In class assignment - The food sucks and the wiring is bad - By Brandon Ince

Summer, 2003
Edinburgh, Scotland

I'm 9 years old and way out of my element. Scotland is a weird place, it rains all day everyday, there are different words for only specific things, and it's dark. Not dark in the sense that the exists a significant lack of sunlight or incandescence, though one would not be out of place saying so, - dark in the sense that the history of Scotland has been surreptitiously laced the the wispy stitch of malice and blood.

 Anyways, the story begins breakfast one morning, I don't know who but someone once said that "in hell all the cooks are English" and entering my second week partaking in classic English cuisine I cannot help but agree. "the food here sucks" I thought to myself as my eyes glazed over the few lovely loafs of "spotted dick" left in the buffet trays. The hotel we were staying at was nice, probably the nicest place I'd ever been, the cook staff must have been comparably talented but frankly, there is no saving that name - "spotted dick", especially to a 9 year old.

I made my way back to the room knowing we had a stash of plain bagels hidden away. I arrived at the threshold but something was not right. What's wrong with this place? I can't say for sure what I was feeling at that point, it's beyond my capability as a writer to fully articulate. A close approximation would be the strange feeling you get when you watch a massive object in the distance as you move passed it but the object is so large and perspective so warped that it doesn't move in the way you expect it. The feeling is similar to vertigo but not exact. 

I went to my bag and pulled out my precious plain bagel but I was no longer hungry, I was anxious. I want out of here. I can not stay in here. The room is exactly how I left it earlier but at the same time not. There's something extra. It's grotesque. I leave for the door but as I near the exit there is a ringing. Ringing? Ringing not exactly, but a high-pitched continuous screeching sound, though soft and quiet. I turn around to see the CRT TV is now on when before it was off, I didn't turn that on. I guess you could say I was freaked out at that point I went back to the eating area where my family was but I don't remember telling them what happened until we were back stateside.

It wasn't until later I learned that faulty wiring can cause feelings of anxiety and nausea. Which would explain the strange feelings I was experiencing and the TV turning on randomly for no reason. Darn you bad Scottish electricians. Though also that hotel is also a notoriously haunted hotel in one of the most notoriously haunted cities in the whole world. So there is also that. One or the other I guess.