The pain woke me up.

The feeling of being repeatedly stabbed in the stomach with a dull butter knife would probably wake anyone up quickly. However, when I woke up I found that I was not being brutally murdered with a poorly kept utensil. I was just experiencing the most painful cramps I had ever had.

"Mom," I said weakly, hoping she'd be able to hear me. I looked around and saw my alarm clock, which I'm positive I hadn't set up before collapsing, telling me it was already noon. Of the next day. Meaning I slept for twenty-four hours straight.

Great I thought to myself She's at work by now.

The only reason she wasn't at work yesterday was because she took the day off for the move. We both knew that it would be back to business as usual the next day. What we didn't expect was my sudden need to lie in the fetal position on top of a clumsily spread sleeping bag holding my stomach in pain while desperately hoping that it would just end by itself or I'd pass out again for another twenty-four hours.

After what seemed to be an eternity, which was really just five minutes when I looked at the clock again, I found that the pain was coming in waves that were steadily getting less intense. I waited for the pain to subside until it was comfortable enough to sit up. Then kneeling. Then standing. It took about twenty minutes to get to that point, but at least the pain was going away. Slowly, but going away nonetheless.

It still hurt as I weakly staggered downstairs to get some water. I found that it was far easier going down the stairs than it had been going up the previous day. This time I was also far more aware of my surroundings. Every footfall was a pitifully dull thud against hollow wood instead of a painfully loud creak. A sound that I had grown completely numb to as it was the ongoing background noise of whenever I moved around the shack that we called my old house.

I'd never even know if someone was in the house with me, I thought to myself. A strange feeling of dread started to crawl over me. As if I was being observed by some unknown entity. Something that wasn’t friendly, but would try its best to convince you otherwise. I was immediately glad that the sound of my footsteps wouldn’t alert anyone in the house to my presence. But on some level I knew that didn’t matter, whatever it was already knew I was trapped.

Once I got downstairs, to my relief, I found that the living room was the same as the day before, filled with boxes and various pieces of furniture waiting to be put away properly. A large red and blue carpet was rolled up and propped against a wall next to the only piece of furniture that was completely set up: The bookshelf. Unsurprisingly, the boxes were completely disorganized. We didn't stack them in any neat and orderly fashion, we just put them down randomly hoping to get everything in quickly. That didn't really matter though since I was planning to just go to the kitchen and get some water.

Have we even unpacked the cups yet? I thought to myself. Seeing all of the boxes unopened and nothing on the counter, that would probably be a no. But I had been surprised this morning by my alarm clock actually being set up. So I walked over to the cupboard just to check if we had just put them in their proper place. Still nothing.

When I turned around I saw a single glass on the counter next to an opened box.

"Huh," I muttered to myself, "how did I miss that walking in?"

At that moment I didn't particularly care. The pain was starting to come back. I figured I'd get a drink and go back up upstairs to lie down again. Maybe the couch if I couldn't bring myself to walk upstairs.

I put the mystery glass under the faucet and water immediately started pouring out. Usually I would be concerned that I hadn't even touched the handle, but the pain suddenly spiked. My vision went dark and when it came back, I was in the living room again.

I fell to my knees and looked right at the floor. The fuzzy red and blue floor. The rug? It was laid out already? How? I just saw it rolled up against the wall! Or did I? I did just black out next to the sink. Did I start unrolling it and forget?

Suddenly the pain traveled from my stomach to my head. The dull butter knife became sharp daggers stabbing at my temples and in between my eyes. It started building in intensity as if it were making up for the brief reprieve I had experienced since walking downstairs. As the pain kept increasing so did the dread. As if the entity that I felt watching me was becoming more intrigued.

Then it got weird. Well, weirder. I felt like I was being lifted up in the air as I saw all of the boxes and furniture doing the same from my peripheral. I thought I was having some kind of vivid fever dream. Everything started spinning around me if it was all caught in a whirlwind. It kept gaining momentum, faster and faster, and the pain in my head grew greater and greater.

"STOP!" I shrieked.

And it did.

I fell to the floor. I was exhausted again, even more so than yesterday, but the pain had just vanished. It felt like the entity had temporarily withdrawn, satisfied with what it saw. I passed out right where I landed.

● ● ●

I came to face first on the rug.

Something was definitely going on. The pain had completely left, but it felt as if someone had stuffed my head full of cotton and someone else was trying to spin it into yarn. I was aware that I had passed out again, but I had no idea for how long. Had another day passed? The lighting outside felt like it was earlier in the morning than when I had woken up.

I lifted my head to look around again. I thought for sure something was wrong with my eyes. Everything, and I mean everything, was set up or put away. Chairs, the coffee table, the couch, all the furniture was put exactly where I would want it. All the boxes were emptied and flattened in the corner while their contents were all neatly put away on the bookshelf or on the table.

As I stood up to go see if the kitchen was the same way, I had to grab the couch for support. I didn't notice while on the floor lying still, but I had almost completely lost my sense of balance. The room was starting to spin. Metaphorically of course, not the whirlwind I had experienced before I passed out.

The couch was about as high up has I could get myself off the ground without falling flat on my face. So I sat there to wait for everything to stop moving. Slowly but surely my disorientation was fading. I had my bearings back, but my head still felt like it was filled with tissue paper. What's happening to me?

The entity that I had felt watching me was definitely gone. I couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or a bad thing. It felt like a good thing, but I also really didn’t want to be alone. I also couldn't really tell if I was alone. The entity was gone but a warmer, kinder, presence felt close by. Another, almost scattered presence was farther off. Not malicious, and not unfriendly either, but it felt like something I should be wary of regardless. Neither were as strong of a feeling as the last entity, like they were both farther away or didn't have the same level of power. It almost felt like both were getting closer, but I couldn't figure out which would find me first. 

My uncertainty didn’t extend to one simple fact though: My mother still wasn’t home. Did something happen? There’s no way she would have just let me sleep face first on the floor if she had come back last night, if I had been down here over night.

I didn't have any more time to think about it because at that moment, there was a knock on the door.