub, so I could escape. Then I was worried that he was actually right outside by bathroom and wished I had shut the door. I rolled out some toilet paper with my eyes riveted on the space in front of the doorway, expecting a pair of eyes to suddenly snap open, glowing, and expecting to scream.

Of course, nothing happened. I flushed, washed my hands, and went back to bed. I thought to myself, “You are SO stupid! There is no one out to kill you! Why are you such a chicken in the dark?” And fell asleep, still berating myself. When I woke up in the morning to my alarm, the sun was brightly shining and I felt safe and warm. I ridiculed myself again for being scared in the night, telling myself that my apartment was the same in the day as it was at night, completely empty except for me. I walked into the bathroom and laughed at myself again. But for some reason, I checked the bathtub again. I shook my head and started to brush my teeth.

At work, I was completely exhausted and I had no idea why. Maybe it was from the stress I put myself before during the night. I cursed myself again; it was becoming a habit. I sat there at my desk filing this and that. Occasionally, I’d sip at some pink lemonade. Finally, I was finished and sat there enjoying the whole bottle of lemonade. Marcus, the guy with a cubicle directly above mine on the next floor up, stood in front of my desk and gave me a whole new stack of things to file.

“You hate me now, don’t you?” Marcus asked.

“Sure do, Marcus.” I smiled.

“Look, you know it’s not my fault.”

“Yeah, yeah I know.” I replied. We both sighed at management on the top floor, and then laughed.

“So I’ll meet you for lunch later, Aubrey?” Marcus asked as he walked towards the elevators.

“Sure. Downstairs today?”

“No, let’s go try that new café thing a couple blocks over. What’s the name again?” Marcus tapped one of his temples rapidly with his pen.

“Marcus, your pen’s still uncapped.”

“Hmm?” He said, bewildered. He rubbed his temple with an index finger, looked at it, and grimaced. “Great… Flavor Savor! That’s the name.” He brightened up.

“Flavor Savor?” I asked, with a look of disgust on my face.

“Don’t be fooled by the cheesy name, it’s really good. Or so I hear.” He forgot all about the dots of pen on his face and pushed the button to go upstairs.

“Flavor Savor.” I muttered again to myself, “I’m going to a place called Flavor Savor.” I continued filing; partially hoping I’d forget.

At Flavor Savor, I couldn’t keep my eyes open for more than three minutes at a time. I almost fell asleep through Marcus’ order, and the waitress had to ask me three times what kind of dressing I wanted on my salad. It took me four tries to say ranch. Marcus asked me if I was okay. I explained to him about how I was being stupid last night. He droned on and on about how my job was too boring, filing things all day and that my psyche was creating some sort of excitement that my real life didn’t have. He talked about his psychology classes at college and his ambitions from when he was younger and started complaining about how he’d ended up at this company. I almost fell asleep and drowned in my ranch dressing when something he said caught my attention.

“What did you just say? I’m sorry, I was just spacing out.” I said, sitting upright to see if better posture would increase blood flow to my brain or something.

“No kidding you were spacing out. I said soul-eaters. Pretty wild, huh?”

“Mmm… what about soul-eaters now?”

“Well in my psych class we talked about all the different explanations people used to have for problems like yours. And there is this one group of people who believed that there were these soul-eaters, these spirits, who were specifically after your soul. And how they would get it, is to play with peoples’ imaginations and work them to their will. The soul-eaters would make peoples’ imaginations really vivid, and they would end up dying of fear, and the soul-eaters would take their soul. The creepy thing is, in every incident of this type of death, something has always happened.”

“What do you mean ‘something has always happened’?”

“Well I mean like these people would imagine something so vivid and frightening that it would happen. Nobody knows if they really died of fright or of their imaginations coming to life.”

“That’s weird. But what if your worst fear was that like an asteroid came and blew up the earth? That hasn’t happened, we would know.” I smiled derisively.

“It’s only a theory. What are you attacking me for? Who ate your soul last night? Sheesh.” Marcus replied, thinking he was clever.

“You know what? Shut up.” I said, unable to think of anything else.

I went home that night even more exhausted than I was that morning. After changing into track pants and a hooded zip-up sweatshirt, I immediately flopped down on the bed and fell asleep. I woke up after an hour or two and microwaved myself a nice, fat-filled dinner. I turned on the tv, sat down in my favorite armchair and ate my dinner. The television emitted raucous, loud laughter as one of the main characters on the screen ran into a table. I shook my head. Years and years of evolution, and we still laugh at people getting hurt. Full, I pushed the tagboard tray into the garbage, settled back and started flipping through the channels looking for something good to watch.

The next thing I knew, I woke up in my armchair and everything was pitch black. I mumbled something close to “Wha?” and rubbed my eyes. Why was the tv off? I searched around for the remote. The remote had disappeared. “Okay, don’t freak out, Aubrey. Just calm yourself.” I thought. I reached around some more and found that I was sitting on it. “Okay. You just sat on it and the tv turned off. That’s all. Stop being paranoid,” I reassured myself out loud, “What are you gonna do, let the soul-eaters get you?” I laughed a little at my joke. When I stopped, the room was too quiet. I turned the tv back on, shivering a little. Bad idea. They were advertising chain saws and so the first thing I saw when I turned the tv on was this big chain saw ripping through a tree limb that looked remarkably human. The volume was also on very loud, so I got a jolt of “VRRRRHHHH!!!!”

I decided to turn off the tv and go to bed. I stumbled through the dark, and I swear my houseplants were attacking me. I lay in my bed, the sheets still cold, and felt both completely alone and strangely accompanied at the same time. I tried not to let my imagination run away with me again and concentrated on getting unconscious. When I woke up, I found that I was grasping wildly at soul-eaters. But really it was the air and the dark that I was grabbing. I had to pee again. I muttered to myself about how I should probably go see a shrink because I’m going crazy and then started wondering whether Marcus could refer me to any.

I sat down on the porcelain and put my forehead on the cool sink rim. I suddenly started to hear them. I started to hear the soul-eaters. Whirrring and rushing and whooshing and hissing and dripping. My heart started beating faster. They started to howl. I clutched my hands to my chest, hoping that my heart wouldn’t buck my soul off it like a wild mustang. I hoped that the soul-eaters wouldn’t get my soul and devour it. I sat up, and realized that the sounds were only the sounds of the toilet humming. I shook my head and started my ritual of cursing myself.

After I had flushed, I looked at myself in the mirror. The rim of the sink had left a curved, red imprint on my forehead. I turned on the water and started washing my hands. Suddenly, two glowing eyes appeared above my head and made a smiley face with the imprint on my forehead. And then, it smiled bigger. Out of some sort of fearful impulse, I clapped a hand to my forehead and felt something warm and wet. Was I bleeding? I gasped and looked at my hand. No, of course I wasn’t bleeding. It was only warm water. I looked in the mirror again. The two eyes were just reflections of the nightlight on the glass shower door. I sighed. “Get a hold of yourself, Aubrey. You’re going insane.” I thought. I dried my hands as well as my forehead, and went back to bed and entered a fitful sleep.

“You okay, Aubrey?” Marcus asked me in the morning while handing me a large pile of papers. “You look terrible.”

“Thanks.” I said, giving him a disgruntled look.

“No, you know I didn’t mean you’re ugly or anything.”

“I know what you meant. Yeah, I had a rough night last night.”

“Ah,” Marcus said, raising an eyebrow, “With whom, may I ask?”

“Well, it was a big group, actually.” I smiled a little.

Marcus raised the other eyebrow as well, “A big group?”

“Yep. Spent the night with a bunch of soul-eaters.” I replied.

“Ohhhh. I get it. You’ve been having nightmares again?”

“No, not nightmares, almost waking nightmares.”

“Sounds like those soul-eaters are doing a good job.” Marcus chuckled. I chuckled with him, and began to get really uncomfortable at the thought of being alone at night.

“Hey, you wanna go do something after work today? Maybe go see a movie or something?” I asked. I was planning on making sure that I’d have at least one evening not frightened out of my wits at home.

“Sure, sounds great. How about going to see that new action flick… ‘Burning Acres,’ I think is the name.”

“Geez, you come up with the worst names.”

“No I don’t! I mean, I don’t make them up, they just happened to be named stupidly.” Marcus said, putting his hands up in defense.

“Fine. We’ll go see ‘Burning Acres’ and then we’ll go have dinner at Georges’.”

“Georges’? That place is pretty fancy…” suddenly it dawned on Marcus, “You’re asking me out on a date. Aubrey, did you just ask me out on a date?”

“Yeah? So?” I asked aggressively with a bit of a frumpy look, “You ask me out to lunch all the time. I just figured…” I trailed off, my aggressiveness spent.

“Wow. Aubrey, I didn’t know…”

“Didn’t know what? It’s just one date, I’m not asking you to marry me, sheesh.”

“Okay, okay! Just one date. Not a marriage proposal. I get it.”

“So… We’ll meet at the theater at when?”

“Hey I thought this was a date. I’ll drop by your place at 5. We’ll see the matinee showing. What should I wear?”

I laughed, “Stop being a junior high girl and worrying about what you’re going to wear! Just wear something that won’t get us kicked out of Georges’.”

He smiled, “All right.” He looked at me and winked. “All right.” He said again, in a different tone, and walked off to the elevators and pushed the up button. When it arrived, he practically bounced into the elevator. I smiled and started filing. My soul was safe tonight.

“That movie was terrible!” I complained as we were driving to Georges’.

“Okay, so it was terrible. I’m sorry. It looked good in the previews!” his voice got high pitched as he apologized.

“What did you expect? The name was Burning Acres! And that’s all that happened! Acres burned!” I laughed.

Marcus settled down a little, “Well, but didn’t you see that love story subplot?”

“You mean the one where the guy saves the girl’s life and they make out in the soggy barn? That was a love story subplot? That was more of a try-to-divert-your-attention-from-the-terrible-big-plot-by-showing-you-a-wet-girl subplot!”

“‘Big plot?’” Marcus mocked.

“Shut up! I couldn’t think of a better term.” I said, playfully jostling his elbow. He smiled at me, and then sped right through a yellow light. Dinner went swimmingly. Marcus could not take his eyes off me, and therefore had a terrible time ordering his food. It was really amusing. I began to really like him, and then felt bad because I was just planning on using him so that I wouldn’t be alone.

“I didn’t know my joke was THAT bad.” He said, smiling at me, and dipping his head down to catch my eyes.

“Oh I’m sorry, I just spaced out again. What was it?”

“Never mind. It wasn’t a very good joke anyways. I’m glad you missed it. You should be too.”

“Oh. Are you sure? I don’t want-”

“Don’t worry about it.” He chuckled, “You worry too much. And all you do is file. You worrywart. I think I even see some gray hairs.”

“Hey!” I said, and threw a crouton at him. A waiter raised an eyebrow at me and glared. “Let’s get out of here.” I said.

“Where to?” Marcus asked, surprised.

“How about my place?” I suggested.

Even more surprised, Marcus could only say, “Uhhhh… okay.” We drove in silence back to my apartment. He was so nervous and excited he actually began sweating. “Is it hot in here? Are you hot? Well, I mean, of course you’re hot. But I mean physically? Do you feel hot? I mean, uh… I’m turning on the air conditioning if that’s all right with you.” The AC started whirring and that was the only sound that was heard until we got back to the apartment. I unlocked the door and he was just taking off his tie when his pager went off. BEEP BEEP BEEP! BEEP BEEP BEEP! It scared us both half to death. He checked his pager, and swore loudly. “It’s the dog.”

“Your dog paged you?” I asked, wide-eyed.

“No,” he paused for a short laugh, “My dog’s been really sick and she’s at the vet, and they just paged me for some reason. I have to go. I really hate leaving you though.”

“That’s fine, Marcus. No problem. I mean she’s really sick and everything and I can totally understand.”

“Really? I mean, I could always just call.” He said, hesitant.

“No, it’s fine. Go already so you stop worrying!” I said, shooing him towards the door.

“I’ll call you then?”

“Yeah that’s fine! Go check up on your dog before I do!” I said, trying to give him a reassuring smile.

“Okay.” He replied and smiled back. He walked hurriedly down the hall and I closed the door with a soft click. I sighed and leaned against it.

“Just me and you, soul-eaters.” I said aloud. But tonight, they were quiet. I guess they had decided to leave me alone. Or maybe Marcus was right. Maybe I just needed some more excitement in my life and tonight was a healthy dose. But then as I brushed my teeth, I realized that it was too quiet. They were waiting for something. It frightened me to think of what they were waiting for. The noise of my toothbrush scraping my teeth echoed around the bathroom. It was then that I made up my mind not to be frightened. It was all a matter of will anyway. A trick of the mind. If I decided not to be frightened, then I wouldn’t be. I would not believe in faces smiling evilly using imprints on my forehead, I would not believe that phantoms are turning of my tv. I would not be scared. I would not believe in soul-eaters, and then even if they did exist, they could not harm me. They operate on fear. No fear, no soul-eaters, no consumed soul.

I went to bed chanting, “I will not be afraid.” In my head, and soon, I fell asleep. I woke up in the middle of the night, again having to go to the bathroom. I groaned. It was so much easier to be afraid when I was conscious. I sat up, and put my feet down on the carpet. It squelched. It was wet and soggy. I groped for my headboard to see if I had knocked over the glass of water I always kept there. I ran my hand into the wall, and it was wet, too. I put my palm on the wall, and I felt something warm and liquid run over it. I put my hand up to my face, trying to see it. I couldn’t. It was slightly thicker than water, and I stuck the tip of my tongue out to taste it. Whatever it was, it was salty, with a metallic taste, like quarters. I put my hand back on the wall and let the liquid flow over my hand again.

Whatever the soul-eaters’ trick was this time, it wasn’t working. I was actually soothed by the feel of liquid on my hand. But then I thought back. The soul-eaters didn’t actually do anything to me. Everything was just my imagination. Nothing actually smiled at me, and I turned off my own television. So what was going on with this liquid flowing down my walls? I got nervous, and remembered that I had to pee. I walked towards the door, the liquid now flooding the room. My hands slipped on the doorknob, and I quickly grabbed a shirt to open it. But it was locked, or jammed, or stuck, or something. I stepped back, the liquid now swirling around my calves. Was it flowing faster? I tried not to panic. I didn’t want the soul-eaters to get me.

I rubbed my hands, now that the liquid was dry. They felt crusty. A horrible realization swept over me. “Oh god, it’s blood.” I whispered. I started crying hysterically. “LET ME OUT!!!!” I screamed, and pounded on the walls. The blood splashed onto my face, and I stepped back, horrified. I tried to wipe it off, but only succeeded in wiping more blood onto myself. I stood near my bed, petrified. The blood kept swirling and swirling, and looked like the end of the world. It looked pitch black. It was like staring into a big black hole and fearing that I would get sucked in. As the blood filled the room up past my head, I started floating in it and I realized that this feeling, this black hole feeling was the soul-eaters. I took one big breath before the room filled completely. Then the soul-eaters came. They were partially solid specters that brushed up against me as I flailed uselessly in the blood. Finally, I let out a bubbly, bloody, scream, and blood and soul-eaters came rushing down my throat. It all felt familiar.

“Well that’s because it’s your own blood, Aubrey.” The soul-eater whispered. I floated there, unable to move as the soul-eaters did their disgusting work. Scraping and clawing at the inside of my chest, they rejoiced that they had gotten me. They feasted until my soul was oozing out them, and floating out into the blood. I guess a neighbor had heard me scream and pound, because soon, police were sent to my apartment. They kicked down the front door, and gingerly opened my bedroom door. The blood gushed out and soaked their uniforms. One of the officers got some in his mouth and retched in the bathroom. The others were just shocked as my body washed out with the last few gallons of blood. They stood there, silent and staring.

How do I know this? I witnessed it all. Eyes still open, as well as my mouth. I was not dead; my soul had just been scooped out and eaten. I could not move. I could not breathe. I could not even blink. I could think though, and that is the worst part. The soul-eaters leave your mind in mint condition. I was still conscious. And now I lay here, buried alive. Six feet underground in a heavy wooden coffin with concrete layered around me. The soul-eaters still whisper to me, taunting me. While I wait for everything to rot away and I can think no more. Look out for the soul eaters. Do not be afraid.