I'll stick around in the house of your mind

[sovay]

The dead leaf on a cobweb no longer hangs outside our shower window. I say "dead leaf on a cobweb" because that seemed the likeliest culprit: our shower window is plastered over with that kind of cloudy colorless contact paper that permits the passage of light but prevents your neighbors from having you proscribed for indecent exposure. So what we actually saw was a kind of trembling white blotch against vague blackness that periodically banged itself into the glass to the fitful rhythms of what we assumed but could not prove was the wind. It was M. R. Jamesian. In order to describe to spatch why I found it so uncanny, I resorted to John Bellairs. (Me, describing The Face in the Frost (1969): "It's this incredible blend of meta-comedy and nightmare fuel!") We saw it for two or three nights in a row; I started to feel weird about turning my back on it. It was never visible during the day. Tonight it was gone. In a reasonable universe, it got washed off in today's rain and is now lying behind the house in the part of the yard we don't have access to, since we don't live on the first floor. If it shows up at other windows, we move.

Comments

[rydra_wong]

I hope that, if necessary, you can contain it in a story.

[sovay]

I hope that, if necessary, you can contain it in a story.

Thank you. I hope it doesn't become necessary.

[nineweaving]

If it shows up at other windows, we move.

And if it follows you to other houses?

Nine

[sovay]

And if it follows you to other houses?

Well, since "smash windows" never works, start looking through our weird old artifacts, I guess.

[selkie]

...NOPE, BYE.

[sovay]

...NOPE, BYE.

IT WAS NOT A GOOD THING TO HAVE IN THE SHOWER.

[ashlyme]

That would unnerve me too.

[sovay]

That would unnerve me too.

It was almost parodically weird, which didn't stop it from creeping me out.

[dhampyresa]

WELP D:

*hugs*

[sovay]

WELP

BASICALLLY.

*hugs*

[sami]

If it shows up at other windows, surely you run without stopping to pack?

[sovay]

If it shows up at other windows, surely you run without stopping to pack?

Cats, passport, computer.

[asakiyume]

I guess it was finally able to open the portal back to its own plane, but yeah, if it decides to bring others of its kind back *through* the portal, you may want to ... start reading up on eldritch spells? Or... I'm not sure. I guess if it's Lovecraftian you'd just go mad.

[sovay]

I guess it was finally able to open the portal back to its own plane

I like this theory.

I guess if it's Lovecraftian you'd just go mad.

If it's Jamesian, I should get to keep my sanity, I'll just be very unhappy about it.