#frightnight

    Pealing my final potato, I sat it in the bowl and grabbed the cutting board to empty the shavings into the trash. As I did I jumped back in horror as I gazed into the trash and saw a pair of eyes staring back at me. I jumped, throwing the board back and dumping the shavings all over the floor behind me. But I didn't care. I was concerned with the thing in my trash.

    I pulled off the lid to get a better look, leaning back a bit just in case it leaped out at me or something. But as more light shone into the trash, I saw that it was a full on disembodied head of a man with a plain face, blue eyes, and blonde hair. His eyes were open and seemed to follow me. The rest of his face remained emotionless.

    How did it get there? I wondered. And was it alive? Surely it couldn't be, right? I mean, how could someone survive without a head?

    I leaned over, my finger outstretched to poke it. Its eyes followed my finger to its forehead before furrowing its brows in confusion. "What are you doing?" The head spoke, making me immediately jump back and scream out in terror.

    "What are you going around and touching people's faces for?" it demanded. "How would you feel if I jumped out of this here trash and poked you in the face? You wouldn't like it much, now would ya?"

    My mouth was agape. How dare it talk to me like that. "Excuse me, but how the hell did you get into my trash?" I asked.

    "Well, now look at you, thinking everything belongs to you," it snapped back. "I'll have you know I've been sitting in this trash for a few days now. You've paid no mind until just now. I'd say its my trash actually."

    At this point, the terror was fading into something more of frustration. Was I really about to let some random guy's head in the trash talk to me that way?

    I grabbed it by its hair and lifted him up to better face me.

    "Hey, put me down!" it demanded. "How dare you touch me like this! This is highly unethical!"

    "You know, I'm quite hungry," I said in a cold, harsh voice. "I've been cooking all day and I realized I don't have any meat. I think you'll do just fine."

    "Please no!" it pleaded. "Please, I'll do anything! Let me go! I'll go hide in someone else's trash bin!"

    "Too late," I shot back at him with a twisted smile.

    But that's when I heard it. Call me paranoid, but my house was relatively new. Never had I heard the floorboards creak or any subtle thuds of the house settling. Yet, that one night, I could swear I heard something in the room with me. I could swear it sounded like maybe the rustling of clothes, or a soft creaking sound. It was subtle enough that I felt I needed to hold my breath to hear it, as even a single exhale would mask it.

    I would turn to face the sound, but could see nothing. I tried resting again, and still the sound came. Very slight, like the whispering wind was blowing softly against my window. But it didn't feel quite so distant.

    You know how when you're walking past a room and you can tell a TV is on by the silent ringing? There's no volume omitting from the speakers. In fact, the screen is just a plain still image with no sound. Yet, just by being close enough to the room without peering inside, you can tell its on? This was like that. A strange and unexplained sixth sense. Even through the silence you could just feel that something was in the room with you. Something that wasn't supposed to be there. Something that remained unmoving, but something as simple as the way the wind blows past it gives it shape, giving it away to your senses.

    This is what has been haunting me for the past few weeks. Something I could never prove and quite frankly never saw, never truly heard any proof that it was there. But I knew that it was. Somehow. Watching me. Or perhaps waiting for the perfect time to strike, to reveal itself to me so that I may never be able to rest easy again.

    Perhaps it loved this twisted game of leaving me too paranoid to sleep. It knew that I knew it was there. And it knew that not revealing itself was far scarier to me than ripping the bandage off and plastering its presence on the walls.

    But tonight I was going to catch it. Tonight, I would be turning on some cameras. I'd be using an audio recording to pick up any signs of it.

    As the sun dipped below the horizon, turning the sky this beautiful purple-blue hue, I had finally pulled into the parking lot of the hotel I'd be staying the night in. It wasn't exactly the fanciest place to stay, but it would get the job done.

    I checked in and the gracious lady at the front desk handed me my room key. On the way to the room, I took a few glances around the lobby and my eyes landed on a corkboard with several missing person's posters. This peaked my curiosity, so I stepped closer. There were dozens of posters, all with black and white images of various people of different ages and genders. All disappearing in the last few years. All of them were last seen in this very city.

    I approached the lady at the desk to ask her about it.

    "Oh, those sorry souls?" she said. "From what I heard, quite a few of them were last seen exploring a place they weren't supposed to be. Why, one of them disappeared with a group of friends who wanted to do some ghost hunting in an abandoned house downtown. Another decided to take a swim in a pond that was on private property. All of them were doing some dumb kid stuff and paid the price for it."

    I looked down, solemnly as to feel sorrow for them. She and I parted ways and I made my way to my room.

    The room was just about as average as you'd expect. The bed lay parallel to the window with an AC unit against the far wall. In the narrow hallway leading to the bed sat the door to the bathroom.

    I flicked on the lights and saw just how janky the room was. I mean, I feel like janky was the wrong word. There was nothing inherently wrong with the room. It was pretty average. Nothing exciting.

    I pulled my laptop from my bag and sat down on my bed. I had some sort of twisted inspiration to write a story about missing kids exploring abandoned building, allowing my imagination to bend and twist as it chased down the rabbit hole of their fate. However, nothing felt too satisfying of a conclusion, so I just said that a ghost reached their hand out from the darkness and pulled them in.

    But as the story concluded and my eyelids started feeling heavy, I put my laptop on the nightstand beside the bed and drifted off to sleep. Or at least I tried.

    A sudden banging from the ceiling overhead startled me awake. The thuds were muffled, but it sounded like someone jumping up and down in one spot with maybe heavy boots on or something.

    Oh boy, I thought. Of course I had to have noisy people upstairs from me.

  I tried keeping myself awake until I was almost certain they wouldn't be making any more noise. Or at least that was the hope. Every time I felt myself start to drift off, be it after a minute or twenty, the thuds kicked up again, jolting me awake. But then, silence.

    After about the sixth time of this occurring, I stomped out of bed and raced up the stairs to then pound on the door of the people in the room upstairs from me, ready to really lay into them.

    The door swung open and immediately, I opened my mouth to start yelling. But no words escaped my lips. Just beyond the door was darkness. It wasn't a dimly-lit room like you'd expect, as there was nothing my eyes could make out. Instead, this looked like I was peering into the void.

    I peaked my head inside and called out, hoping for a reply. But there was nothing but the dark echo of my voice. Why did the room feel so cold?