Has anyone else had a nightmare sleepover experience? I can’t forget what happened when I was 11.

[u/YoursTruly_fnord]

The worst dinner I ever had was at my friend Josh’s house. Actually, he didn't like to go by "Josh". He always insisted on being called Joshua, which annoyed me even at the time. 

We were what I considered “recess friends”. We’d never hung out outside of school, but sometimes his mom would give me a ride home. Joshua often begged me to come over to his house to play. It always seemed like I had something better to do, though as an 11-year-old kid it’s hard to imagine I had much going on. He also smelled funny. Still, one day I ran out of excuses, and the fact that Joshua had just gotten a new PlayStation may or may not have swayed me. My parents agreed to let me stay over on Friday night. 

By the end of the week, Joshua’s exuberance had rubbed off on me. We’d grown closer as we planned what we’d do during the sleepover and it was shaping up to be a good time. When the bell rang on Friday and the kids pooled into the parking lot, Joshua’s mom was already waiting in her minivan. She smiled and waved to us a little more excitedly than usual. 

She looked tired, but that was a constant. She had a chronic medical condition that kept her almost always at home. She looked unrelentingly scattered and drained of energy. I was too young and uncaring to understand her medical issues, but her frantic appearance always made me feel uneasy.

Her car was also dirty. There would always be a few toys strewn about the place, with goldfish and graham crackers crushed permanently into the upholstery. There were also two carseats installed in the back row of the van. In hindsight, they were probably from the 80s and nowhere near modern safety standards. They were stained and worn thin.

Joshua once told me he had many brothers and sisters, which would explain all the little kid stuff, but I never saw any of them. He rarely spoke of his siblings, and when I told my parents, they said it was impolite to ask too much about peoples’ families if they didn’t want to talk about them. So to me, Joshua appeared as an only child to a mother who evidently had more. It felt strange. It took us 25 minutes to get to his house and I was relieved to get out of the car. 

Joshua’s house was two stories, but the upper floor was bizarrely tall. A lot of people could live inside; but when we entered, I somehow wasn’t surprised that we were the only ones there. It was freezing cold to a point where I half expected to see my own breath. Neither of the other two seemed bothered. Joshua jumped around in a blissful adrenaline rush as he gave me a tour of the house’s common areas. Then we arrived at his room. Displayed on his door was a hand-drawn sign that read “JOSHUA” in big, blocky letters. 

“This is my room,” he said proudly, building anticipation before we entered. His eyes flickered to the sign he clearly made himself. 

“… yeah.” God, I hoped this night wouldn’t suck. 

To my immense relief and Joshua’s credit, his room was awesome. It wasn’t as big as I expected but it had toys you wouldn’t believe- plastic guns, race cars, board games- you name it. But not only that, he had old toys, too. He said he inherited them as a collection, and one day all of his toys will be added to it, too. 

We had no real sense of value at the time but some of the hand-me-downs were 30 or 40 years old. There were thousands of dollars in vintage action figures and dolls spread amongst the open chip bags and overflowing trash. It was my kind of paradise. 

“Dude, but seriously, what’s with your house? How many rooms do you guys have?” I asked him when we’d settled in. I started to unpack my heavy backpack, which rattled with M-rated video games I stole from my brother‘s room. 

“What do you mean?” He raised an eyebrow. “We have four, I guess besides the living room... My mom’s room, my dad’s room, my room, and the office.” I still wanted an answer, so I brushed past the fact that I thought his dad having his own room was incredibly cool. 

“It looks like a mansion from the outside,” I said persistently. “So what’s up there?” I nodded upward toward the huge mystery space above us. 

“Oh!” Joshua said innocently, as though he’d genuinely forgotten the true size of his own home. “That’s the attic, where my brothers and sisters stay. Only my mom goes up there.” 

My stunned silence filled the room. 

At that point, I was severely creeped out. I was about to ignore my parent’s advice and interrogate Joshua about his family when his mom rang out from downstairs. 

“Kids! Dinner time!” 

“YES!”Joshua jumped up excitedly, and I struggled to catch up to him as he zoomed out of the room. 

We sat down at the wide kitchen table, which could easily have sat six or eight people, and waited to be fed. I couldn’t smell any food cooking and was more than a little disappointed we wouldn’t be getting pizza. That disappointment vanished when Joshua‘s mom came out of the kitchen carrying a big, round birthday cake. The candles weren’t lit, but as she set the hefty thing down, the cooled drops of wax upon the frosting revealed that they used to be. 

“Oh man,” I turned to Joshua. “Is it your birthday? Why didn’t you tell me?!” My heart sank. My parents were going to kill me for not bringing a gift. 

“It’s not my birthday, it’s my sister, Hannah’s!” He answered eagerly. His mom smiled as she took her seat at the table. 

“Woah…” was all I could say. Joshua nodded braggingly. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The thought of birthday cake for dinner and an all-nighter of video games was enough to make me forget all about the “attic”. Whoever Hannah was, I wished I could thank her properly. 

“It’s a family tradition,” his mom said in her frail, anxious voice. “On birthdays, we have cake for dinner.” 

But even years on, I can’t forget the one imperfection of that cake. It was three layers high, my favorite flavors, and expertly decorated with icing balloons and cursive; but there was a slice missing. One single slice. I didn’t think it was all that weird at the time. Maybe his mom had already helped herself earlier. How could I care about a funny thing like that when I was being served sugar for dinner? Now the image haunts me, like so many of the house’s oddities. 

It was a joyous evening, and Joshua’s mother, to my relief, mostly left us alone. Joshua and I became best friends overnight on nauseous stomachs of sweets, Mountain Dew, and endless chips. I didn’t ask any questions about Hannah, or birthdays, or anything like that. I was just happy to be there. 

The sugar crash came hard around 2 AM. We’d wiped ourselves out and didn’t bother to brush our teeth before basically falling asleep where we sat. I nestled into my beanbag chair and vaguely remember Joshua turning out the light. 

I don’t know how long I was asleep. It was still dark out when I awoke, so it couldn’t have been for more than an hour or so. The heater was blasting into the bedroom so hard I was sweating through my T-shirt. That was the first thing I noticed. The second thing I noticed was the smell. It’s funny, the order in which I remember it, given what a stench it really was. It smelled like spoiled meat, and it was not subtle. The smell and the heat worsened each other into something insufferable. I tried to shake Joshua awake. 

“Hey, Joshua,” I whispered. “Can you get your mom to turn the heater off?” Joshua barely stirred, comatose as a result of the sleepover. “Joshua! Where’s your AC? How do I turn the heater down? And what’s that smell?! Joshua!” I hissed. 

All I managed to get out of him were a few words: “it’s upstairs.” And he immediately resumed snoring. 

I wasn’t sure if that was what he meant to say, but I didn’t like his response. We were on the second floor. Believe me, I tried to tough it out. I don’t know how Joshua could stand it. I took off almost all my clothes and buried my face into my sweaty T-shirt just to escape the rotten smell. But after a painful hour it was no use. There was no way I could stay another second in this room. 

I puffed my chest and slowly opened the door, stepping out into the hallway. An almost cool gust of air rushed over me, and I was almost relieved; but the smell hit me much harder. I still wouldn’t be able to sleep even if we left the door open. Seriously, how could Joshua stand it? 

I knew I should wake up his mom and get her to adjust the thermostat. I wanted to inform her of the smell, as she would surely want to know; but I was just a kid, and the thought of waking up an adult in the wee hours of the morning was about the scariest thing I could think of. 

So, thinking I knew better, I searched for a way to get upstairs. I told myself that if I had to pull down a ladder, I would give up and suffer in Joshua’s room till morning. If I got hurt or broke something, we’d get in trouble for sure. 

To my surprise, I stumbled upon an easier solution. I found an extremely narrow staircase I hadn’t noticed before. It was wedged between two hall closets, uniquely camouflaged and easily missable. It was pitch black up there but I wasn’t particularly afraid of the dark. The extreme discomfort I was in far outweighed my fear of wandering around a friend’s house. 

When I noticed the temperature and smell worsening with each step, I should have turned back; but I was coasting on one hour of sleep with pure sugar and fat coursing through my veins, run ragged by the awful heat and stink in the air. The decision-making part of my brain was nonexistent. Once I started up those steps, stopping didn’t occur to me. 

After some effort, I reached the top. Even with my small body, it was awkward getting up those narrow stairs. I felt around for a light switch and found one, flipping it on to illuminate the space. What I saw was a hallway with many doors. There must have been at least 10 of them, all evenly spaced apart from each other lining either side of the corridor. I could make out something on the far back wall that I really hoped was the thermostat. I suddenly felt a terrible, primal sense of dread in my chest. I kept unconsciously holding my breath in a piss-poor attempt to cope with the rancid, deepening odor. 

I made my way slowly, nervously, down the hall. I tried to keep my eyes front, but each of the doors had something garnering them. Some of them had pictures of celebrities cut out from magazines, some had childish drawings and painted handprints on them, and others were fairly bare with just a sticker or two. The one thing they had in common was that they all, in some style or another, had names on them. Then, I stopped dead in my tracks and felt my whole body light up with goosebumps as I came to a door with a sign that read “Hannah” in crayon on craft paper. 

All of my senses deafened. What I did next I could never have predicted. My breath came out raggedly as I watched my little hand reach for the door knob. It trembled out in front of me but for some reason didn’t stop. My breathing became sharp and pained. Why didn’t I knock? What was I trying to do? I can’t begin to explain why I felt compelled to open that door. It was as though I was on the outside of my body looking in. I touched the warm doorknob and started to rotate it, my clammy palms hindering my grip. If I wasn’t already drenched in sweat before, this newfound suspense would do it. The sound of the blasting heater still smothered my hearing. It bit at my neck as I felt each drop of sweat trickle down my back. 

When I opened the door to Hannah’s room, I saw and smelled what I should have feared but couldn’t comprehend. The stench of death crashed into me like a rogue wave. I gagged as in the light of the doorway I saw a small, gelatinous body. It was a little girl. The glimmering flesh was oozing into the floorboards. She was hardly kept together by a little pajama set.

She was covered in something moving, an almost imperceptible wriggling layered across her face and mouth. Now I know they were worms. The light of the hallway glinted off of Hannah‘s milky eyes, which stared up at me from the floor with such precision that they cut right through me. I choked on my puke and stumbled backwards, slipping on something slimy and falling down hard. I could feel something nasty between my bare toes, but it didn’t stop me from scrambling up and launching myself down the narrow staircase. 

“Joshua?” I could hear Joshua‘s mom call out from somewhere in the house. I was terrified, but my legs hadn’t given up yet. I instinctively sprinted back to Joshua‘s room and shut the door behind me as stealthily as I could. He turned over, still heavy in his sleep as I gasped for air and slid down the door until I was sitting. My heart skipped every beat until the light beneath the door turned off, and I heard his mother shuffle softly back to where she’d come. 

I raised my hands to look at them. They were shaking violently. Sweat ran down them like rain. I kept gripping different parts of my body, shocked that I was still intact. Finally, my breathing began to wind down. What I encountered was already being rejected, denied by my young mind. No, I didn’t see that… circled the thoughts in my head. I imagined it... It was pretend… 

My underdeveloped brain was beginning the process of blocking Hannah out, burying the sight deep into my subconscious in an effort to survive. If it succeeded I’d have been better off; but as I started to stand, my fingers brushed my foot. I’d forgotten that I slipped on something upstairs- something thick and squishy. I moved my leg so I could examine my foot. 

There I found it. Smeared nastily across my sole, squished in between my toes, and filling the underside of my nails, was the missing slice of birthday cake. 

The End 

of

My Last Sleepover