| abstract | - I don't know how I should start with this. I've never been too good with writing my thoughts and English being my third language doesn't help much either. I don't know who you are or why you are reading this and frankly I don't care. I'm not writing this for your reading pleasure, I'm writing this just to get it off my chest. You'll probably say "bullshit!" after you hear my tale but I won't blame you for not believing it. If I was in your shoes I would have done the same. I mean who believes some stranger on the internet. Well, even if you don't believe me I'll still try to tell you about what happened that day. Let me start by telling you a little bit about myself. I live in a small country which you probably never even hard of. My family is not what you would call rich but wealthy enough to get their son through college. I was always a good student, listened to my parents, never got in trouble with anyone. To put it simply, I was the average ideal child. My grades were good and my parents were proud of me. I even managed to get in the best university of my country with relatively little effort. I was happy, really happy for that, it felt like I finally found a purpose in my life. I moved in the dorm and began to adjust to my new life. My life was mostly ok there. I'm not an outgoing person but I managed to make a couple of friends rather quickly. I helped them out with their academics and they helped me out with everything else. Usually, two students share a room in the dorm, but the guy who was supposed to be my roommate dropped out for some reason. He was one year senior to me and was supposedly a quite, reserved guy. I never got to meet him in person and from the little I heard about him, he seemed like a rather dull guy. I didn't feel the need to inquire any further about him or why he dropped out. Perhaps he experienced the same thing as me and decided to run away before it got to him. If that's true then he was a far wiser man than me. My life at the university began slowly at first. The classes were long, the teachers were boring and I felt sleepy just trying to process their lectures in my mind. After class I hung out with my new friends for a while and tried to pass the time. I was bored and slowly becoming disillusioned with the idea of finding a purpose in my life. I was just going with the flow and before I knew it I gradually began to sink in depression. It finally happened about a month after I moved into the dormitory. I wish I could forget that night, but I know very well that it will haunt me for the rest of my life. I've always had my own room at my house, so I had welcomed the chance to have a dorm room all for myself. I never believed in ghosts, vampires, zombies or whatever kinds of monsters that came as a result of people's wild imaginations. As I said before, I was depressed with my dull, monotone life in the university and felt tired all the time. I used to just get in my room at night, lock the doors and go straight to sleep. As usual I got in my bed and closed my eyes. I'm a heavy sleeper and I don't normally wake up until morning. But that night I woke up in the middle of the night. I could hear a strange noise coming from the hallway outside of my room. It was barely audible but it sounded like someone was walking. I felt a bit annoyed, perhaps some other guy in the dorm decided it would be great idea to walk in the hallway at the middle of the night. I would probably just go back to sleep but the footsteps were kinda... different. I mean when you hear footsteps, you can vaguely guess what kind of a person is making that noise. An old man usually walks slowly and a young man walks at a faster pace. An overweight man's footsteps make louder sound while a skinny guy makes less noise. I can't explain why, but the footsteps were somehow unsettling. It felt like a someone was taking every step with a feeling of pure hatred and malice. I won't brag but I'm not a person who gets easily unnerved. I kept telling myself that I was just tired and having some weird nightmares. After I made certain I was awake and I was indeed hearing footsteps I decided to look for its source. Perhaps humans do have something called a sixth sense, because I could almost hear a voice in my head scream, "DON'T! DON'T! Whatever you do, DON'T step out of your room!" God! How I wish today I listened to that voice in my head. I slowly opened the door of my room. The hallway was pitch-black as expected. The footsteps suddenly came to a halt when I walked out of the room. For a second, I hoped that the footsteps were all my imagination. But after a brief pause the sound of the footsteps resumed, this time even louder than before. I took a long breath and walked on anyway. I had a flashlight in my hand but I didn't feel like turning it on. I've walked these corridors almost a hundred times by now, I shouldn't need a flashlight to tell me where I'm going. I kept walking toward the footsteps. Something in my mind still kept screaming, "Turn back! There's still time! That thing hasn't noticed you yet, you can still make it back to your room! TURN BACK!" I should have listened to my mind, I really should have. But some force still kept dragging me to those footsteps. Finally I reached the place where the sound was loudest. The first thing I noticed was an unpleasant odor in the air. It was the kind of smell that you get when you keep raw meet out of the freezer and forget to put it back. The smell was overwhelming. I have a mild bout of asthma, so I'm usually the last person to notice any disturbing stench. But still that rotting stench was so strong that I almost had trouble breathing. I still had the flashlight in my hand. The footsteps had stopped a long time ago, so I decided to finally point my point flashlight at whoever woke me up in the middle of the night and turned on the switch. I........I just can't describe what I saw. That THING (I dare not call it a human being) looked like a lump of flesh put together. It had a humanoid body structure but it was not something you can call human. It had no face, ear, nose or even a proper head. The whole thing was kinda dragging itself to move. It wasn't footsteps but rather the sound of rotten, mutated flesh thumping on the ground. I froze in that place and realized that I had wet myself. That thing finally noticed me and began to slowly half-walk, half-drag itself towards me. Its movements were slow, but I was far too scared to move. Finally, I snapped out of my trance. Every cell of my body was screaming "RUN!!!" I ran as fast as I could and didn't dare turn back. As I said it was pitch-black and I couldn't really see where I was going. I just ran and prayed, begged and hoped that thing won't catch me. I don't remember anymore of that night. They found me in an unused room, suffering from deep fever and delusional. I was supposedly spouting non-sense and begging them to kill me off. It took about six weeks of therapy for myself to get back to normal. When I was almost normal, some upper staffs of the university came to visit me. They asked if I was taking any unauthorized medications. They couldn't outright accuse me of taking drugs because of my clean record, but I could see it in their eyes that's what they were thinking. I told everyone that I don't remember anything and just had a nervous breakdown due to academic stress. My parents were really worried about me, they told me to drop out and come home. I did as they asked. I never talked to anyone about what I saw that night. I don't even know for sure what that thing was. I know if I tell anyone about it they will never believe me and just lock me up in some insane asylum. I'm still sane enough to know that sometimes it's better to keep your mouth shut. I can't talk about it to my parents, my friends.......nobody. So, here I am, writing this on the internet. Perhaps some random stranger from the other side of the globe will read it. He or she will either believe it or call it bullshit. But, I know what I saw and it was not something from this world. I don't know if writing all this really changes anything... but I just needed to get it off my chest. Thank you for reading.
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