Scary Rooms
Rooms that go bump in the night
Once there was a family man who started sleep-walking and, unlike his peaceful nights before, he would get out of bed and head for the den.
He had to go down a flight of steps from his upstairs bedroom and avoid stepping on the stacks of paper and household paraphernalia along side the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs, he would turn to walk across a short hallway toward the den.
The obstacle course ahead of him was a perilous one; lined with over-stuffed, open boxes and more piles of dusty stacked paper decorated with some cobwebs. They weren't the kind of cobwebs a person could buy at a retail store either.
Somehow, the sleepwalker would manage to reach the den without injury. As he entered the clutter-laden room, his aim seemed to be to put himself on the sofa in front of the blank television screen. This was not going to be without incident if he could manage to walk through a cluster of toys spread along his pathway, the over-abundance of protruding furniture blocking his way, and more piles of meaningless paper on the floor.
The face of any onlooker might be an aghast of horror. Will he make it? Is he going to get a rude wake up? Can he survive this sleepwalk?
As luck would have it, he did make it to his sofa destination without harm. The only explanation for this was that he knew the room, like a blind man knowing where to walk and what things to avoid. His plight was not over, however.
Before him sat a six-foot sofa that had room enough for one. As he began to sit himself down, one could only watch in anxious anticipation for whether or not he'd miss the broken toaster oven that sat there waiting to be fixed for the past several weeks. What it was doing on the sofa? was anyone's question.
Again, the sleepwalker had luck on his side. He sat himself down, surrounded with "stuff" lining the sofa seats. He had found a clear spot, and onlookers could breath a sigh of relief.
Then, just as he thoughtlessly reached for the television remote control sitting on the coffee table in front of him, he brushed upon an electronic Halloween gadget that jumped up from the table surface and began to spur out loud ghostly sounds. The sleepwalker shook in a startling awakened state, and darted up to get out of the room.
That's when he slipped on the mound of slippery paper and went down to the floor with a heavy thump.
Clutter haunts him to this day.
