So, I’m in a bit of a sticky situation.
Some quick, basic background information to help you along and then we’ll get started with the problem - Four months ago I moved to the west from the northeast, mainly because I hate the cold, but also because the city happened to house the college of my dreams. This means that my family currently lives literally across the country from my tiny, underfurnished apartment. My roommate Kate likes to stay out all night and drink. She pays half the rent and respects the tradition of pajama/movie night Thursday, though, so I keep her around.
Anyway, about two weeks into my new life, I finally found a decent coffee shop to invest my time in. Seriously. Perfect. Not a big business, not over-busy in the morning, not so hot that it scalds my tongue every goddamn sip… It’s the perfect cup of joe, alright?
Not kidding - the next day, while I am still riding the high of this glorious discovery, I find out a homeless tramp lives in the adjacent alleyway.
And he takes a liking to me.
It’s not terrible at first. I’m not usually one to strike up a conversation with strangers. I mean, I’m a thin, seriously lanky, pale dude, with about as much muscle as you would expect a small kitten to have. And I respect the whole “teach people not to attack instead of teaching someone to defend themself” ideology but there was still no way I wasn’t considering self defense.
Turns out I didn’t need it. Although he looked off-putting, the vagrant who introduces himself to me and asks what my favorite book is (The Once and Future King, T.H. White) seems like a totally harmless, if not mildly touched, old man.
I don’t remember much about our first meeting, but something sticks about him telling me I looked lost, an awkward laugh on my part, and him then going on to proclaim that my hair was “too light” (I’m a natural blond) and “styled weird” (meaning messy). Despite this, he miraculously grew on me pretty quickly. In fact, more often than not, I would buy him a coffee in the morning too, and he would walk with me to my bus stop. The first few times I was slightly worried about him taking note of this crucial location to my life, but he never once made a fuss when it was time for him to leave. We had some pretty great conversations on our block-walks.
We’ll call him Al, because even though I’ve tried, no matter what, I still can’t bear to leave him nameless.
Al and I talked about a lot of things. We had a lot of similar views about the world. He said that he liked to go to the center of town and listen to the music young people played there. He said he liked to go to bookstores with the change he saved up. The only time I ever asked him why, he said, “This world, well- it’s a shitty one, son. No two ways about it. But in a bookstore, there’s millions of worlds that are slightly less shitty, or where it’s equally shitty, but the characters get better hands that I never got. So I like to share that time with them.” Hearing him talk about the things he loved was one of the greatest pleasures of my life. His playful eyes lit up and he got a small smile on his partially-hidden-by-beard lips. He looked away to the left as he spoke slightly softer.
"What’s your all-time favorite book, Al?" I asked him after that.
He looked at me from the side of his eyes and smiled beneath that long, mangy beard of his. “It hasn’t been written yet,” he confessed. “But I’ll know when I find it.”
"Okay, well then, what’s your favorite, er, experience you’ve ever shared so far?"
He turned to face me full on, then. He looked me dead in the eyes and said softly, “This one.” It was the first moment I was sure beyond a doubt that I liked Al. I don’t know why I never invited him back to my house for a shower and a sandwich or something. I know Kate wouldn’t have minded. I think, at the time, I convinced myself that it was because of all my schoolwork, or that my budget was too low to care for him the way he needed it. I was selfish, but Al was nice. He never asked or imposed or even insinuated that he would like to see where I lived or use my phone.
And then, a month and a half later, out of the blue he stops showing up. I ventured as far into his alleyway as I dared the day it happened, but his treasured sleeping mat and plastic bag of books were nowhere to be found. I bought him a coffee and left it at the mouth of the alley just in case I had missed him, and I took my walk to the bus stop. It felt pretty weird to be alone. The bus regulars whom I had never spoken to actually asked me where Al was.
The next day the coffee was still there. I checked - the cup was full and cold. So, being a college kid in America and battling serious budget issues already, I couldn’t buy a coffee to waste again. I did check around the city’s homeless shelters, food pantries, and even the local emergency room as soon as I got a chance, though. Nobody had ever heard of anybody remotely like Al.
So, eventually, I let it go.
He must have moved streets. I didn’t let myself think he’d died. I managed to convince myself that he was set up outside the biggest library in town, where the nice librarians provided him with literature to his heart’s content. Or that he had found someone better than me, who would be able to take him in the way I wished I could. Eventually, college life caught up to me, and Al was pushed to the back of my mind by papers and projects and readings.
Until he turned up again, just as suddenly as he’d disappeared. Just before I stopped in to get my daily coffee, someone grabbed my sweatshirt from behind and pulled me into the alleyway. It wasn’t a friendly pull. I recognized him immediately, but it didn’t stop me from nearly pissing myself. He was scary now, something changed in him, and his usually calm and cheerful brown eyes were closer to black; they were cold and unforgiving, like the northeast winters I had fought so desperately for years to escape.
I’ll always remember what he yelled into my chest, like he wasn’t all the way there, until the day I die, word for word, even if it didn’t make any sense at the time.
"You think you’re better than me? Forget a day, we’ll see who pays. You better remember, boy, or you’ll meet your maker!"
At this point, even though I almost considered this guy to be like an uncle or something, I was seriously planning a way to get to my phone and call Kate to come save me. She’s easily the most badass person I know, and the person who tolerates my inability to do any sort of laundry the best. She would be the one to get me out of there.
But just like that, he let me go, and he half-stumbled, half-ran down the alleyway into almost blackness. I lost sight of him pretty quickly, and eventually the hacking coughs that took hold of him subsided into the busy street noises behind me. Even though I wasn’t entirely sure that my pants were still clean, though I could hear my knees clacking together, and though he had done whatever he did to me, I still considered him a friend and called after him. I went as far as the second dumpster before my flight response got the better of me and I ran back to my bus stop.
That night I practically shook for an hour as Kate patiently listened. She told me, “I know you cared about him. But he was probably nearing the end anyway. I’m sorry that you couldn’t do more for him, but you made his last few months really special.”
"No. No, I’m going to hell," I said resolutely. "I could have helped him, but I didn’t."
"Don’t say that," Kate scolded me, and she pushed a cup of tea closer. "Al was a good friend of yours, and he knew it. These things are unfortunate, but they happen. We should actually probably call someone and tell them about him. If he’s out on the streets alone, he could hurt someone or himself."
"Someone meaning the police," I said miserably. "Kate, if he wanted to hurt me, he would have hurt me. Can we please leave him be? I’ve ruined his life enough already. He’d never forgive me if I was the one who got him put in a shelter."
"You still have to think of what’s best for h- God damn it, I’ll get it. Wait right here," Kate said. She got up from the dining room table and walked across the small apartment to answer the persistently knocking door. I could hear her voice as if she was still sitting next to me. "What?" A mumbled reply. "No, he’s not here." Referring to me. I didn’t turn around. "If I say he’s not here, he’s not here. Fuck off."
She hit the door shut, locked it, and a moment later was back at the table.
"Who was that?" I asked. I still remember my hopeless voice, and the dead, sinking weight in my stomach. I felt absolutely terrible, like my stomach had been replaced with a grimy lake. I didn’t want any more tea.
"I don’t know. Some guy in a suit. He asked for you. I told him to fuck off."
"I heard."
That was the end of that conversation. We had pajama/movie night that night. I tried to push Al to the back of my mind, but only ended up thinking about him more.
The next day was the same. And the day after that. And the day after that. Kate was staying nights home because she knew I wasn’t okay. I felt bad for keeping her, but at the same time, I knew that she didn’t mind. We ordered take out and watched bad sitcoms and bad romcoms and I tried not to think about Al.
I was nearing the end of Thanksgiving break, most of which I had spent in my pajamas, when someone knocked on the door again. Kate didn’t usually forget her keys, so I had to assume it was an ax murderer politely requesting entry.
It was a guy in a suit, and long story short, he came to question me about Al. He asked a lot about what Al was like, did I think he was dangerous, what had happened the last time I saw him, blah, blah, blah. And I’ll be honest here - I wish I had lied. The irony of that statement is not lost on me.
I wish I had told the guy that the last time I had seen Al, he was totally normal. But I said what had happened, and when I asked what all of this was about, he told me that it was an investigation. Someone had witnessed Al vandalizing a local shop and recognized him from a bus stop. Vaguely, I felt something pick at the back of my mind. News of broken windows at a Barnes and Noble a few roads down.
"Al couldn’t have done it," I assured the guy immediately, and then went into a long, hysteric rant about his compassion for books, about how he treats them better than he treats his clothes or his hair. The guy had to sit me on the floor of my doorstep because I told him not to come in. He kneeled in front of me from outside and said that he didn’t have any more questions. This is when the story becomes two things: fuzzy, and weird.
That night, Kate wasn’t home. She was finally trusting me alone again. I decided not to tell her about my episode because she hadn’t had a good party in almost a week, and she was no good to me drunk anyway. So I curled up in my comforting pajamas and I kept the TV on for light and background noise as I internetted aimlessly with my laptop. I had leftover pizza for dinner and took a long shower. It was nearly two in the morning when I decided to lay down and try for some shut eye. I very specifically remember leaving a glass of water on the counter for Kate. I did it every night she went out, and she always drank it if she made it home.
I chalked up my bad feeling as a result of my breakdown. There was something like the feeling of lead coated inside my chest as I laid down that night, trying to get to sleep in the darkness. I couldn’t get the image of Al breaking into Barnes and Noble out of my head, even though I knew it was entirely fictitious, the fuck-started offspring of my own worry. The thing that really bothered me was how clearly I could picture it. Him, hunched over, breaking the windows outside of the shop and standing in the glass, trying to get in.
And then I heard the sound of breaking glass, like someone had broken a window or dropped a glass on the floor. I nearly pissed myself jerking up, because I had been mostly engulfed by an uneasy sleep, and entirely sure that I was alone.
I was out of bed before my coward brain could override my legs. I halted at the door, listening intently. I began counting. The second I got to five, a huge bang issued on the door, like a sumo wrestler had punched my bedroom door as hard as possible. I leaped a full foot in the air, landing back in my bed with the covers half-on, and yelped the loudest I have in my entire life. The door, though it didn’t even have a locking mechanism, stayed shut. Whoever it was obviously knew I was here, but they were just messing with me.
That was almost what made it the most terrifying. Kate was the only one with keys to the apartment, so it couldn’t have been any of my school friends playing a joke on the social recluse, unless they were willing to go so far as to force the door for a stupid prank. Maybe Kate had given them the keys. But all of these thoughts come after. At the moment of the occurrence, my only thought is impolite ax murderer.
I hear the front door creak open. Have they left?
No. Kate’s home. She’s talking on the phone. And drunk.
"Oh, good, he’s asle… what the fuck? No, there’s shit on my floor. Hold on let me turn on the light.”
I vividly remember my internal conversation with her.
Don’t turn on the light, dear God, Kate, don’t turn on the light, there’s someone in the house.
The crack beneath my bedroom door lights up yellow. Kate continues her call.
"That’s better. Fuck, where’s my water? He usually leaves water fo…"
It’s on the… shit.
"Oh my God, there’s a broken glass on the… okay, let me call you back."
I was opening the door before Kate could wake me up and call me out. She was obviously drunk, but probably a lot more sober than she was when she had walked through the door.
"Is that glass broken?" I asked.
"Yeah, there’s water on the wall and… everywhere."
She was right. I didn’t have to fully cross the room to see the splashed and sprayed marks all over the white wall and framed painting of our group of friends at the local park. The water was soaking into the rug, where a pile of glass shards littered the area.
"Step back, Kate, you’re drunk. I’ll clean it. Go to bed." My voice was shaking.
"Okay. Can I have water?"
"Yeah," I said slowly, before I remembered that whoever the hell had banged on the door and thrown the glass could very well still be here, hiding in the bathroom or in Kate’s room. "Just wait on the couch."
"What’s wrong?"
"I don’t know. I think someone might be in here."
"Should I call the police?"
"…Yeah."
I heard Kate on the phone with them as I got another glass from the cupboard and filled it in the sink. Ax murderer in my house or not, her care was my priority, and a police unit was far more likely to take a serial killer down than a pasty college kid. I was more than happy to let him sit in Kate’s closet and enjoy his last moments as a free man.
The knock on the door came as a blessing. I got up from the couch with Kate and practically ran to the door. A woman in a police vest, in short, took her unit and searched the house. I watched them, standing in the corner where the glass still lay broken five feet to my left. They spread out, searched Kate’s room first, which was thankfully empty, then the bathroom, and finally my room. The second the policewoman entered, I knew something was wrong.
She called another officer over and kept me out of the room, then asked what I had done to my wall. I said nothing, which was the truth, and she let me pass. That was where I saw words carved into my wall like someone had taken a knife to the wood.
Everything not forbidden is compulsory
It was a quote from The Once and Future King. I was so close to passing out that she had to escort me back to the couch, where Kate joined me and rubbed my back soothingly.
I don’t remember much more apart from breathing exercises. They didn’t find anyone hiding. At the time, I had no idea how it could have happened.
The next morning made me take Monday off of school. A news post showed up on my Facebook feed. “Local Homeless Man Killed in Police Struggle.”
This is already pretty long, and I don’t want to go back into those feelings. I grieved for Al. Kate joined me at his funeral, but we and one or two people from my bus stop showed up, as well as a police officer.
I found a weird wall spackle type thing online and put it on my wall. I covered up the ugly smudge it left with a poster.
There was no more news or evidence concerning the alleged break in. I walked to the bus stop alone. Kate gave me the space I needed. I worked to fill the silence, on school and at the library. It was a sort of apology to Al. I was making myself better.
My family invited me back up north for Christmas. Though I knew there would be snow and below freezing temperatures, I accepted. Two days before I was set to fly out, I was doing gift shopping from practically dusk until dawn. Almost the second I got home, I wrapped them and packed them, and then I fell into bed. Kate was home, but she was mostly in her room catching up on work. I only saw her once.
As soon as I shut my eyes, I was waking up. Someone was banging on the door again. It wasn’t like the other night. It was an insistent and powerful thumpthumpthumpthumpthump. I vaulted out of bed just to shut whoever it was up.
Al was standing on the other side of the door.
"Al? How do you know where I live?" I asked, bleary-eyed but alert at seeing him.
"A lot’s happened, son," he answered, in his familiar, gruff voice. It felt so good to hear that my chest filled with air. I felt lighter than I had in weeks. Without question, I followed him, barefooted and pajama-clad, into my living room. Kate must still be sleeping. "And a lot is going to happen."
"But how-"
"Just know… I don’t want to do this, kid. He’s making me." Al’s eyes turned black. He was on me, hand pressed back against my mouth, suffocating both me and my joy in an instant. My brain went into overdrive. He couldn’t be here… We had buried him…
But if I was going to be killed, I guess it was okay that Al did it. He was the one who deserved revenge against me, if anyone did.
As I felt the sickening absence of air in my lungs, the ground began to shake. My ears were ringing, and I heard with stunning clarity, “You think you’re better than me? Forget a day, we’ll see who pays. You better remember, boy, or you’ll meet your maker!”
Distantly, I remembered Christmas shopping, and that the one thing I hadn’t remembered, all day… was Al.
As I was hastily pulled from sleep, I realized that the ground wasn’t shaking. My bed was. It was hopping and sliding and shaking and clattering, hitting vehemently against the wooden floor, making a terrible racket and taking me the closest I’ve ever been to a heart attack. My lungs were absolutely closed. My body felt like it was literally soaked in acid from my throat to my lungs, and I sucked in a huge gust of oxygen. My yell for Kate was more like a strangled gasp of breath; but I hadn’t any need to worry. She was opening the door to my room before her name was out of my mouth, and my bed was slamming permanently back into the floor, with disarming finality. I leaned over the side and threw up everything in my stomach, right onto the severely scuffed floor.
"Hey. Hey," Kate was saying, obviously scared out of her mind, but still soothing. "It was just a nightmare. Are you okay? It wasn’t real."
"The bed," I managed to get out. At this point, I was absolute sobbing. Kate kindly gave me her shoulder to let it out on.
"Yeah, you scared me to death making it writhe around like that," she said. "Must have been one hell of a nightmare for you to thrash that hard."
I shook my head for the longest time, unable to get the words out. Air hurt. It was burning my acid-ridden body like fire. “It wasn’t me,” I confessed at last. Kate went stiff.
"What do you mean it wasn’t you?"
I don’t remember what happened next, but Kate swears that all I would say for the rest of the night was “I killed him” and “It was Al.”
So now I’ve cancelled my trip back north. And I’m in quite the situation. Because I don’t know what to do, now that Al is dead and haunting me. He’s determined to make me remember - or the “he” that Al mentioned is, but that means piss-all to me, as of yet.
Of course, I didn’t mean to forget him. If remembering is what keeps him at peace, keeps him docile… well, it’s a good thing that coffee will remind me every day.
—
Credits to: photofreecreepypasta
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