My therapist doesn’t seem to understand how bad my situation is. If she did, she wouldn’t be making me write this.
The medication doesn’t seem to be working. No matter how many times she sees me resist sleep through the monitors in my room, sees me inevitably fail and get up screaming, she does nothing more than up my dosage and tries to get me to speak once more.
I haven’t spoken a word in months, not since it started tormenting me. “Traumatic mutism” my therapist has neatly labelled it. The thing is, it’s not that I can’t speak, it’s the fact that I don’t want to. I can’t trust myself to not talk about it. I didn’t want anyone else to go through what I have gone through. But now, I’ve realized I really don’t care.
I’m so sick of being tired. I don’t want to go through this anymore. I just want somebody to know, to see what I see.
It Watches Me When I Sleep.
That was the title of the forum post that started it all. A short little story about a creature that supposedly haunted the author while they slept and had slowly started appearing closer to them with each passing night, robbing the author of any sleep or safety. Nothing but a story, something I had read for fun. And it was fun.
Until it started visiting me.
It looks like a regular human at first glance, someone you could see on a street. So plain that if you tried to describe them, you wouldn’t remember enough to say anything. But there’s always something wrong with it no matter how many times it tries to fix itself. Eyes too bright, limbs out of proportion, face just a bit too long. There is always something wrong.
It didn’t go past the foot of my bed the first few nights, content to just stand there, breathing hard enough to wake me up every time. I’ve tried getting up during these little moments of ours, do anything at all. I’m never able to move. I think it makes sure of this.
After a couple of days, it started getting closer and more aggressive. I can hear it approaching every time, it’s limbs cracking with every movement. And then come the attacks. Fingers warp into claws as it tries to pull me out of bed only to scratch my sides bloody instead. Claws wrap around my neck and obstruct my breathing for just long enough, pulling away right before I pass out. Throughout my pain, I’ve heard it laugh a couple of times, as if this was just a game for its entertainment.
But the worst was when it started talking. Coming up to my side once more in those slow jagged steps before leaning down next to my ear and whispering for hours on end.
Forbidden knowledge that no human should ever be made aware of.
The world is not what it seems; The comfort of my beliefs have been stripped away by it and replaced with concepts so horrid in nature I cannot put them into words. I grieve for what I know, but also for all that you do not know.
Unfortunately, you will soon become privy to this knowledge as well. I am merely a harbinger of what is to come, and I want you to know that I’m sorry.
For you see, among all the things it has told me, I’ve also been told how it continues its own existence. Simply through the words of one person to another. Doesn’t matter what medium or what setting, just as long as it is spoken about.
I don’t know how this works, whether it will move on from me to you, or kill me first. All I know is that all of it will finally stop. I just want it to STOP.
If it comes for me tonight once more, I have resolved to offer myself up as a sacrifice and merely pray for a fast death. If it doesn’t do the deed, I’ll go through with it myself.
Just remember.
It hates when you keep your eyes closed for too long.
