|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Fri Apr 06, 2007 12:17 am
 Certs: | Fear | Terror |Name of Nightmare: Nippikortuyok (Nickname: Nippik)Fear: CrowdsHome: WandersNightmare’s Personality: Loud, obnoxious, cranky, has a rather rank smell, and has no sense of personal space… at all.Name of Human: Jim HalsteadHuman’s History: Used to own a small-town hardware store, but now he’s retired and has gone to live with his daughter and her family in the city. Still can’t get used to it. Becomes anxious when among lots of people, especially in small areas. After only a short time of living in the city, Jim has developed a phobia of crowds.Events:April 4, 2007: Acquired the fear. I decided upon a whim to enter this flatsale, and I got second pick. Lucky me, I even got to choose colors!
April 14, 2007: RP post I -- Jim. Meet Jim. Cindy, his daughter, brings him to a baseball game.
April 14, 2007: RP post II -- The Crowd. Jim starts hearing voices and feeling like he's in a crowd when he's not.
April 15, 2007: RP post III -- The Fear. Nippikortuyok torments Jim for a while before introducing itself and then leaving for the night.
April 19, 2007: RP post IV -- Alone? Ha! Hear Nippik's point of view. It makes Jim think he's in a rock concert.
April 26, 2007: Growth. Nippik's a Terror! Watch out Jim... It's time to visit the Nightscape. >3”And the crowd goes wild.”
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 10:58 am
[ Jim ]
I'm sitting in the ragged-edged armchair. Remote control in one hand, other hand nestled in the fur of the cat on my lap. The chair doesn’t belong here. It’s an old one, worn in, sagging, stained and faded to an even lighter blue every year. It belongs in an old house, a big family room. It belongs settled into the dents in the wood floor where it’s always been. It doesn’t belong in this sixth-story apartment. Leather couch. Glass-top coffee table. Cream-colored carpet. The chair doesn’t belong here and I don't either.
“Oh Daaaaad, guess what?”
I look at my daughter, Cindy, as she comes in the room. She just came from the office. You can tell because she’s got her office clothes on still, with the blazer and the skirt. She looks real sharp. It’s hard to believe it when you think of where she came from. Or when you look at me, me with my t-shirts and flannel and jeans that I’ve had for years and years. I smile, tired. “What is it, hun?”
“One of the girls at the office has a couple of extra tickets to the game on Friday, and… she offered them to us! If you want to go.” She’s grinning but it’s kind of hesitant. Like she knows what I’m going to say but hopes to God I’m not going to say it.
“Aw… Cindy, you know I don’t like… you know…”
Her face falls. I swallow hard. I love baseball. She knows it. She just wants me to be happy. I feel bad. I like watching it on TV, but she’s taken me to a game before. There’s a lot of people there. It’s loud and crowded and I feel like they’re all pressing in on me, like they’re all jabbing their elbows into my space, and breathing their bad breath, and yelling like my ears aren’t right in front of them. It’s not any fun. It’s kind of scary. But Cindy just wants me to be happy. Doesn’t take long for me to say I’ll go with her. I never could refuse any of my kids. It was my wife who was the stricter one.
Until Friday I don’t worry about it. Tell myself it’ll be good. Spend some time with my girl, time I hardly ever get to spend, and watch the team play. It’ll be all right.
We get to the stadium and it’s like a box full of bees. You can hear the buzzing of all the people talking, even from outside. I’ve got a jacket on and the sun isn’t quite down yet, but I shiver anyway. Cindy looks at me like I’d better not be chickening out now, though also kind of worried, so I smile at her. She smiles back and takes my arm. We go in.
It’s loud. That’s the first thing. Loud. All those people’s voices, so many different voices but all at once so it sounds like one big voice. One huge loud voice with a thousand different tones mashed together in it and it never calms down, never quiets, never has to pause to breathe.
I gulp the sticky air and watch the ground as we walk. Cement, grime, trash. Spilled soda. Feet flashing past on either side, swerving away so they don’t walk into us.
We’re in a kind of tunnel leading to the bleachers, and the huge loud voice is echoing around down here. Like ghosts, appearing for a second on one side to laugh like a woman, and then appearing from above to yell like a man, then behind to cry like a kid, then on another side to be the hot dog vendor shouting, and another side to be a group calling someone’s name to get his attention. It’s one voice and it’s many voices at the same time. One voice with many faces. Many faces with one voice. I run a hand over my head and wipe sweat off my face. I can’t think straight right now.
Then we go out into the stadium. Cindy leads me along by the arm and finds a seat. Good thing, because I wouldn’t have been able to move on my own. All those people. They’re a wall on the opposite side of the stadium. All of them moving around on their own so the wall wriggles around like crazy. It’s the same as the voice. A thousand different people all moving at once so that they’re one thing that never calms down, never holds still, never has to pause to breathe.
We’re sitting on the hard metal bench and that grounds me a bit. But I can still feel them everywhere. No one is touching me but I feel like they’re all pressed up against me. Trying to crush me. They’re laughing, real happy as they crush me.
“Dad? Dad. Hey. Dad.”
Cindy’s shaking me by the shoulder. I look up at her groggily.
“I asked if you want something? I’m going to get a drink.”
She’s going to leave me alone? Here with all the people crushing me? I can’t breathe. Can’t breathe. I want to go with her. I don’t want to be alone in the crowd. But I can’t breathe. Kind of dizzy already. I probably shouldn’t get up. What if I pass out or just fall over somewhere? Better to stay here than to walk around like this. Oh yeah she asked a question. I blink, trying to remember it, then fumble for an answer.
“Uh… yeah… How ‘bout a beer?”
I’m sure going to need it.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 6:31 pm
[ The Crowd ]
The game’s going okay. I try to focus on it and not all the people. It’s not all that bad I guess. There’s something exciting, even, about the volume of noise that all of them can make when one of the boys gets across home plate. Cindy’s happy, anyway. She screams along with the best of them, clinging to my arm and bouncing up and down.
I’d still rather be watching this from my old armchair.
The sun sets and the sky’s a dirty pink color. The lights high overhead are bright and they seem to restrict the world to the inside of the stadium as everything else fades into dimness. We’re in the last inning and we’re ahead by a lot, so everyone’s starting to get jittery.
It’s not a surprise when we win, but for me the reaction sure is. The stadium explodes. It’s like an attacking beast. People throw things and leap in the air and fling themselves on each other, all the while screaming with voices that sound like they’re being strangled. Someone bumps into me and loses his balance and falls over at my feet, laughing crazily as some people drag him back up and he hasn’t even had time to look at me. Everything is white in the lights with dark black shadows underneath. People are melted together into a mottled white and black writhing mass that screams and laughs and whistles and cheers and screams. It flickers all around me so I can’t keep an eye on it. I keep getting bumped into. It’s shoving me and shaking me; even Cindy’s part of it with her arms around my neck. It’s pounding in my head and it’s making the whole stadium sway and spin. The crowd. I’m covered with sweat, I can’t breathe, I can’t move but can’t stop shaking. I can’t see and I can’t hear because it’s overwhelming everything. It’s like it’s gotten into my head and filled me up so there’s nothing else except… the crowd.
I don’t even know how we ended up outside. Cindy’s talking to me. I don’t know what she’s saying. There’s air out here, though, and the noise is farther away and less condensed. More conversational as people disperse into the night. I’m leaning on the car and she’s hovering around.
“You okay, Dad? What happened in there?”
What can I say? “I’m all right, hun. I’ll be all right.”
We get in the car and she’s maneuvering around the streets. It’s slow going. I’m slouched against the window pretending to sleep. Really I’m trying to lean my head against the car as hard as I can so that the engine vibrations drown out the memory. I keep flashing back. It’s like there are people all around still. I can hear them. They sound excited and glad and ominous. Distant and at the same time right next to my ear. I can feel their breath. I shrink into my jacket and if I didn’t know any better I’d say that someone had just bumped into me, or maybe the back of my seat… And I hear a laugh right behind me. I whip my head around, terrified of looking and terrified of not looking.
Cindy glances over her shoulder instinctively. “What is it?”
“Nothing. I think I fell asleep and was dreaming.” The first part is true, anyway. There’s nothing in the back seat. The lights from the stadium filter in through the windows and I can see that it’s empty. But I know I wasn’t sleeping. And I wasn’t dreaming.
I hear a woman’s voice distinctly. It seems like she’s somewhere down in front of me. She’s shouting. “Hey, watch it! Watch where you’re going!”
Nothing in front of the car. I expect to see a woman there, her brow furrowed and mouth turned down, scolding, but there isn’t anything. Cindy doesn’t react to the voice. She does react to how nervous I am and how I keep looking around like a madman. She starts talking. About work, about her son Trevor, about some book she’s been reading. When I hear her voice I can’t really hear the others. Her voice makes us seem alone in the car. Which we are.
The crowd is gone, at least. The fear is still there. I don’t think that’s going anywhere anytime soon.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Apr 15, 2007 12:03 am
[ The Fear ]
That night while Jim lay in his bed, trying to sleep, he heard something.
He slept in a small den or office that had been converted into a guest bedroom when he retired and moved to the city to live with Cindy. There were boxes stacked along one wall -- leaning towers of slowly softening cardboard filled with all the belongings that had fit nicely in the sprawling old farmhouse, but that did not have a place in the apartment.
Here there was always background noise, mostly that of cars punctuated by far-off sirens, but it was quiet noise because they were insulated by the five floors beneath them.
This was nothing like that.
Jim clutched the blanket to his chin with one hand and grappled with the lamp with the other, panicking in the darkness. Finally he found the switch and calm yellow light rose in the room. Gulping quickly he scanned the stacks of boxes and their long shadows across the walls. Only his eyes dared to move.
Maybe I’m going crazy, he thought. For the sound that he’d heard was the voice again, the same voice. The voice of the crowd. The voice with a thousand faces. All ages and genders and emotions, far away and close up and in all directions. Mostly the buzz of talking and laughing, some shouting, some children crying. It only came occasionally and he never understood exactly what the words were and he could never tell where it was coming from or if it was coming from anywhere… or if it was coming from in his mind…
He lay in his bed, alone in the room, and he felt something bump into him. And he heard a young man’s voice, lazy and confident.
“Yo, dude, I’m walking here!” A sigh of disgust and then it was gone.
Jim cried out. “Go away!” But the cry didn’t come out as a cry; it was more of a whine. Tears were in his eyes. “Please,” he whispered.
“I ain’t going nowhere.” It was an incredulous, sassy voice, belonging to a woman with a New York accent. “I have just as much right to be here as you do, buddy.”
“Mommy!” a small child blubbered through its uncontrollable wailing. “Mommy! Mommy!”
Jim screwed his eyes shut but found it unbearable and opened them again. The blanket under which he huddled seemed to move around him. It jostled him like the crowd had at the baseball game. His bones were locked in fear and his body was pushed roughly about like a rock that is kicked as people walk past it. Stop it, stop it, stop it, he pleaded in his mind. He was choking on his tongue and couldn’t say it out loud.
A businessman on his cell phone swept past. A beggar clawed at him. A group of girls sqeezed by but refused to move out of their shoulder-to-shoulder line. A mother ran over his foot with a stroller. A constant stream of “Woah!” “Hey!” “Oops!” “Watch it!” and various inarticulate mumblings and exclamations accompanied the movement.
The crowd was stampeding by and he couldn’t get out of its way.
Finally, somehow, he managed to move. He wrestled the blanket off and threw it on the floor and sat on the bed, panting and weeping. The cloth landed in an inert, innocent heap. The voices were silenced.
He couldn’t do anything but whimper softly and clutch his aching head. What was happening to him?
But… more importantly…
What was happening to the blanket!?
He watched in horror as he was shown clearly that he had not imagined the movement. The blanket was twitching on the floor as if something was kicking its way out of the folds. The frustrated voice of an older man, sounding similar to Jim, cursing under its breath, came from its direction. It was as if there was an invisible man jabbing at the cloth with his foot. Then suddenly the voice snapped, “What’re ya lookin’ at?” and even though Jim couldn’t see the man’s face, he could imagine it, and he could tell that it was scowling at him with bristly brows lowered over beady eyes. He scuttled backwards against the headboard of his bed. “What are you looking at?” the voice asked again and it was obviously coming closer. But it wasn’t an old man now. It was a curious, suspicious girl with a slight accent that Jim couldn’t place.
“Who are you people?”
“That is an intriguing question,” the voice mused, now soft and academically precise. “First because it makes careless assumptions, and second because I believe that you already know the answer.”
Jim’s chest ached with the pounding of his heart and the burning of his lungs. “I… I don’t know what you’re talking about…”
Suddenly something surrounded him. A cloud. A fog. Constricting, suffocating. Heavy. Invisible. Saturating. Overwhelming. Reeking of cigarette smoke and fast food and bad cologne and chewing gum and urine and hair spray and the sweat of many warm bodies in the same room. He gagged. Bile speared the back of his throat.
Then it swooped away from him, jerking the mattress sharply up like someone stumbling into his back.
“Oh! Excuse me!” it sing-songed sweetly in a woman’s honeyed voice. “Didn’t see you there.”
He coughed and tried to breathe and not fall off of his bed. He couldn’t speak. Even if he could, he wouldn’t have known what to say. Then someone was breathing near his ear. He pulled away. Something tugged at the hem of his shirt. He pulled away. The voices were everywhere again.
Another childlike tug on his shirt and he heard a small voice calling him. “Mister? ‘scuse me, mister?”
“What?” he gasped, his own voice splintered by tears.
“You asked who we are?” A shy man with a southern drawl. “Well we’re not ‘we.’ We’re ‘I.’ I’m Nippikortuyok.”
Now a grandmotherly voice crinkled into a smile. The blanket was flicked up off of the floor and spread neatly over his bed. “Pleased to meet you, very pleased. You can call me Nippik for short. Now don’t you fret; I’ll be back before you know it. You won’t even have time to miss me.”
And it was gone, leaving Jim’s heartbeat and his heaving breaths the only sounds in the bedroom.
But fears, they don’t truly leave. We can be distracted from them. We can forget them when we are out of the presence of what creates the fear in our hearts. But the fear is still there. Just waiting… waiting for another chance.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 2:36 pm
[ Alone? Ha! ]
So I’m watching this dude sit there, right? He’s seriously so boring. I can’t even stand it. He barely ever goes anywhere, you know? He sits there in that chair. All. The. Time. And he’s totally by himself in the house too. Like, how am I supposed to resist? If I don’t do something, I’m going to die of boredom. No really. I’m that bored. I’ve got to, like, go over and talk to him, for at least a little while. Can you blame me?
“Good sir,” I intone gravely, with much deliberation and seriousness of purpose, “Why must you insist upon being such a complete and utter dullard?”
His reaction instills in me a sense of pure joy. As I predicted, he stiffens his already rather stiff joints, and his eyes widen as if he hopes that it will help him see me. I chuckle throatily to myself at the very idea.
“You’re back?” he whispers.
I glide closer to him so that he might benefit fully from the olfactory evidence of my presence. As the expression on his face morphs from terror to disgust, my spirits are significantly lifted, for there are few things that I find quite as satisfying as this – an unadulterated reaction to the horror that I am capable of instilling. I respond simply to his quivering query, my tone betraying my pleasure at his discomfort. “Quite.”
No? I think it was ‘no’. He mumbled something. I couldn’t hear. I flick closer and try to hear. That bothers me. It’s irritating. If you want to say something, then say it! Just say it! How hard is that? Why say something that no one can hear? Speak up or shut up. Honestly. “I can’t hear you,” I snap at him. I whip around his head. I’m just trying to hear what he’s saying. “Sorry. Didn’t catch that. You’ll have to repeat it.” And again! He keeps mumbling! I’m louder this time. “You’ll have to speak up. Did you hear me? Are you deaf? You’re deaf, aren’t you.”
This is ridiculous. I give up. He’s gotten me angry. I want to scare him. He wants to be alone? Ha! I’ll show him. Alone? He’ll never be alone again.
I start to rush around the room, screaming, changing my voice so fast that it runs together into that voice he dreads: the voice of the crowd. The voice of thousands. I pick up my pace. A different voice in every location suspended in the air, a different face in the crowd for the man to imagine. I move fast enough that I might as well be in all of those different locations at once. Every time I pass him I shove his clothes against him sharply and knock his chair around to mimic a dense, rowdy crowd.
He’s paralyzed with terror.
I can’t help it; I laugh. And all the voices laugh with a malicious gaiety. All of them. At once. At a volume that surely must be ringing in his ears.
Let him suffer.
~
No longer is Jim alone. He’s one of thousands. They’re waiting at a rock concert. At any second it could start. The others are mostly teenagers. They’re screaming like the crowd at the baseball game… multiplied by ten. Everyone is standing, pressed together. The crowd wriggles like a net full of fish as it’s dragged from the ocean.
And then they are all laughing and they aren’t teenagers anymore… they’re… maybe they’re demons…
The doorbell rings.
Silence. Stillness. Jim’s ears are full of an angry roaring hum and his heart is thrumming violently against his bones. He slumps in his chair completely dazed. The doorbell rings again and then someone knocks. Eventually he can hear it. Eventually he collects the presence of mind to want to go answer it, knowing that he is the only person in the apartment right now – Cindy and her husband are at work and the kids are at school. Eventually he regains control of his body so that he can sit up and breathe. Eventually he can speak and so he says weakly, “Coming.” Eventually he gathers the strength to stand up and shuffle to the door.
It’s one of the neighbors. She is frustrated and asks him to please keep it down, whatever he’s doing, watching TV or whatever, because there are some people who are trying to sleep you know, and it’s common courtesy. He watches her talk. She sounds far away as if he was listening to her from underwater.
After a time he realizes that she’s left and he closes the door and leans on it, shaking his head. He clears his throat and jabs his sleeve at the tears seeping into his wrinkled skin.
His voice leaks out of the tears. “… Going crazy…”
He gives up on trying to stop crying and wanders into the kitchen. He gets out a beer and sits at the table. “Insane…”
And he does what he thinks anyone in his position would do: he drinks until the world doesn’t look so bad.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
