#......... maybe

You passed by the spot on the wall again. You heard the sound breathing, sounding like it didn’t belong to a person, but a beast. You felt your hair move a little when you paused. Just when you’re about to ignore it, you felt something grab your leg. You screamed and ran up the stairs like you used to when you were a kid, when you just turned off the lights in the living room and rushed back to your room.

Something grabbed you. And after you hid in your room, you could hear the floor creak in the distinct way it does when something heavy is moving on top of it. You can still hear the breathing, but at least it’s outside. It sounds as if it’s… pacing around.

You don’t know what to do. What are you supposed to do?? Jump out the window? You can’t call the police on something you can’t see. What if it can leave the house?

So you’ve been staying here, hoping nothing happens. You contemplated calling your friend but you didn’t want to make any noise, so you just texted him.

You hate those noises. You don’t know what you’re dealing with. You don’t know what to do. You just want it to-

Another creak.

.

It’s the door.

You stopped breathing. Good thing you’re pretty much under the blanket. You dropped it as soon as you heard it, and now you can’t see anything- just the faint light from outside that can pierce the fabric.

It’s breathing. It doesn’t sound human. The closest thing you can akin it to is maybe if someone had something in their mouth and was breathing through it. Or if they had a bad throat infection. But louder and deeper.

Maybe that wasn’t the best comparison but either way, you don’t like it.

Footsteps echoes throughout the room. They sound heavy.

You hear a…. a growl…?

You feel your entire body freeze when you feel something brushing over the top of the blanket. Your eyes go wide, your heart jumps into your throat, and all thoughts stop.

… There’s no other thing you can think of.

This time it sounds like it’s sniffing.

It’s almost feather light, but as whatever it is reaches your head over the blanket, it feels like claws.

As if things couldn’t get any worse, you saw the blanket lifting slightly.

You shut your eyes as tightly as you can, feeling your throat tightening, readying to scream.

…

A heartbeat.

Two heartbeats.

...?

You take a peek and…

There’s nothing. It’s almost like how the blanket was before you hid in it, just slightly open for you to breathe. Under it, you can see the door to your bedroom swinging slightly, as if something had just gone through it, just slightly ajar.

After a minute of two, you shakily grab the edge of the blanket and lift it a bit to look around the room in case… In case.

There’s still nothing.

You slowly, silently tiptoe towards the door and close it as quietly as you can.

You don’t think locking the door would do anything about the… whatever it is, and it’d be loud in the deafening silence of the house anyway, so you leave it be.

You walk back to your bed and this time hide your face under the pillow.

You’ll make sure to call your friend tomorrow morning.