by Ian Rossin
I slide into my sleeping bag and lie down, resting my head on my semi-flat pillow. I then close my eyes, try to relax my body, focus on my breathing pattern, and attempt to sleep. I’ve nearly sunken into unconsciousness when a pillow smacks me in the face. I leap to my feet, incredulous, and turn to Charlie, who’s kneeling at the edge of his bed and holding the attack weapon over his head.
“Hey!” I yell. “What was that for?”
Charlie smirks, and without a word, smacks me again.
“You wanna go there? Really? Fine, asshole,” I say.
I snatch up the pillow I’d been using and leap towards my best friend, pinning him down. I start repeatedly whacking him with the pillow with one hand while the other pins down his wrists. I straddle his legs with mine so he can’t get up.
“How? Does? This? Feel?” I demand with each hit.
Despite the circumstances, Charlie’s laughing. He rolls his body to the side and I fall off, and he starts hitting me back. Our pillow fight continues for nearly five minutes before we’re out of breath and sleep starts to call our names.
“Okay, buddy, let’s go to bed. It’s nearly two in the morning,” he says.
I cross my arms. “The last time you said that, you ended up assaulting me.”
“I’m serious this time, Henry,” he tells me. “But I’m cold. Can I just sleep with you in your sleeping bag?” We’ve been friends for nearly ten years at this point, and have shared everything from food, drinks, and homework answers. The notion of us sleeping in the same space isn’t anything unusual or surprising.
I take a moment to consider his proposition. “Yes.”
We both grab our pillows, slide off Charlie’s bed, and wiggle into my sleeping bag. He’s freezing to the touch. “Can you feel how cold I am?” he asks.
I make a big show of shivering and chattering my teeth. “Oh-oh, y-yeah,” I inform him. “You’re like an i-i-icicle.”
Charlie elbows me playfully in the ribs. “Shut up.” He then turns away from me so our backs are against each other. “Goodnight, grumpy,” he says.
“Goodnight, gassy.”
“Hey! I’m not gassy.”
“Not all the time, at least. Now go to sleep.”
And with that, our heads hit our pillows and we try to fall asleep. Unfortunately, only couple of hours later, I awaken to the feel of a cool, icy hand wrapping around my ankle. I twist my body around to face Charlie. “Why are you touching my ankle?” I ask.
“I was about to ask you the same thing. But if we’re looking at each other, and our sleeping positions haven’t changed, then how could our hands be anywhere near the other’s feet?”
My head tilts to the side like a confused puppy as I consider his words. I don’t have a second to think before the hands on our ankles suddenly yank us further into the sleeping bag and we’re blanketed in darkness.
When I regain consciousness, I find that I’m lying on a rough, cold cement floor. I hear an overlap of several leaks drip drip dripping all at once. The air smells like…fresh laundry? I’m unsure of my surroundings—though they indicate a dungeon, maybe? A jail cell?—but it’s clear we’re not in Charlie’s bedroom anymore.
My eyes are ready to open, but they struggle to do so, as there’s a flashlight five inches away from my face, shining brightly and putting spots in my vision. I sit up and shove the flashlight away. “Hello? Who are you? Where am I?” I demand.
A deep, melodious voice responds. “You’re at my sleepover.”
I scoot backward, away from the indistinguishable figure. “What sleepover? Who are you?” I repeat.
The flashlight moves to my left and illuminates Charlie’s sleeping body. “Wake up your friend, first. I’d rather not repeat myself,” the voice says.
I turn to Charlie, put a hand on his arm, and proceed to shake him awake. He groans and rubs his eyes, struggling as I did to see with a light shining in his face. “What? What happened? The last thing I remember is being pulled into nothingness.”
I move my hand to his shoulder. “We’ve been kidnapped. I’m not … I’m not sure where we are.” I look in the direction of the flashlight. “Care to explain?”
“Get up,” demands the voice. “And face away from me.”
“What’s going on?” Charlie asks again. “Who is this?”
“Just do it. Now,” the voice says.
We rise slowly and turn away from the flashlight. In doing so, we see a large doorway with bars preventing our escape on the other side of the room. Along with the floor being cement, the walls are, too. I was right: this room is essentially a jail cell.
“I interrupted your sleepover to bring you here because you both engaged in acts of violence earlier tonight,” the voice elaborates. “And now you’re going to be punished for it.”
Charlie and I look at each other, confused.
“Acts of violence? Against who?” I wonder.
The room goes dark. I hear a shuffling and can tell that the person the voice belongs to is getting closer. When the shuffling ceases, I hold my breath in anticipation.
“Against me.” The flashlight comes on again, but what it reveals is something both nightmarish and a tad funny. It’s … a body pillow. With arms. And legs. And a face, which is the oddest part. It’s a smiley face drawn on with various colors of marker. When the mouth opens, permanently upturned in a grin, it’s vastly creepy and completely unhinged. “Your pillow fight was a mistake. Now …”—the bars blocking the exit start to ascend into the ceiling—“you have ten seconds to run.”
The flashlight goes dark and Charlie and I break into a sprint.
“What the fuck have we stumbled into?” I yell. We’ve been running down a long, winding hallway for a few minutes now, not daring to stop.
I hear Charlie’s loud breathing next to me. “Getting hunted down by an angry pillow person was not on my bingo card for this year.”
Suddenly, we smack into a wall. We’ve reached the end of the hallway.
“Shit,” I say. “What now? We can’t see anything.”
Charlie sighs. “I know. Feel around. Maybe there’s another hall.”
I turn to my left and thrust my hand again against the wall only to stumble forward and fall to the ground. “There’s a turn here!” I grab Charlie’s hand and we take off down the new path.
What gets me is that, similarly to the first hallway we ran through, this new one doesn’t have anything on the walls. No pictures, no windows, no doors. It seems as though this dungeon or jail is designed to have no exits, entrances, or hiding spots. The only other room we’ve seen is the one we woke up in. But the real question is, why?
We hit the end of the new hallway, but a new pathway presents itself, again on the left. It takes another few minutes of sprinting before I realize what’s in store. I stop and yank Charlie backward.
“What?” Charlie asks. “Why are we stopping?”
I put my hands on his shoulders, gripped with terror. “Charlie,” I say, “the first turn was a left. The second turn was a left. I think we’re going in a circle. If we reach the end of this hallway and it’s another left, we’ll end up in the same room where we started. It could also even be a dead end. Either way, we’re toast.”
I can’t fully make out his expression, but from the way his shoulders drop, I know he believes me. “What do we do then, Henry?”
I pull Charlie into a tight hug. “I’m not sure there’s anything we can do,” I whisper into his ear.
Charlie starts to sob into my shirt, and he whispers back, “I’m so sorry. This is my fault, for starting that stupid pillow fight.”
With that, something soft yet heavy hits me from behind. I collapse, pulling my best friend down with me. My head smacks the cement floor, and I black out.
“Are you coming to bed, sweetie?” Pillowmena asks her husband. She pats the bed beckoningly.
Stuffen has just finished putting on his nightclothes. “I’m coming, darling. Scoot over, you’re in my spot.”
He walks over to Pillowmena and kisses her cheek as she shuffles closer towards the wall side of the bed. “How was your day?” she asks. “I like the new pillows you got. Nice and full, not as flat as the others.”
Stuffen pats Henry’s head, all of whose face holes have had zippers installed and shut to prevent the soft goose down inside from spilling out. “Thanks, honey. I made them myself. Now, let’s get to sleep. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”
