Alarm Clock - Part I

“STOP!” The young man froze as he was prompted by the scream hardly audible and nearly foreign to his ears but likewise loud enough to halt whatever he was about to do. He was in front of his housemates’ bedroom. The door knob is just an inch away from his hand. He is going to open it and see what is going on inside the room. This is the room he dreaded much because it always smells of mold, unwashed clothes, and condensed air making the room unbearable. Who can stand sleeping in that horrible room?

A while ago, he found himself inside the bathroom singing along with the sound of the alarm clock that sounded off at exactly five-thirty am. He usually wakes at five and the next most logical time for an alarm to set off is five-thirty. Setting it off in between these times is already insane. But what the hell the alarm still beeps? Digital alarms are supposed to stop after twenty beeps or at least must stop somewhere. However, the sound continued even after he put the shower off and it is becoming deadly annoying.

Normally, there are three other people sleeping in the two rooms of the apartment in this day of the week. There are two in the first room which the young man also occupies and one in the second room. The alarm does not come from the first room because he knows that he is the only one who uses an alarm. He is awake already and he would be the one to wake his other roommates. The alarm must have come from the second room.

The young man assumed that the call center agent, one of the occupants of the second room, could have left the apartment already because his work starts at four o’clock. He must have set two alarm times and forgot to shut off the last one when he went out. It could also be the teacher, the other occupant. The young man saw him arriving late the other night, but it is too early for him to rise because he goes to work at nine. So the teacher must still be inside, he thought. Was the teacher dead drunk that he could not hear the sound of the alarm? Or was he lazy to turn it off? Or is he dead? Did he commit suicide? The theories that entered the mind of the young man are becoming weird and he is aware of it, making him smile a bit of his own morbidity. He could not determine the answer yet for he is still inside the bathroom.

People could die in their sleep. He is well aware of that. Forget about Freddy and the “Nightmare on Elm Street” and just think about your body fully dehydrated because of too much alcohol intake. Think about “bangungot”, a feared phenomenon that only plagues the male population. He shivers in his own ruminations. He doesn’t like death. He is not ready to see death. He is even too afraid to see bodies in their coffins. Seeing death right before his eyes could as well make him dead. But, what if this theory becomes real? He doesn’t want to know. How he wished that one of his roommates would be responsible enough to stand up and walk to the door, knock, and asked the occupant whoever he is that he should turn the alarm off.

Still tipped off by the scream he just heard, the young man recoils his hands from the door knob. He is now in doubt what to do. Someone or something prevented him to touch the door. It is his mind. He is convincing himself. Is it because he is getting paranoid and reason tells him that there is really nothing to be worried about? Is this another bout of over reaction he is notorious of doing. Maybe his mind is just trying to tell him that he should conduct himself with restraint and civility. Take the situation slowly.

The voice is right. He cannot just barge inside the room without knocking first. He knew that the people inside are not his favorite housemates but at least he must show some decency and respect to the occupants of the room. He knocked. There is no answer. He leaned closer to the door trying to figure if there is any movement behind it. Nothing. He knocked again. Nothing. He knocked again and made sure they are loud enough. But there is still silence behind the door.

The young man panicked again at the thought that there might be something wrong inside. He thought he would need some help from his other roommates. He would wake them up and they would enter the other room together. He backed away from the second room.

Before making his way to his own room, he thought how cowardly he is to face whatever lies behind his housemates’ room. He is not made that way. He thought he could do it. It would only take a turn of a knob, swing the door open and maybe if he is too afraid to look at the body sleeping on the bed, he would just turn the alarm off and rush away to the door. Let his roommates discover his lifeless body. It would only take seconds.

The young man heads back to the second room. The alarm is still on and every step he makes, the sound seems gets louder. As he reaches the stainless knob, the cold metal sends chills throughout his body and suddenly a screeching sound like a metal scratching another metal burst into his ears, nearly breaking their drums. Once again, the young man froze and covered his ears. The screeching stops and then in a very audible, creepy and faint voice he heard.

“You will see death.”