the alarming bed

Bryan Fall could never wake up in time to get ready for work. Every morning the alarm next to his bed rang loudly at 6:00 am, but Bryan always turned off the alarm and slept much later than he should have. His boss, Mr. Dan Dollar of the Bluntrust Bank, warned Bryan that if he was late one more time, he would not hesitate to fire him. Dollar suspected that Bryan needed a reliable alarm clock, one that would wake him up and keep him awake. So he told Bryan about a business he had just opened called “Alarm Beds”, which sold beds built to wake a person at the right time and keep them awake.

Bryan followed his boss’s advice and drove to “Alarm Beds”. As soon as he opened the store door, he was greeted by a cheerful young woman with a shrill voice: “Welcome to Alarm Beds. My name is Barbara. Can I help you find the perfect bed that will wake you up?”

Bryan asked if he could show him some of his models. “We have a few bed models that are guaranteed to wake our customers up. Each one is designed with a particular wake-up function. For example, our best seller is the bed with sharp spikes that rise up from the mattress after the alarm goes off. It’s our most expensive.”

Bryan’s mind went numb. “Peak?”

“Do you want to see a demo?” Barbara asked.

Brian agreed. So Barbara set the alarm clock on her bed to go off in 2 minutes. When the clock chimed, long spikes shot up from all over the mattress. Bryan’s eyes almost bugged out of her head and she thought the bed was too violent.
“What other beds do you have?”

Barbara walked to the back of the store and showed him a bed with a mattress that quickly folded like a sandwich from head to toe. Bryan winced when he saw what that mattress could do to a body. Barbara showed him another bed with a mattress whose springs turned it to an upright position, throwing the sleeper to the floor.

Bryan thought these beds would surely wake him up in time, but he didn’t want to get killed. Plus they were too expensive. “Do you have any that are less expensive? I really can’t afford much.”

“Well, we have a single that’s on sale for a lot less, but I don’t know much about it. A young man brought it here a couple of days ago. He said he didn’t mind being paid for it, which was weird. Plus , seemed to be in a hurry. Anyway, we took it and put it back here,” Barbara said.

Bryan asked if he could try it. Barbara told her that she could and opened the door for her to try. Bryan walked around the bed examining it. Then she lay on top of him, testing his comfort. He got up and said, “I’ll take it! How much do you want for it?”
“Let me talk to my manager.” She walked away from her and brought the manager back with her. She shook Bryan’s hand, then asked, “How about $50?”

Bryan looked dumbfounded, then said, “What a deal! I’ll take it!”

He left the room, walked to the counter and reached into his pocket handing them a fifty dollar bill. She asked for a receipt, but the manager only wrote a bill of sale that read, “Bed with alarm: $50 no refunds.” He then signed his name at the bottom.
Bryan called some friends who would be in the next 30 minutes to put the bed in his old Ford truck. As soon as they arrived, they returned to the room where the bed was. When they loaded everything onto the truck, they went to Bryan’s apartment and put it in his bedroom.

As soon as Bryan thanked them, the door to his room closed. He did not understand this. Then he turned the handle and the door opened. He then suddenly slammed into his face, rendering him unconscious for several minutes. As he recovered, he heard a low, wicked voice laugh. Bryan thought they might be his friends playing a prank on him. “Okay. Guys… Open the door.”

Then the door slowly opened on its own, but Bryan didn’t think much of it. He went to work until it was time to go to bed. That night he came home, brushed his teeth and got ready for bed. As soon as he closed his eyes, the bed began to shake violently so much that he fell off the bed. Then, he heard the voice of a disembodied woman screaming, “We’re going to kill you!”

Bryan suddenly sat up in shock. “Who said that?”

“We did it! We are your friends. We are Legion!” A male voice sarcastically shouted with a growl.

“Who are you?” Bryan said quietly. Then he heard a multitude of whistles and wicked curses. All night Bryan was physically and verbally tortured. Early in the morning, Bryan ran out of his apartment as fast as he could, jumped into his car and sped to a friend’s house.

Her horrific night reminded her of the terrifying 1973 movie “The Exorcist,” in which priests were called in to exorcise evil spirits from hell inside a little girl. At his friend’s house, Bryan looked up a Catholic church he attended as a child and called a priest to come and remove the demons. However, when he spoke to a priest named O’Leary about his problem, he asked if he could come and exorcise his demon-infested bed. O’Leary scoffed and denied that such things as demons exist and told Bryan to talk to a psychiatrist about the problem.
Bryan was furious and slammed his phone against the wall, smashing it to pieces. He decided what to do to resolve the situation. He cautiously returned to his apartment and pulled the covers off the bed. Although the spirits mocked and insulted him, he went out and called his friends again to help him get the bed out of his apartment.

When they arrived he told them that he wanted to take the bed to the Catholic Church. After they came and took the bed, they went to the church and parked it in front of the church. They unloaded the bed to carry her inside. Most of the church clergy gasped when they saw the bed being carried into the church. Although Bryan heard a whispered evil laugh coming from the bed, he asked a nun where O’Leary’s office was located.

She said, “Your office is just down the hall. Why do you need a bed?” Bryan replied sarcastically, “It’s a donation. I thought I might find some charitable use for it.”