Trauma.

Ever since you were a child, you were terribly afraid of your bathroom. You don’t know why, but, whenever you would see your bathroom door during nighttime, you would be invaded by an overwhelming sensation of unease. You developed a habit out of locking your bathroom’s door before going to sleep.

You would never rest at ease until you closed and locked the door, and whispered to yourself:

“It’s locked.”

You never understood your own fears and, as you grew up, though you still felt them, you began trying to overcome them, or at least ignore them as best as you could. Although the feeling lingers, you become bolder and bolder, and feel as if you could forget all about this seemingly unreasonable child trauma.

You then decide to stop locking the door. Rolling around in bed, you try to muster up the willpower necessary not to look or think about the unsettling door. With some struggle, you finally fall asleep.

You suddenly wake up in the middle of the night. The first thing you realise is that you are not in bed anymore. You lie in a hard and cold tile floor, surrounded by nothing but darkness and silence. You try to feel around yourself, when your hand touches a bathtub. Your bathtub. You freeze. Your heart starts pacing while, in panic, you try to hear any sound indicating the presence of anything else in that bathroom. You can’t hear anything over the sound of your own panicked breath, and the thought that something could hear your breathing instead only deepens your despair. Barely being able to hold yourself together, you rush for the door, as fast as you can. As you try to turn the handle, you realize your mistake. Your heart stops.

“It’s locked.”

Suddenly, you hear someone else’s breathing coming from behind your back.