bad idea: Yesterday, a friend of mine called me. It was a John, an old buddy from high school. I hadn’t spoken with him for years, and we started to reminisce about all the crap we pulled in high school. A few days later I decided to call him back, and see if we could get together, maybe go fishing or something.

We talked on the phone for a while, and I said to him “Hey, maybe we should get together sometime.” He first said that that was a bad idea, but then he agreed. I asked him for address, copied it down, and told him I’d see him in the morning.

The next morning I arrived at the place he said he lived at. There was nothing but rubble there. It looked like there had been a fire there years ago, but nothing got cleaned up, and the plants never regrew. In the middle of the rubble, I found a old rotary style telephone on the floor, not connected to anything. Hurridly, I pulled out my cellphone and called his number.

The telephone on the floor rang.

Once.

Twice.

A third time.

I dropped my cellphone in shock, and knelt to grab the rotary telephone. A voice, drenched in distortion and hiss, said:

“I told you this was a bad idea.”


HELL ROOM:

I've had some strange realizations recently, /x/, and I'm not sure what they mean. Maybe I'm just confused, but this seems too odd and out of place to be me imagining things.

When I was young, I had a friend named Mike. We met in school. He was the new kid, I was the guy who wasn't asshole enough to be mean to the new kid. I introduced him to my circle of friends and everyone got along swimmingly.

Mike lived across the street from an old abandoned house. One night, on a whim, he and I went and tried the window by the front door. It was unlocked, and so Mike reached in and unlocked the front door, and we waltzed right in. The house was nothing special. Some abandoned furniture. One room, presumably the master bedroom, had a wall of mirrored panels. Oddly, most of the abandoned furniture appeared to belong to a baby in one of the side bedrooms. A crib, a bookshelf full of children's books, a clown lamp.

The strange thing about the baby's room was the heat. This was October, and quite chilly, and yet this room felt like an oven. I've always heard ghosts associated with coldness, but this was sweltering heat. It was like poking your face down in front of an oven. It was like the room had some invisible fire in it. If you stood in there too long, the room felt like overwhelming despair. It was tiny to begin with, probably only 8x8 sq. ft. But before long, the walls would seem to move in on you. Between that, the heat, and the odd emotional sensation experienced in the room, we quickly dubbed it "the Hell room."

We brought some friends over to see if we were crazy. We let them explore the house and then we brought them into the Hell room. Immediately, one of my friends took off his coat. "It's fucking hot in here," he said, and wiped the sweat that had accumulated in just moments from his brow.

"What the hell is this place?", another friend asked. "It's like a nursery in Hell." And so we had another name for the Hell room: "the Hell nursery". We'd go over and visit the house, usually hanging out in the master bedroom, which we'd dubbed "the mirror room." The creativity of 15 year olds.
And eventually, we tried to go over to the house and the window was shut and locked, a new deadbolt was on the door, and a note was taped over the screen door that read "TRESPASSING IS A CRIME." That ended our visits to the house, and we never did find out just what was up with the Hell room, or why those people abandoned the place like they did.

Now, the rest of my story is going to seem unrelated, but bear with me.

Around the same time we had taken to visiting this house, which was about a 3 month period, Mike had found a girlfriend. Shortly after we found the house locked to us forever, she found out she was pregnant on Mike's birthday. They had a shotgun wedding, both only 16, and a few months later they had a beautiful baby girl. Mike dropped out of school and got a full-time job to take care of her.

2 years later, his wife left him and took the baby with her. The only thing in life that Mike loved more than his wife was his baby girl. He was heartbroken. I remember visiting him, and for just a second, sitting in his living room and drinking a beer with him, I felt what we had all felt in the Hell room. Heat, smothering heat, and despair. Awful, horrible woe.

I went home, and the next morning I got a call from Mike's neighbor, who was a mutual friend. He was calling everyone in Mike's cell phone contact list, he said, because last night after I'd left, Mike had shot himself in the head.

I remember going to his funeral. I remember standing there, looking at my friends' tear-streaked faces, but none of us could speak a word. I remember watching his wife look guilt-stricken and walking around in a daze. The baby's look of innocence and confusion as she looked over her mother's shoulder at the goings-on about her.

Afterward, my friends and I stood to the side, in our black suits and dresses. None of us spoke for a while. We somberly found different directions in which to stare. Finally, someone spoke. "Do you guys remember the Hell nursery?" This was my friend James, the one who had named the room such.

We all nodded. But no one spoke. Finally, we all shuffled our separate ways and went home. I still have no idea why James mentioned that room then. I've asked since, but he doesn't remember saying anything of the sort, and when I finish my story I think you'll understand why.

Now, under normal circumstances, this would be the end of my story, and I don't think I'd bother posting it if it were, because it's a very personal story, and I am a private person by nature.

But this is so odd, I just can't understand it. I need to share it because I feel like it's something I need to divulge.

Recently, I've realized that Mike is still alive. Not that he came back from the dead. But Mike never died. He didn't fake his own death, of that I'm sure. But something changed. I remember the funeral, I do. I remember the grief and the rain that fell just after they put him in the ground. But then, it's like I remember something else, too. I remember that night I went and drank beer at his house. And I went home, and I went to bed, and I woke up... and everything went like normal. Mike re-married and now he has two other kids. Had two other kids. I don't know. Something's different now, and I can't figure out where it changed. But every time I try to think about where the disconnect comes in between what I remember and what happened, I just start crying and I can't stop until I quit thinking about it. I don't get it at all. Mike lives in Texas now. Or lived in Texas. Or something. I just don't know. I can pick up my phone and call him right now and he'll answer. He's on my Facebook, I see him posting status updates about what his life is like 1000 miles away. I wonder if he looks the same some times.

And then, just a few nights ago, I put these two events together in my mind. I called Mike and I said, "Mike, do you remember the Hell room?" I just heard breathing on the other end. And then he hung up.

I don't know what all this means, but I feel like it's right there, just beyond my grasp, but when I try to put the pieces together I can't stop crying.

And sometimes, when I keep crying for too long, when I keep trying to make it all fit... it starts to feel like the Hell room all around me.