Summer Solstice (Control Your Demons)

Chapter 3


I soon found myself upstairs standing in the area of space which unifies the rooms, and with a surfeited sense of feeling looked down upon the descending flight of stairs questionably; including the floor in which I so earnestly stood, I counted twelve steps in total – a number precisely the same as the numerical equivalent for which my house was known. I pondered this insignificant, statistical comparison for a few moments more then instantaneously lost the thought due to a disturbing noise coming from one of the adjoining rooms.

I wasn't entirely sure which room was home to the mysterious night-time bedlam, as all the doors were closed. The noise seemed to be echoing from the farthest room on the left side of the landing. However, upon closer inspection the noise seemed to have moved to an entirely different location altogether. I would best describe the lamentation as a non-rhythmical rattle of varying pitch; sometimes clear as crunching paper, and other times quiet as the tiniest tap on a table. For short periods of time the noise would cease to exist altogether, then without warning a reverberated “Bang!” shuddered through my body prompting an impulsive recline.

I thought the noise to be nothing but an open window blowing in violent wind from outside. However, I quickly thought it could easily be something else.Perhaps even someone else.

I paused for a moment. I was dead still.

The thought of someone else in my home sent an immediate rush of adrenalin through my body. I became anxious, yet strangely aroused at the same time. My hands went clammy. The beat of my heart increased and I could feel the blood literally pumping through my veins. I felt zoetic!

I finally located the noise to one solitary room and I'm not sure how long I gloomily positioned myself outside the subject’s door which was home to the discord. It seemed like an eternity. I began to enjoy the uncertainty which lay undiscovered from within the room; it became a vivacious ecstasy. Again, everything went silent as if the noise from within had detected my presence from without, and with that vigorous entanglement of apprehension a whole range of daunting preconceptions further engulfed my mind; my forehead became itchy, followed by layer of warm sweat. My heart pumped itself into a third gear, and a few seconds later a hot flash whizzed through my body like a train out of control. My breathing become rapid, and my right hand scarcely went back and forth from the door handle like it was a game of some sort; I'm not entirely sure how many times I retraced my hand from the handle as I wasn't counting. All I felt was an outré, catatonic state of absorption towards the handle. An almost bewildering admiration for it. I couldn't take my eyes off it. I was getting close, my confidence was growing. I knew at some point I would burst through the door I just didn't know when.

Seconds felt like minutes, minutes like hours. All my inhibitions had left me. I was purely functioning on adrenaline.

No decision was mine. I, wasn't me.

A further moment past when to my surprise found my right hand firmly grasped around the handle! I took a deep breathe which staggered its way into my lungs then plucked some unwilling courage from out of nowhere, and then with a clockwise motion began to twist the handle. As the handle squeaked and cracked this way and that I thought I was making too much noise of my own! Finally, enough was enough and with a final twist of audacity the door opened!
I ran in heroically! But immediately found myself flying back in mid-air.

I had slipped on something, and as I continued to fly through the air uncontrollably the last thing I remembered was arching my neck forward intently.

Everything happened so fast yet felt forever lasting and I somehow managed to snatch a brief glimpse of what I was searching for…

…and there, right in front of me was an open window.

But before I knew it, “Wham!” I was out cold.

The dreamlike quality of the overall piece is appealing. The plot is slow-moving but is able to hold my interest. My earlier comments about diction still hold - when a writer's style draws a reader's attention to an unnecessarily large vocabulary and away from the story itself, the writer risks losing the reader.
Still, you've kept my attention so far and I am looking forward to learning what is actually happening here.

Oh, and "rioticism" was a typo, although like Calidore, I kind of like it. In my next story I'm gonna see if I can find a place to use the phrase "zoetic rioticism."