The Solitary

The internet has not been strong in the last week. It hasn't worked for longer than a few minutes at a time sporadically throughout this week.  Someone is coming to look at it tomorrow and I can't wait for it to be restored.

Not having a link to the outside world frightened me. It was strange, an eerie calm, but a menacing silence. It looms over me, the prospect of being alone. My fiancee has been out taking care of family matters throughout the week, so I have been alone. The dogs are blissfully unaware of the internet and what it means to me. They doze, snooze, dream, and snore. I, well, I sit and stare at the lights on the modem. I time my mouse clicks, and hope that I get enough internet to find out what is going on in the rest of the world. I also feel like I need the rest of the world to know what is going on with me, even if there aren't many reading these, I feel like at least someone is, and to be connected to someone, even in a vicarious way, or the reverse of, makes me feel like I am not so alone.

I feel confined in the house. The walls are a prison. Whenver I am out, it feels like the house itself is calling me back to it. Something feels off, and I don't know exactly what it is. There is a room here, and this room intrigues me. It is subtle, as would be the case in any house that has been built less than 40 years ago. The carpet doesn't match. The door knob has a strike plate. The closet is broken. There are words on the walls. They were painted over, but they are still visible. They haunt me. They beckon me.  The door to that room is closed and I'll be damned if I go in there. Maybe I'll ask my fiancee to take a video of the room. The house itelf, being as new as it is, contained several oddities when we got it,  including the lack of a smoke detector upstairs, the thermostat was gone, and large chunks of air conditioner piping were stolen. You could say that the previous owner took everything including the kitchen sink.....oh wait, he took that too.

The nightmares remain. I don't know if they are tied to the house, as I think personally that a house as young as this simply shouldn't be haunted or even mess with my head. I have the nightmares wherever I sleep and they don't focus on the house itself, it simply happens to be a common setting. I chalk this up to my mind placing myself in a familiar setting, and it doesn't get more familiar than home. The latest nightmare had a record playing in the background, and I was sitting in the chair in the TV room. I was looking out the window and the sky turned red, as it does every time I see it in the nightmares anymore. I got up and looked outside. Thunder struck and the record started skipping. All it said, constantly, in a loop, was, "the dark one comes". I am going to the store and buying caffeine. I don't want any Freddy Krueger style nonsense going on in my dreams. Well, Freddy did wear a festive sweater, so I'd cross him out of the dark category. They're just dreams. They'll pass, in time.