I hear it. As I sit down facing my laptop and pondering about how I should start typing out my English essay, I hear the sound. It keeps hissing from a distance. I’m frightened to the point where my hands are literally shaking as I’m trying to type this down. Nope. I can’t do this. I need help, I need to call someone for help. There’s one problem. No one is at home. This house is usually a full house, but on this particular day, it is completely empty, except for one person. Me. I’m all alone. Well, this is really unfortunate. The noise gets louder and louder, but I try to ignore it. I keep typing and typing, but I’m getting really distracted and really annoyed and I think that I need to go out there and uncover the noise beyond my room and my house. While my hands shake with terror, my feet begin to change temperatures. Right now my feet feel extremely cold. Cold as ice. I stand up and reach into my closet for a pair of fuzzy socks. They’re still cold as ice, so I reached for a couple more. Six more fuzzy socks, and now my feet look like bear feet. The noise stops. I sit back on my chair and continued typing my essay. While in the process of typing, my fingers begin to hurt and I can feel my knuckles cracking, although I am not the one doing the cracking. I’m only a paragraph in and I’m already exhausted.
As I’m typing my eyes gaze towards my fingernails. They’re not painted. I need to paint them. Luckily for me, I don’t have to stand up. My nail polish selection is on my left and I can just drag myself along with my chair to grab it. There are so many colors to choose from! Maroon is a good color. I grab the maroon nail polish and start to paint my nails. I start painting my left hand, then I wait for it to dry in order to add another coat on top, while I paint my right hand.
It has been a few minutes and now my left hand is ready for another coat of nail polish. I started to paint over it for a smooth, glamorous look. I started to paint over, one finger from another. I move to my right hand and repeat the same process. After painting my fingernails, I wait for them to dry completely so I can continue typing my essay. I start typing again then I press tab for a new paragraph.
As I move on to my next paragraph on my word document, I begin to hear the noises again. This time, not so close. It sounds much softer and painful all at once, but not too close. Trying not to get distracted again, I reached for my headphones in order to listen to music. I played a track on Spotify at random and it plays “This Spiteful…” by Meshuggah. I have never heard of the song before. It sounds really weird, but I’m still listening to it anyways, at least it’s noisy enough to block off the sounds outside my house. It has no words, it’s like hard core rock music and that’s way out of my taste. Ssssss…sssss…ssss, I start to hear while in the middle of the song. The song suddenly stops. I check to see if my speakers are working. They are perfectly working. I turned up the volume, but no song, followed by tssss…sssss…ssss. Hopefully it’s not what I think it is. I can’t even mention the name here because of my indescribable fear of that animal, which is also in the title of the song, which is why I can’t mention the last word. The hissing noise is coming from my headphones. It’s not from the song because the song paused itself. As I’m trying not to think about it, my feet begin to sweat. I feel like they are literally burning on fire. I quickly remove all my fuzzy socks and threw them all around my room but one remains in place. I try to get it off but it fight back. IT WON’T COME OFF! Seriously what is going on here? I start to get cold. My whole body is cold, except for my feet, and I can’t manage to get these pair of fuzzy socks off! I don’t get it. I’m wondering why my feet are so hot while the rest of my body is freezing. I can’t bear the thought of going downstairs to grab some ice packs, but I need them.
I get up and begin to open my room door. I twist the door knob to the right and slowly peek out before I can walk out. I shut the door really fast immediately. What did I just see? This is strange. My heartbeat races but my feet are burning and I need some ice packs. I opened the door again, only this time, I shut my eyes. I start walking down the hallway, but I hit my head right in front of me. I opened my eyes really quick and nothing is blocking my way. I feel as if I ran into a glass window. I ignore that, but then on my right, there is a window, and it’s bringing in rays of blue and orange light, perfectly striped. My house is really cold, but when I try to walk through the rays of blue and orange light, it is extremely hot. Not burning hot, but ninety degrees in the sun kind of hot. I pass right through it and on my way, my feet started to cool down. I keep going anyways. I walk through the hallway connected directly to my room and turned left to descend the stairs–the steep, narrow stairs. I run down them, as I always do, and they lead me right to the kitchen.
Now that I’m standing in the middle of the kitchen, getting ready to walk over to the refrigerator and grab at least three ice packs, my feet cooled down and the rest of my body warmed up to the perfect temperature. The house is so quiet to the point where I can hear the sound of silence. It sounds as if someone is blowing the dog whistle. In about a minute of the complete silence, I started to hear the hissing sound again. I can hear it pretty close. I’m having a panic attack. I freeze, not temperature-wise, but physically, in the kitchen, unable to move a muscle. My head slowly begin to turn from side to side. The noise keeps going and I don’t know what to do. I walk out of the kitchen and into the dining room, step by step. I look around. Nothing. I slowly walked back to the kitchen and reached for my mom’s biggest chowder spoon.
I don’t know what the hell I’m going to use it for, but I have it, and that’s all that matters for now. I walk back to the dining room onto to the living room. I am probably moving slower than a sloth. My legs are trembling and moving in slow motion. My fuzzy socks are still on but I can’t feel them or think about them right now. As I move down the large living room, the noise keeps getting closer and closer. Nope. I turn back, dropped the chowder spoon, run all the way upstairs and lock myself up in my room. I can still hear the hissing noises. They are still getting closer and closer.
I have to fight this. In the future, I’d like to be able to say that I fought my biggest fear. So I unlock my door really quick, pass through the orange and blue stripped lights, run through the hallways, sprint downstairs, picked up the chowder spoon, went to the kitchen, grabbed a knife, and run through the dining room. But I stopped right there. I start to take baby steps into the living room. I walked through the living room in a slow motion, terrified. I am approaching the wooden golden-brown door. The hissing keeps going and I’m sure it’s coming from the front porch. I move towards the door.
As I move towards the door, my eyes moved from left to right, trying to decide whether I should peek through the window first before reaching out to the doorknob. I slowly place my hands on the doorknob, but I let go of it. I walk up to the window, open up the red curtains, and even brighter rays of blue and orange light flushed in and hit my eyes. They’re not coming from the sky. They are not coming from the ground either. They are between the sky and the ground. THERE. I see it. That animal. Next to it is the cutest, fuzziest cat. The hissing keeps going, but it’s not coming from That Animal, it’s coming from the cat. It hisses because it feels threatened and in danger. I believe that I’m the only who hear the hissing, although there is no one else in the neighborhood. It calls for my help. It has been calling for my help, but I can’t get any closer than this. ‘The window is the limit. As much as I would love to get out that door and kill that thing, snatch the cat, and keep it with me, I can’t. I looked on the floor of the front porch. There lies the same cat, but not so fuzzy. I’m sure that that animal has bitten this adorable cat. There is blood everywhere. The blood has been drained out of its body, leaving it empty. It tried to fight that animal, but it failed. It’s not breathing. It is just lying on the ground motionless. As I look up again, they both disappear. The orange and blue light disappears. Then I realize something. Even if I would’ve be able to help the cat, I was too late. It has been dead for a while now. All that heat I was feeling under my fuzzy socks was the heat the cast felt.
I could’ve helped it, but because of my fear of this huge, monstrous piece of striped snake, I left the cat alone to die. The action wasn’t cute, but the cat was. The snake definitely isn’t. I’m still scared though, so I run back upstairs to take a nap. And then I woke up. I’m not sure what just happened. I think I was dreaming or maybe I wasn’t. Who knows?
