I jolted awake and sat up in bed. My vintage Cow and Chicken t-shirt clung to my back. I checked my phone: 3:04 AM. This was the third night in a row that I had woken up like this.
What the fuck.
I remember being annoyed that I had to wash my night shirt soon. The design faded with every wash so I avoided it as much as possible. I wiped my forehead with it and tried to recall my recurring nightmare. The only thing I could remember was this face—a chalk-white, hairless face with black holes for eyes that were round like ping-pong balls and spaced a little too far apart. It clearly wasn’t human, but it wasn’t alien either. Despite its grotesque appearance, there was something oddly familiar about it. Thin, cracked lips curled into a smile that stretched from ear to ear. I wouldn’t say it looked happy, though.
I sighed and shook my head as if it were an Etch-a-Sketch. The oscillating fan whirred softly in the corner. I remembered that I had to work in the morning and double-checked that the alarm on my phone was set. I grabbed a cup from the nightstand, took a few sips of water, and laid back down.
As I tried to fall asleep, I became painfully aware of how empty my bed was. It had been a couple months since my girlfriend left me over a stupid argument, right around Valentine’s Day. Now it was just me and my cat Nugget in a lonely little brick house that I was renting in the countryside. I’d wake up, go deliver pizzas downtown all day, and come home to play video games and hang out with Nugget. I didn’t have a lot of friends anymore, unless you counted my cat and my Xbox Live buddies. I had also been losing a lot of weight.
I noticed there wasn’t a fluffy snowball curled up at my feet like there usually was at night, so I called to her in the annoying, high-pitched voice that I frequently used to get her attention.
“Nuuuuggeeeet!”
I waited for a moment and figured she must have been asleep in the living room downstairs. I rolled over on my side and faced the spot where Anne used to drool in her sleep sometimes. My eyelids became heavy, and I soon drifted out of consciousness.
About half an hour later, I felt the sheets drag slowly across my feet. I smiled and glanced down at the foot of the bed, expecting to see Nugget.
If only it had been Nugget.
What I saw instead was a pair of long, twiggy legs sticking out of the sheets right next to mine, extending at least a couple feet past the edge of the bed. The moonlight cast a faint glow on them through the window and reflected off of six jagged toenails that pointed toward the ceiling. There were only six of them because there were only three toes on each bony foot. I slowly raised my head toward Anne’s old pillow, my eyes wide with terror, to find that hideous face from my nightmares staring right the fuck back at me.
My blood turned to ice water. You’d think I would’ve screamed, but I didn’t. I guess I was afraid of what would happen if I made a noise, as if those cavernous sockets would suddenly sprout eyes.
Of course, he could already see me. He was in my fucking bed.
This isn’t real.
I closed my eyes for a few seconds and opened them. He was still there. A few seconds later I heard Nugget hiss from the doorway.
Oh, my God. She can see him, too.
He didn’t have ears as far as I could tell, but he must have heard her because his smile slowly faded. His jaw opened to reveal a sickening set of crooked, yellow teeth. They looked human, only they were spaced out as if every other tooth had been pulled. His tongue and gums were ash gray, and when he exhaled I got a whiff of rotting meat that made my stomach turn. He took in another breath and then let out a strange noise that started as a high-pitched whine and became a roaring shriek that sounded like a vortex trying to suck me in. I couldn’t believe how loud it was.
It took every ounce of effort I had to jerk my body out of bed and sprint for the door. I smacked the light switch and spun around. The noise had stopped, and the bed was empty except for the puddle of sweat I’d left on the sheets. Some of it might have been piss. I looked around for Nugget and wondered if it was me or the noise that had scared her off.
I stood there until my heart rate and breathing returned to normal. I went downstairs, found Nugget hiding behind the couch in the living room, and ended up sleeping on the recliner with her on my lap. With the lights on.
When I woke up for work, I decided I was going to buy a couple surveillance cameras and a gun on my way home. I had never been a fan of guns.
Three weeks passed and nothing happened. I had installed the cameras in the kitchen and the bedroom, one facing the living room and the other facing my bed. They cost me a hundred and twenty fucking dollars at Best Buy, and now they were starting to feel like a gigantic waste of money. Do you know how much weed I could have bought instead? Anyway, the pistol that took me ten minutes to buy thanks to Kentucky’s lax gun laws stayed under my pillow, my sheets stayed relatively dry, and Nugget stayed the fuck away from my room. I didn’t blame her. I got a few notifications about movement in the house (the cameras were motion-sensitive and linked to an app on my phone), but they were all triggered by Nugget.
Then one night, I was working late, driving through one of my usual neighborhoods, when my phone chimed in my pocket. My heart stopped. I had adjusted the motion-sensing threshold on the cameras so that Nugget’s tiny body wouldn’t trigger them anymore—not unless she grew ten times her size. I immediately pulled over and checked my phone.
He’s not real.
I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw Nugget on the screen, batting around a half-dead moth on the kitchen floor. The only light that was on was the stove light. I figured she had probably jumped up on the counter in front of the camera, blocking enough of its view to trigger the motion sensor.
I was about to close the app when I noticed that she had stopped playing with the moth. Her eyes were fixated on something off camera, near the refrigerator. Her ears were flattened and her back was arched, the hairs on her back visibly standing on end. My anxiety was briefly interrupted by anger as I remembered how much extra I had spent on high-definition video. The audio was pretty good, too, because when Nugget hissed the same way she did that night that Mr. Skinnylegs was in my bed, it sounded like she was right next to me in the passenger seat.
What happened next is burned into my memory for as long as I’ll live. I say “burned into my memory” and not “recorded on my camera” because what you see when you watch the video is completely different from what really happened.
I watched the clip on my phone for the seventh time in a row as I sat on my bed in a state of shock. Another notification popped up letting me know that my boss was trying to get ahold of me. It probably had something to do with the seven pizzas getting cold in the back seat of my car.
What the fuck do I do?
The pistol was loaded and sitting in my lap. I considered blowing my brains out with it. Before watching Nugget’s last moments seven times, I had spent half an hour cleaning her blood and fur off the kitchen floor. I started to regret not taking pictures of the scene first. Would it really have helped me, though? Or would it have just made me look like a cat-killing sociopath?
I watched the clip for the eighth time. Nugget hisses and turns toward the back door where she often went in and out through a doggy door. Her claws skitter on the linoleum for a second before she remembers how to use her pads and gains traction. Then she just runs off the screen. And that’s that. Only there’s no sound of the doggy door flapping open and closed. It’s like she just disappears into a portal in the corner of the room, never to be seen again.
But I knew that wasn’t what happened. Not just because the smell of her blood—God, there was so much blood—still lingered in my nostrils, but also because an hour earlier I had been sitting in my car, watching the live feed in horror as Mr. Skinnylegs crept into view and lunged at Nugget. She made it to the doormat, which was just off camera, when he reached out with a branch-like arm and snatched her off the floor. I screamed, tears streaming down my face, as I watched my best friend desperately squirm to get free, only to have her head swiftly ripped off by that eight-foot monstrosity.
I’ll never forget the sound of her flesh tearing and her blood spilling onto the floor. Or the sound of Mr. Skinnylegs crunching on her bones as he chewed her up and swallowed her right in front of my high-definition camera. Sounds that you wouldn’t hear if I showed you the clip. Lucky you.
I put my phone in my pocket and grabbed the pistol, then immediately dropped it and started rubbing my temples. Migraine. I felt my nose start to drip, and a spot of blood appeared on my jeans. I grabbed a tissue from the nightstand and stuffed it in my nostril like a tampon. I could see it slowly getting saturated, forcing my brain to conjure up flashbacks of Nugget’s snow-white fur being dyed red. Her limp, headless body being brandished and ripped apart like a fucking chicken wing in the hand of some fat asshole at a sports bar. I gagged.
My phone chimed again, sending jolts of electricity through my brain. I turned it on silent and made my way downstairs, pistol in hand. After a quick sweep of the living room and kitchen, I went outside, sat in my car, and ate some pizza that belonged to Mike Something—I don’t know. Someone who had a lot less to worry about than I did at the moment. I cracked open his two-liter of Mountain Dew and washed it down. My nose had stopped bleeding, so I took out the nose-pon and tossed it in the back seat next to the pistol.
I was about to call my boss and let him know that I had fallen ill and wouldn’t be able to return to work until at least New Year’s (it was April), when a car pulled up behind me in the driveway. It was Jessica, one of my coworkers. Cute little brunette, green eyes. I recognized the Giovanni’s car-topper and her little blue Chevy immediately. I rolled down my window as she approached my car.
“Hey, man, are you OK? Rob’s been trying to get ahold of you. He’s fucking pissed.”
She looked genuinely concerned. I could tell she had gone out of her way on one of her routes to see if I had gone home, to check on me. Besides, there’s no way Rob would have sent her twenty minutes outside of town just to look for me. Not when there were pizzas to be delivered.
“Uh, yeah. Totally.”
She wasn’t buying it. “So why’d you ditch work, then?”
“I, uh…”
I took off my Giovanni’s hat and ran my fingers through my hair, the way I do when I’m nervous. Jessica’s eyes grew wide, and I realized she was looking at my jacket sleeve.
“Is that blood?”
Shit.
There was actually quite a bit of blood on my sleeves. I was so dazed that I hadn’t even noticed.
“What? No,” I replied, as casually as possible. I leaned back in my seat so she could see the half-eaten pizza beside me. “It’s pizza sauce.”
“Dude, I know what a pizza sauce stain looks like.” It took her all of half a second to find one on her own jacket.
I sat there awkwardly while she studied me. I realized in that moment that I could have just blamed it on my nosebleed, but she had caught me off guard. If I kept lying, she was going to think I was a murderer.
“Look, it’s not what you think. It’s my cat’s blood.”
She looked even more horrified.
“No, wait, listen,” I continued. “It wasn’t me. I know you’re not gonna believe me, but I’m being visited by some sort of demon or monster. I call him Mr. Skinnylegs. I first saw him in my bed a few weeks ago, which led me to buy a gun and some surveillance cameras. I just saw him again tonight on the one that’s set up in my kitchen.” I paused and looked her dead in the eye. “I watched him eat my cat.”
The look on her face had morphed from fear into fascination.
“Show me.”
Jessica stood over the kitchen trash can with her hand over her mouth. Inside were blood-soaked towels and clumps of red and white fur—all that was left of the cuddliest cat in the world. I stood beside her wielding the pistol and nervously glancing around the kitchen and living room.
“I don’t know if we should really be in here, Jessica. What if he comes back?”
“What if he’s upstairs right now? We should go check!”
She grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the stairs. I looked at her in disbelief, unable to form words. When we reached the staircase, I flipped on the upstairs light switch and led the way.
No sign of Mr. Skinnylegs. I sat on the edge of my bed and put the pistol down beside me. Jessica sat cross-legged on the floor directly in front me, armed with a million questions. What did he look like? Did he talk? Did my ex-girlfriend ever see him? Just how skinny were those legs?
Her phone started ringing.
“Oh, shit. It’s Rob,” she said, before muting the phone and sticking it back in her pocket. “What are we gonna tell him?”
“Jessica, I don’t think you understand—”
“Wait! Didn’t you say you watched Mr. Skinnylegs eat your cat on one of your surveillance cameras?” She pointed at the one on my dresser.
I nodded, my head buried in my hands.
“Can you only watch the live feeds, or do they record, too? That was a dumb question. What kind of surveillance camera doesn’t record video? I mean, what good would it do to see someone robbing your house if you couldn’t show the police what they looked like?”
My temples throbbed. “Yes, they record audio and video.”
“Then why haven’t you shown me the footage yet?! Is it because—” She stopped herself. I could feel her excitement turn into embarrassment as it dawned on her that maybe I didn’t want to watch or hear my beloved pet getting devoured again.
I shook my head. “It’s not that. I think Mr. Skinnylegs fucked with the footage.”
“Fucked with it how? Like, he deleted the video?”
“No. Well, kinda. The video’s still there. It’s just… different. It doesn’t show what I saw when I was watching it live earlier.”
Her excitement returned. “Ooooh, spooky! Can I watch it anyway?”
“Knock yourself out,” I said, handing her my phone. I helped her pull up the clip before putting my head back in my hands. So tired.
I sat there for a minute while she watched it, questioning everything I ever knew, thinking back to a time when life didn’t feel like some fucked-up nightmare. I heard the part of the clip where Nugget hisses and her claws skitter on the floor. Then I heard a couple of things that I wasn’t expecting to hear: the gut-wrenching sound of Nugget’s flesh tearing, and the sound of my phone hitting the floor.
I looked up to see Jessica staring at me, frozen in terror. All of the color had drained from her face. She was shaking like a leaf.
“Jessica, what—”
And then I saw it. On my phone screen in front of her was me, kneeling on the kitchen floor, skinning Nugget with a steak knife. The “me” in the video stopped, slowly turned toward the kitchen camera, and smiled at me. The same fucking way that Mr. Skinnylegs did in my nightmares and in my bed. My jaw dropped.
Jessica screamed at the top of her lungs, sprang to her feet, and sprinted out of my room. At that moment, every light in the house went out. All I could see was my phone at my feet. The display switched back to the live feed from the kitchen. The front door flew open on my phone screen, and the moonlight revealed Jessica’s petite silhouette in the doorway. Before she could make it outside, a skinny arm shot out of the shadows between the window and the door and skewered her head with a long, pointy finger. The arm retracted, and blood poured from the side of her head. She crumpled to the floor.
If you were to somehow retrieve the footage of Jessica’s death from police custody and watch it, you would see a normal-looking human arm point a pistol at her head. You would see and hear a gunshot before seeing her collapse. You would see my silhouette enter the doorway and drag her body into the shadows.
You would think I’m crazy.
I’m not crazy.