The Midnight Creeper — Writing Prompt #25

This one’s truly embarrassing. My roommate and I were already on questionable terms, but throw this into the mix and I was done for.

Writing prompt: Have you ever done something that unintentionally appeared creepy?

My memory:

My first college roommate’s name was Charlene. We were “friends” in the sense that we occasionally talked, if she were in a good mood. There were sometimes long stretches of no communication or interaction with one another if she was in one of her bad moods. Maybe a better way to describe our relationship is that we occasionally got along and otherwise stayed aloof. Is there a term for that? We only stayed roommates for my freshman year so it wasn’t too big a deal.

At some point in the year, Charlene bought a tv for our room. I briefly thought this might be pretty cool because, well…tv? I’d never had cable before. And as it turns out, I still didn’t. Charlene set the tv up just in front of her bed which also happened to be facing away from my bed. This made it so that the majority of the time this tv was turned on, I couldn’t see the screen. Still no biggie.

Oh wait, now it’s 3 a.m., both of us are sleeping, and yes. Yes, this has become a biggie. Charlene started to get in the habit of keeping her tv on after falling asleep (which was already past when I preferred my bedtime). As I mentioned, I’d never had cable before and never once fallen asleep during a movie. Having sound on while trying to fall asleep drove me CRAZY. Had we a good friendship or even a tiny bit of a good relationship, I would let her know this was negatively affecting my sleep. But hand someone who’s already not keen on confrontation a person who’s low-key crazy (much longer story behind that), and you can forget it.

So I took things into my own hands. At 3 a.m., or whatever stupid hour it was, I got out of bed and crept over to shut off the thing. After searching high and low for an off button on the tv itself, I turned to find the remote instead. If there were only a power button on the tv like normal tv’s, this whole situation could have been avoided and I’d just have shut it off for her to find in the morning. It may have come off as a little passive aggressive, but that’s better than looking like a creeper. After all, I’d spent much of the night with earbuds in, blasting calming music from my ipod, trying to soften the sound of the incessant noise. Some light passive aggression might be called for.

I knew she kept the remote on her bed so I gathered my courage, took a deep breath, and started lightly patting her comforter with only the flickering screen for light. {OMG, This sounds as bad as it felt, even in hindsight.} Her blankets were a mess, so it wasn’t just a quick sweep of the arm and over and done with. It was like there were folds in the heap of blankets, forcing me to have to gently pick some up and move things around.

In the end, I didn’t even find the remote. If I had, what came next might have been avoided.

A few weeks later, Charlene and I were walking back from class together. She was in a rare happy mood which meant conversation, so we were chit chatting about whatever.

“Hey, did you know you sleep walk?” She suddenly asked.

Uhhhh…. “No…what are you talking about??” (I knew I wasn’t a sleep-walker, and never have been. But also pretty sure I knew where this was going.)

“Yeah. It’s actually kind of creepy. One night I woke up and you were standing over me, just looking down at me.”

O.o

Me: “OMGGGG!! That’s SO creepy! I can’t believe that happened! Sooo crazy. I would have screamed if I were you…”

You know what I’m prettyyyyy positive actually happened? It was one of my nights that I tried to silently find the remote (there was more than one night of this), then noticed her stir in her sleep, so I paused and studied her to make sure she wasn’t waking up; THEN crept back to bed when I realized it probably wasn’t safe anymore.  TALK. ABOUT. A CREEP.

End of story. Whachu got?