Hell Theater
21 Years without a shower

Creepypasta tells about the past trauma experienced by a young man so he never took a shower for 21 years.

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Author by: Chance Patrick

I always had a bad dream. I was trapped in the bathroom. The sinkhole is clogged and the water won't stop flowing. The water pooled up to my ankles, rose up to my waist, until it finally buried my head. The curtains of my room turned hard into glass. I drowned inside my own bathroom and my screams immediately turned into air bubbles. A black shadow stuck his face on the glass wall, watching me from the other side. I tried to beg for his mercy, but he wouldn't let me out. I swallowed water and was out of breath. It finally floated helplessly inside my glass coffin.

I woke up panting.

I know where the nightmare came from. I don't have to dig deep into my mind to find out. The incident that caused the nightmare was never far from my subconscious. Finding him was easy.

Forgetting it, that's hard.

I remember well the day it all started. On my 12th birthday when the Hudson family moved across the house. When I first saw them, there were three members of the family, one of them was a really thin grandmother. My body is small, thin, so it only looks like a bone wrapped in skin. His thin hair was as white as snow. She wore a blue dress with an old-fashioned floral pattern. His head hung around his neck and moved like a pendulum as the man pushed him in a wheelchair into the house. At that time, I didn't even know if the grandmother was alive or dead.

A few minutes later he appeared behind an upstairs window, still sitting in his wheelchair. He sat facing my bedroom, which was also on the second floor of my house. My curiosity prompted me to open the window curtain slightly to peek at it. His head suddenly rose, looking at me. He kept looking at me, without even blinking his eyes.

I closed my curtains back.

For days he sat in front of the window. There was much he could see from the second floor window of his room. There was a car that passed by and a child–anak who was playing on the road. But the grandmother just chose to look forward, towards my room. I never saw anyone but Grandma in that room. I never even saw the wheelchair move. At night, I nervously peeked around with a little curtain of my window. His silhouette was still faintly visible on the window, with the lights off, and his posture was still staring towards my room. I could tell that even at night, he was still watching me.

The story of the strange grandmother soon spread quickly among my schoolmates. Some say that grandma is actually a witch. Some say the grandmother is actually dead. Some say that grandma is just a doll. Of course the thing that caused those rumors was the fact that no one had ever seen him move in the slightest and leave the window of his room. I never even saw his head move or look. I could feel that he was watching me, studying me. Alone in the night room, I always close the curtains of my window tightly. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and shake. I know he's watching me, I know that.

I started sleeping on the floor. The lower I am, the better. Maybe he couldn't see me if I was lying on the floor.

I told my parents that my grandmother across the street was freaking me out. I begged them to talk to the Hudson family and asked them to move the grandmother to a windowless room. They even laughed at me and told me to let the grandmother spend the rest of her life in peace. He just wants to see the way and the people, they say, and maybe it can make him happy and feel younger.

“Are you going to put your mother in a windowless room when she gets old?” my mom laughed, “Then remind mom to stay with your sister only if mom is already in a wheelchair.”

A week later, something happened at the Hudson family home. I stared from my bedroom window as the man ran out of the house and opened the door. He then ran back in and appeared a few minutes later, pushing his grandmother's wheelchair down the stairs. He looked weaker than usual. The weight may not be more than 35 kilos. His head is on his right shoulder.

But I know he's alive.

I know because his eyes keep watching me all the time.

The man grabbed her and put her in the car. He folded his wheelchair and stuck it in the trunk. He quickly jumped into the car, followed by his wife.

Grandma's face was still visible in the car window. He's still staring at me. His face was expressionless, even without the slightest emotion emanating. His tongue hung slightly on the side of his mouth, but his eyes. His eyes are still on me.

The car came out of the yard and drove, disappearing into the traffic.

My parents heard from other neighbors that the grandmother's condition was deteriorating and they had to take her to a nursing home in the middle of the city. They don't think he's going back to that house. I went up to my bedroom and looked across the street. I smile. For the first time since they had come, the window of the room was finally empty.

The Hudson family still didn't come back the next day. There were no cars parked in front of their houses. Later that night, I peeked back into Grandma's room. There's nobody there. There are no wheelchairs. But the grandmother's room lights were still on. I told my dad because it was so weird. But the father only said that they might install a timer on the room lamp.

I woke up in the middle of the night and nervously peered through my bedroom window. Grandma's room light is still on. Suddenly the lights went off and I immediately hid myself under the covers. I then slowly got up and peeked back, hoping that it would look like the silhouette of that skull-like grandmother. I waited for 10 minutes while squinting my eyes. There was no one in the room, but the lights went on again, then went out again.

I decided to go back to sleep on the floor while hugging my pillow.

I got a baseball practice schedule the next afternoon. When I got home, my house was empty. My parents were at my brother's softball game. I immediately went to the shower in my bathroom to refresh myself.

After 3 minutes in the shower, I felt cold. It makes no sense, I use warm water. It seemed like the hot steam of this water escaped out of the bathroom, which to me made absolutely no sense anyway, because I closed the door. I couldn't see very well because of the shampoo that started dripping into my eyes. Then I heard a voice that would haunt me for the rest of my life.

Someone get in the bathroom!

The pain from the shampoo seemed to sting my eyes. But I can still see the dark shadows behind the curtains. Jemari2 was skinny, long, and pale dragging the curtains until it opened slowly.

There stood the grandmother. I may only look at it for a second or two, but time seems to stop. After all these years, I still can't forget that terrible shadow from my mind. His hair was white. Insanity seemed to gush from his eyes. The visible bone protrudes from behind her wrinkled skin. The lump of flesh that hung on his body, as if no longer bound and just waiting to fall on the floor. As well as her pale skin like a corpse.it all made me have nightmares, even after so many years later.

He smiled in a very scary way and the warm water that had poured my body from the shower seemed unable to warm my body which was frozen. In her hand, I saw the grandmother holding a knife, a letter opener.

“August ...” he murmured, “August ... August .... August ...”

I immediately ran past him and pushed him until his body fell to the floor. I immediately ran down the stairs, still wet. In my panic, I somehow still remembered that I was naked. I immediately grabbed the pants from the laundry room and dropped the basket hard on the floor. I ran out of the house again, to my neighbor who was my friend.

When the police arrived, they found the grandmother unconscious in the bathroom. The water in the shower is still flowing. The policemen were really kind to me, even praising my bravery. I told them what the grandmother said, “August” and asked if they knew what she meant.

“Next month is August,” replied one of them while shrugging his shoulders, “You will never understand the contents of the head of a crazy old woman, Nak.”

The Hudson family returned only to pick up the rest of their belongings. Posts “Home for Sale” soon on display in front of their house a few days later. My mother felt bad thinking they might move because of the incident in our house. But what really happened? My parents told me that the grandmother had been taken by her family to a nursing home in the middle of the city. However, somehow, one day the grandmother managed to escape and took a bus to return here. But how is it possible? I don't think that story makes sense to me. He was so old, senile, and fragile. He could barely move and walk as long as he lived across the street. How could he have traveled alone from the nursing home to come back here, even walking up to the second floor and scaring me in the bathroom?

Anyway, you can imagine what the impact of the incident would be for my psychology. I haven't had a shower in 21 years. Well, that doesn't mean I never take a shower. I sometimes bathe with a soak in a tub filled with soapy water. But still I can't stay in the water too long.

But taking a shower, standing behind a curtain, and the water splashing against my body, I never did it again in my entire life.

When you take a shower, I'm alone. That's your privacy. You are estranged from the world.

This makes bathing very dangerous.

You're in a closed room, you're fragile, you're naked,

You're easily attacked.

I've talked about my fears to everyone – my parents, even – psychiatrists but there's nothing they can do. I also had to continue my life. Besides my bathing problems, my life is going normally (especially since I use a lot of fragrance).

A few months ago, something in me felt inspired. I felt like I had the urge to dig deeper into the information about the incident. Like there was a voice in my head that told me to do it. I think part of me is demanding answers.

I spent hours in front of the internet, trying to track down any information about the Hudson family and the old woman. I finally found what I was looking for – an obituary (news of death announcement) from the grandmother. He died four years ago. Somehow the walking skull was still alive 15 years after the incident. The obituary was in black and white and was taken when she was a beautiful young girl. In the photo, he is not alone. She was with her late husband on their wedding day.

Her husband's name is August.

And he looks a lot like me.

I closed the browser and just stared at my desktop screen for 10 minutes. This finally makes sense to me. Why he called me August. Why is he so obsessed with me. Perhaps she often wrote letters to her husband and maybe that's why she was holding a letter-opening knife at the time.

For a moment, I feel better. Everything will look better if we start to understand it.

“Honey, is everything okay?” ask wife.

“Ya, Darling.” replied me.

I finally took a shower for the first time in 21 years. I didn't even jump in fear when my wife opened the curtains to give me the towel I had left in the room.

But there is one question that has not been answered.

How could the face of the young lady in the wedding photo be so similar to my wife's?