"The Green Carpet" Copyright (c) 1993 by John J Wikman No part of this story may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author and/or publisher. "The Green Carpet" I'm starting to get scared again. I can't ignore it anymore, you see. What, you may ask, seems to have me so up in the air? Well, I'll tell you. It's my carpet. My green carpet. I'm sure your next question would be "Well what about your green carpet has you so scared?", right? Well, I'll tell you that too, but all in good time. Let me start from the beginning. A little history of my green carpet and me, if you will. I'm a junior in college. The name of the school doesn't really matter I guess. Anyway, it's halfway across the country from where I was born and raised. Well, I lived all last year in jealousy of the guys that had their dorm rooms filled with stereos, TV's, wall to wall carpeting, posters, etc. I was jealous because I had none of that stuff. Coming halfway across the country, all I had room for in my suitcases was clothes. Therefore, while some of the guys had awesome rooms that people would stop and stare at as they walked down the halls, my room was totally barren. Just me, my alarm clock, my dorm desk, my dorm chair, my dorm bed, and one M. C. Escher poster that I had bought at the student union on sale. I was supposed to have a roomate ... Mike Alsooth, or something like that. He never showed up. I didn't care. I've never been a 'people person' anyway. Oh yeah, I guess you might want to know my name. For the records, I'm Jason Sinclair. Being somewhat of a loner, I never got very involved in any of the dorm activities, and therefore didn't make a lot of friends. I didn't make any, in fact. I attribute this, at least partially, to my lack of a 'cool room'. I didn't have anything interesting in my room, so no one had any reason to ever just stop in and say hi. I didn't have any blacklight posters or lava lamps or kick ass stereo systems, so I was boring. Well, it didn't bother me at first, but by the end of the year, I was getting pretty lonely and more than a little dejected about the whole situation. So I vowed that next year, I would have at least a semi-cool room. I decided to rent one of those "Lockit Yerself" storage garages for the summer, so that I could leave most of my clothes (and my alarm clock) at campus, so that I would have room to bring back some cool stuff next year. Well, much happier and quite pleased with myself for coming up with such a brilliant idea, I ignored the ignoring I got the rest of the year, confident that next year I could make some friends. Dead week came and went, and so did finals week. I did about as well as I had expected. I could have done better, but I could have done a lot worse. I had just finished my last final at 10:45 in the morning on Thursday of finals week. I had until Saturday afternoon to move out, so I decided to take my meager belongings over to the storage shed and get the hell out of town on the 9:00 a.m. plane the next day. Luckily, the storage place was only three blocks down the road from my dorm. I wouldn't need to worry about asking a stranger to give me a lift across town with a couple suitcases full of clothes and a slightly torn poster. I came out the door after hauling the two packed suitcases down three flights of stairs and paused to catch my breath. It was a bright spring day, with not a cloud in the sky. The sun glinted painfully off the chrome of the myriad of cars jammed into the loading dock of my dorm. I mopped the sweat off my forehead with one arm (it was unusually warm too ... almost 85 and still only mid May), hefted my cases again, and trudged slowly down the road to the storage center. After locking my stuff safely in the small cubicle, I walked slowly back to the dorm, taking a little ironic pleasure in the watching all the 'cool guys' carry load after load of stuff down to their vehicles. Some had their cars jammed so full, the exhaust pipe scraped the pavement as they pulled out of the loading dock. Others had their parents there with the family pick up truck. I smiled ruefully and sat on the curb to watch as one of the coolest guys on the floor, in terms of cool rooms, backed a medium sized U-Haul truck into the dock, narrowly missing someone's parents' Cadillac. I stretched and looked around the dock, just revelling in the general mayhem, knowing that I was done, that all I had to do was make it to the airport shuttle bus by 8:00 the next morning. My eyes happened across the area where there is always a dumpster parked, ready to be filled by the janitors emptying trash cans and disposing of the piles of dust swept up from the corridors. And there it was. Amidst the broken chairs and bulging grey industrial size trash bags, and even a cracked and torn box spring, it lay. It was rolled up nicely and tied with twine on both ends. A corner of it was flipped back, as if it was waiting for someone to come along and inspect its texture and quality. It was green, and it was a carpet. Now, this carpet wasn't just your average ordinary forest green, or it wasn't even that bright, gaudy, crayon green. It was that perfect, 70's style, medium shag, cross between baby shit, guacamole, and vomit green. It was perfect dorm carpet, and I knew if I had that laying in my room next year, not only would it keep my feet off the cold tile floor in the mornings, it would make me the coolest person on the hall. All of these thoughts ran through my head in the space of a second or two. So being as nonchalant as I could, I strolled over to the dumpster, and when no one was looking (or at least a minimum number of people), Hauled the carpet, now *my* carpet, unceremoniously out onto the ground. I quickly dragged my newest possession the three blocks to my storage shed, where I unrolled it on the sidewalk. It wouldn't do me much good to have a cool carpet if it had a big puke stain in the middle or something. It seemed to be my lucky day though. The carpet was not only in excellent shape, it seemed to be almost brand new. I cast suspicious glances aroun as I rolled the carpet back up and tied it, thinking that no one in their right mind would throw out such a perfect dorm carpet. I searched my keychain for the the key to the storage shed, which didn't take too long, seeing as how I hnly had one other key on it, that being the key to my room. I breathed a sigh of relief as I turned the key in the lock after carefully laying the carpet atop my suitcases. I flew out the next morning, feeling better than I had for weeks. I know it's silly that a friggin carpet could make me happy, but it wasn't so much the carpet itself, but what it *represented*. it represented the end of loneliness, the end of feelings of not belonging, the end of cold feet in the mornings! I didn't give the carpet a whole lot of thought over the summer, although now that I look back, I realize that the summer between my freshman and sophomore years was one of the happiest of my life. I could never put my finger exactly on just why I was so happy, but I suppose it could be attributed to the deep seated change in my basic personality that finding that carpet seemed to bring out in me. I seeme to develop a new self confidence during that summer. I actually found the nerve to ask a girl out. She turned me down flat, but for some odd reason, it didn't really discourage me very much. I kept asking girls out, and eventually one of them said yes. We went out a few times and discovered that we liked each other a lot. Three weeks after I went out with her, she took my virginity. What's all this rambling got to do with the story of the green carpet, you may ask at this point. The answer is: absolutely nothing. I'm just offering up this information as proof of what a profound change in me occurred because of this piece of rug. Anyway, August finally rolled around again and I flew back to school, this time with suitcases loaded with a small bookshelf stereo, a tiny TV, a plama globe (one of those weird things that looks like it has electricity flowing around inside a little glass ball), and even some posters. The first thing I did after checking into my room, though, was run down the street (quite literally run ... I sprinted the three blocks) to the storage shed and check on my carpet. Almost as soon as my plane had started its descent, I had remembered the carpet. Soon it was all I could think about. I couldn't wait to get back so I could check on it and make sure no one had broken into the shed and taken it. Well, the carpet was fine. A bit dusty, but fine. I carried it back to my room and laid it out. It seemed to be tailor made for my room. It fit every nook and cranny, even though I could have sworn that it was a perfect square when I had pulled it from the dumpster. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention ... I had a roomate that year. His name was Alan Glessber. He had some stuff for the room, like a refrigerator, but he was really pleased that I had a carpet, since he didn't bring one. I couldn't believe it. The carpet had already gotten me a new friend, it seemed. Well, now we're getting to the thick of the story. The trouble started about three or four weeks after school started. I had received a nice pen and pencil set for my birthday that summer. One night, I remember dropping the pen on the floor by my desk as I was taking my contact lenses out. "I'll just pick it up in the morning," I thought, seeing as how I was about ready to drop over unconscious from studying. So I left it lay on the floor by my desk. When I got up in the morning, it was gone. Well, not entirely gone. Just mostly gone. There was a small bulge in the carpet about the length of my pen and in about the same location where my pen had fallen. I didn't notice the bulge at first though. I looked all over my desk and the floor around my desk, thinking maybe Alan kicked it accientally when he was going to the bathroom at night or something. No pen. I woke Alan up and asked him if he had done anything with it. He managed to mumble something negative before rolling over and going back to sleep. So I began another, more thoroough search of the floor aroun my desk. This was when I noticed the bulge. I sat and stared at it for close to fifteen minutes before deciding to just shut up and try to forget about it, which is exactly what I did. Until it happened again. The next time was about four days later. I had put my missing pen almost completely out of my mind, when a disk for my computer class vanished. It had fallen out of my backpack when I tossed it on the floor after class, and I had been too lazy to put it away. The following morning, there was a small rectangular lump in the carpeting. I shoved my bookbag aside and looked at the spot where my pen had been. The lump was still there, but decidedly smaller. At this point, a brilliant deduction popped into my head. Of course. The guys from the floor were just playing a trick on me. Practical jokes in our hall were rare, but not unheard of. Although a 'hungry carpet' certainly was a new one to me. There must just be a really creative prankster on the floor. I knew I sure wouldn't have had the inspiration to shove things under someone's carpet. With a knowing grin on my face, I tugged back the edge of the carpet. The look on my face must have been very neraly comic when I saw that there was nothing but the bare off-white tiles underneath my beautiful carpet. I laid the carpet back down and pushed and prodded at the spot where my pen used to be. Yes, there definitely a lump there, but if it wasn't *on* the carpet, and it wasnt *under* the carpet, that meant that it could only be one other place ... *in* the carpet. I shoveled through the various papers and pieces of junk and trash on my desk until I came up with my Swiss Army Knife. Handy little gadget, the Swiss Army Knife. It seems to have a tool for every occasion. Anyway, I yanked open one of the many blades and bent down until my nose was almost pressing against the lump in the carpet. I pushed apart the figers of the carpet with my fingers, then cut along the length of the bulge. The cut in my carpet looked amazingly, and disgustingly, like a little green furry mouth. Or maybe a deep gash that has gone moldy with green fuzz. Either way, it wasn't a very pleasant picture. I pulled away in disgust at the momentary resemblances, but got my head back on straight after a few seconds. I felt rather silly for being disgusted by a cut in a piece of carpet. Then I pried apart the edges and peered into the gash. Inside the lump was a pile of metal shavings. My mouth went dry and all the blood rushed from my head. I could feel myself swaying back and forth, about ready to pass out, so I used a very old trick. I bit down on my tongue. Hard. All the colors rushed back into the world with an almost audible thud. The salty warmth of blood seeped into my mouth, but I didn't feel quite so faint, so I considered it a fair trade off. I finally worked up the nerve and looked back into the lump. Some of the shavings where reduced to nothing more than metal powder, while others were almost entirely intact. And yes, it definitely was my pen. I could tell, because one of the few pieces remaining completely intact was the little clip that holds it in the pocket. It was engraved with my initials. Reluctant to actually stick my finger anywhere near any of the pieces, I used the point of the knife blade to prod around in the pile of shavings. While most of the pen had been reduced to metal and plastic shavings and metal powder, there were still parts of the pen intact ... A piece of spring here, a small chunk of ink stained plastic from the ink-well there, the tiny roller ball over there. I stood slowly up and went and sat on my bed. At this point I thought one of two things was happening. 1) Someone was playing a very elaborate, very nasty practical joke on me. Or 2) I am going quite insane. I wasn't sure which was more plausible. I decided to just let it all go and ignore it for awhile. See if it either happened again or if it just stopped. If it was a practical joke, maybe the person would either get bored and give up or realize that it wasn't very funny and give up. And if I was going insane, or already was insane, maybe if I just ignored these signs, they'd go away and I'd get better. Either that or I'd snap and go over the edge and just wouldn't have to worry about anything anymore. So I pushed the lump down with my foot and went to class and tried to forget that my carpet seemed to be eating things. Almost two weeks went by, and I had begun to think that maybe it really had been nothing more than a practical joke, and whoever had been playing it had given up for more interesting prey. It was about time for Thanksgiving break, so I flew home, fairly light of heart, thinking that my problems were over and the lumps in my carpet were nothing more than some mysterious 'initiation' or something like that. The university locks up the dorms over Thanksgiving, so I knew when I came back that day that it was no joke. Either I was insane or something very very strange was happening in my room. My duffle bag fell from my numb fingers as I stared around my room in disbelief. The entire floor was a minefield of small and medium sized lumps. Wherever something had been left laying on the floor, there was a hump. In a few places, halves of things were still sticking out. My desk chair was leaning back, its back legs nearly two inches shorter, small lumps spreading from the bases of the legs. My eyes bulged wide as I saw a huge lump in the corner. This one was nearly a foot tall and still seemed to be moving a tiny bit in the shadows. It was like it was almost ... ripping. As I finally convinced myself that the lump couldn't possibly be *moving*, I saw Alan's Cubs hat, the one he never took off, except to sleep or take a shower, roll down the side of the lump and land with a soft plopping sound on the floor. Almost immediately, a hundred, a thousand, possibly a million tiny green threads sprung up around the edges of the hat and latched it securely to the floor. My legs went out from under me and I sat down hard, running a long jagged scrape up my back from the edge of the desk. I think I passed out for awhile, but I don't really remember all that clearly. All I remember was coming in and seeing my desk chair teetering on its now lopsided legs, and ... something else ... something I don't want to ever think about again. And then I was running down the hall to the stairwell. I still don't know how I made it down all the stairs without falling and breaking my neck, but I did. Then I was outside, gasping in the dismal fall morning. The day had started out fairly sunny, but by the time the airport shuttle bus dropped me off in front of my dorm, there had been grey coulds scudding across the sky, threatening snow. All I could think about was that Alan had told me that he would probably come back a day early from break to catch up on some reading for his Latin class. A shudder wracked its way up my back and I half sat, half fell onto the steps. I lay there, trying to catch my breath. Trying to catch my *mind*. It was pretty much spinning freely for awhile. LIke the little guy in the driver's seat saw that big old roadblock to sanity up ahead and just shifted the whole mess into neutral for awhile. Somehow I managed to go back upstairs. I still don't remember much of it. I pulled all the furniture out into the hall and rolled up the green carpet. I don't remember *any* of the trip down the stairs to the dumpster with the carpet. I think the carpet somehow knew that I was getting rid of it. Its deep vomit color was a pale green by the time I wrestled it into the dumpster. I don't know to this day why it didn't attack me or try and make me stop. Maybe it knew it was in public, and I had caught it, feeding and vulnerable, at the only time it couldn't fight back. Or maybe it somehow saw me as its master or keeper, and couldn't or didn't want to fight back against me. I don't know. I went back upstairs, pulled all my furnitre back into the room, sat down, and began studying. When Alan hadn't returned by the end of the second day of classes after Thanksgiving break, I told my counselor, who called his parents to see if he was still at home. From what they knew, he had left a day and a half early, just as planned. After another two days, his parents reported him missing. It was assumed that he was kidnapped or mugged and killed on the road or something. Maybe he stopped at a diner or truckstop for some lunch and was car-jacked, or something like that. The rest of the school year passed uneventuflly. I never got a new roomate, and I just dealt with cold feet in the mornings. By the time I packed up my stereo and TV in the storage shed and flew home, I had completely blocked the green carpet out of my mind. The next year, this year, I got an apartment a mile away from campus instead of living in the dorm. I was legal now, and wanted to have alcohol around. Not that I drink a lot or anything, I just like to have some wine coolers and a beer or two on hand. Also, I was getting really tired of sharing a bathroom with seventy five other guys. So I found a nice cheap apartment where I could live by myself, yet still be close to campus and my few friends. I had rented the place out after only seeing a map of where it ws located and a floorplan. I couldn't really afford to fly cear back to school just to see an apartment. Moving day came, and I flew back to school. This time my suitcases were stuffed with pots and pans and curtains and other necessities. The landlord handed me the keys to my new apartment, and I climbed the stairs to the second floor of the apartment building, arms loaded with boxes of pans and Tupperware containers. I turned the key in the lock, and the door swung slowly open. The boxes fell by my feet into a clattering pile. I could actually feel my hair stand on end. I found out later that it had gone bone white at the same time. I stared wide eyed into my new apartment, watching, but not seeing the dust motes glitter like a thousand floating diamonds caught in a stray beam of early afternoon sunlight. My new apartment was completely furnished, save for for more personal items, like a TV and stereo. But having a bed and chairs and things were one of the things that attracted me to the apartment in the first place. As I stood there staring into my new apartment, my mind went numb again as everything came flooding back to me. All the memories ... the pen, the small pile of metal shavings, the day I came back from Thanksgiving break, the lump that used to be my roomate, dragging the heavy carpet downstairs and manhandling it into the dumpster. It all came back with a mind rending shriek, like a car forcing its way through a garage door that's just a tiny bit too small. My mind buckled and folded and shut down, then kicked back up into overdrive a second later. I stared at the chair that was sunk almost to its bottom in that 70's style, medium shag, puke, baby shit, and guacamole green carpet. My mind reeled as I saw the telephone, my new telephone, actually sinking before my eyes into that rug. So what did I do? I ran again. I ran and ran until there was a deep burning stitch in my side. Then I stopped, threw up, and ran some more. Somehow I ended up outside the library. I don't know if it was blind luck or if some subconscious part of me brought me there. But suddenly I knew that I had to write this down. I've never been much for words, but I knew that there had to be some physical record of this experience kept. I dug in my backpack, which I had never gotten around to taking off, and which hadn't fallen off during my little jog, until I found a computer disk. I went into the library and checked out the key to one of those small cubicles that contain a word processor for students that are too poor to afford their own. I popped the disk in and started typing. So here I am now, a little over three hours later. I think I've decided what to do. I'm going to finish up this narrative, save the document on my disk, and leave it here in this little room. Then I'm going to go back to my apartment, lay down on my green carpet, and try to reason with it. I know it harbors some kind of intelligence. It has to, simply because it managed to follow me and lay in wait for me for almost an entire year. Anyway, I'm going to go lay on my green carpet and talk to it. Maybe I can talk some sense into it, but if I can't, maybe it will at least make the end quick for me, if I ask nicely enough. Wish me luck, for I think I am about to experience the world's first *real* magic carpet ride. November 7, 1993 - November 8, 1993