I'm an ordinary Internet dweller — I keep a blog, sometimes I write fan fiction based on my favorite works, obeying popular trends, for some reason I even started accounts on Twitter and Facebook - in general, I lead an active online life. And nothing, as usual, foreshadowed trouble, until one morning a reader from the blog joined my ICQ. I was kind of surprised - I didn't think we'd ever talked to her, even in the comments, and anyway, she was one of those people I thought she was just shy about unsubscribing. In general, she added and writes: "Do you want a joke?" And who refuses to joke in the morning? Of course, I say I want to. She sends me a picture file in response. And the morning, you know, is a busy time, and between checking your mail and reading new comments, you still need to have time to drink tea, wash up, get dressed, and, preferably, put on makeup. And, of course, I was constantly distracted. I go to the computer once again, and the ICQ window is already bursting with questions: "Did you look?", "How are you?", "Did you open it?", "Hey, where are you?". I must admit, I was even surprised by such a stir from a stranger, but I opened the file, why should people be upset? I opened it, and there was an ordinary room with all my favorite carpets on the wall and geraniums, only in the corner there was some kind of cloudy dark spot - clearly either a shooting defect or a crooked "photoshop". "So what? — I'm writing. "Where is there to laugh?" And she said to me, "Oh, forget it," and went offline, and I had no choice but to add her to my mental list of potentially inadequate, turn off the computer and go to work.
In the evening, I remembered about this "joke" again, found a photo, looked at it again. The room is like a room, and the stain is no longer there, it must have seemed like a dream. In a word, it's not funny. I wanted to find this girl and interrogate her, but she was offline. And then I completely forgot about her, because the apartment was suddenly devastated.
At first, it began to stink terribly from the drain in the sink, some kind of rot and dampness. We probably took the entire household chemicals department out of the store, and nothing helps. In the end, Dad couldn't stand it and called a plumber. The plumber came, fiddled with the riser, looked at us like we were idiots and said everything was fine. But there was nothing wrong, because after a couple of days, the bathroom started to stink. And sometimes it seemed that there, in the drains, as if something was scratching and rustling. Crocodiles from the sewers, or what?
And after a while, I go into the kitchen in the morning, as usual, and the ventilation grate is lying on the floor. I put it back in its place and would have forgotten it if I hadn't discovered the same thing the next morning, and the next, and the next. But a person gets used to everything, so putting the grate back in place quickly became my personal ritual, until wet footprints began to appear on it: first a few drops, and then real puddles, muddy, as if a dirty rag had been squeezed out. Well, the smell is appropriate. Then I got a little nervous, but Dad and liquid nails came to the rescue — they glued this unfortunate grate, and it stopped falling off.
But it would have been better if it had kept falling off, because after that everything got even weirder. Muddy puddles began to form under the ventilation, which was glued tightly, and at night the noise of footsteps began to be heard in the apartment. It's like someone is slapping bare feet, first only in the kitchen, then also in the living room. Somehow I plucked up the courage, turned on the light and ran to see what was going on there — there was no one in the living room, only wet spots on the floor. Meanwhile, the drains were already scratching very clearly, and one day, when I was taking a shower, the water suddenly stopped flowing, but a painfully familiar rustling sound was heard from the shower, as if something was trying to get out. I didn't wait for the incident to end, I just flew out of the bathroom as if scalded.
I thought I wouldn't sleep after this, but man is a strange creature — I passed out instantly, but I dreamed all night that I was drowning in some kind of swamp: muddy water, mud and a terrible stench. And guess what the first thing I discovered when I woke up? Puddles near the bed. It happened literally every other night, and the parents became kind of weird. Of course, the first thing I did was run to them to share my nighttime experiences. And Mom and dad smile, look at me like they're blessed, and respond almost in unison— that you're okay, honey. I've never been called cute in my life, and Mom adds, "Go take a bath and relax." What kind of baths are there? By that time, I was just afraid to brush my teeth, and only the fear of getting completely lousy somehow outweighed the fear. But I was already an inch away from asking my friends for a wash by lying about the water being turned off for a month.
And then it all ended abruptly. And the pipes stopped stinking, and the ventilation stopped dripping. And I began to have such good dreams — as if I were lying in a bathtub, warm, good, surrounded by goodness and peace. And life flowed on as usual — the Internet, work, friends... But now the parents were almost fighting in the evenings about who would go to the shower first, and they sat there for almost two hours — they must have seen enough anti-stress drugs on the Malakhov+ program.
In general, everything was fine until I decided to update my photos on Facebook, that is, to take a picture of myself. I've photographed it a couple of times, and I'm looking at what happened. And then I didn't feel like looking at myself, because behind me, somewhere in the area of the wall, I saw the same spot, exactly the same as in the photo I sent. It was in all the photos, and I snapped about ten of them. Having overcome the desire to escape, I began to take pictures of my native interiors with shaking hands. There was a stain everywhere, I photographed the kitchen — it was there, the hallway — another stain, and in the bathroom it was as if the entire ceiling was covered with some kind of smoke.
That night, I was drowning in a dream again. I wake up, and the whole pillow is covered in some kind of mud. And the parents are walking around, smiling, as if under hypnosis.
And here I found nothing better than to grab my laptop, shamefully run to the nearest cafe with Wi-Fi and, after drinking for courage, climb into the blog in search of this unfortunate reader. When I was thrown onto the "diary is closed or not kept" page, I wasn't even surprised, but I had one last trump card up my sleeve — an acquaintance who seemed to be in the same year with that girl. And, oh joy, there's a green flower in front of her nickname. After the usual hello-how-are-you, I decided to casually find out why her classmate's diary was closed. And I heard something like this — she decided to leave the Internet, said she was tired of wasting time on it, youth is passing, and the session in general... Besides, she became quite withdrawn after her brother fell asleep in the bathroom and drowned.
After finding out when my brother drowned and comparing all the facts, I realized that it happened a few days before I agreed to watch the "joke". And I already knew what to do next. But the trouble is, ever since watching all sorts of "Calls," I've been trying on a situation, realizing that if necessary, I just couldn't do this to people I know, see, or at least communicate with online. I can't live with the feeling that I'm to blame, that something terrible happened because of me, even if I'm just a victim myself. But I can't go on living like this either. This morning my bed was completely wet, as if the blanket had been rinsed in a swamp, and Dad had locked himself in the bathroom and wouldn't come out.
Forgive me.
No comments:
Post a Comment