Sleeping with your eyes open is different than normal sleep. You don’t necessarily dream, you hallucinate. Your vision gets dark and creates images in your surroundings when you reach a deep enough sleep. Your vision is the set of a play and your mind is the cast. It’s similar enough to dreaming that you won’t notice everything is taking place within your vision until the light shines through your window and you jerk awake, suddenly becoming aware that you’ve been staring at your closet for six hours.
My hallucinations are vivid. I’d call it half-lucid, because I can sometimes realize I’m asleep and still manage to stay in my dream until I force myself awake. After a childhood plagued with nightmares, I’ve gotten pretty good at making myself wake up. In my dream I close my eyes tight and then open them, and I’ll wake up.
Usually.
I fell asleep staring at my living room. I’ve been sleeping at my parent’s house since getting out of the Army, and they’ve been kind enough to give me an air mattress in the living room. They aren’t a fan of how much I’ve been drinking, but for the most part they leave me alone.
As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, the dream became more clear, brighter.
I can’t remember where it started, but I was back in Afghanistan. I was laying on my cot, and ahead of me, taking their places on the couch and the chairs facing the TV, were my old squad-mates: Philly, Ali, and Dakota. We were watching a movie–some dream mixture between the Departed and Casino. It was as clear as a memory.
We were talking. Something about our times both in training and over deployment, good memories embellished with the usual flair of imagination. More excitement, more things that weren’t quite real. I stayed on my cot, watching my friends talk and occasionally joining in–sleep-talking. After a bit, I noticed someone else was there. Beyond them in the corner of the room was someone I didn’t recognize. They were in darkness, just a tall silhouette, with a thick boot tapping on the ground rhythmically, slowly. They were in the chair perpendicular to the TV, facing me.
You can tell when a dream is becoming a nightmare. The scene becomes darker. Like vignette, the borders of the dream creep in and enclose around you and the focus of your fright. That’s what I saw.
I asked my friends who that was in the chair.
Philly looked at me. He was different than before. My dream had changed into being more real and my friends had more substance. I was taking in details that shouldn’t be possible during sleep. The couch sunk with Philly’s weight. His face was unnaturally rough, suddenly taking on sharp edges as he scowled at me. “Who are you talking about? Watch the movie.”
I jerked in my bed at his voice. It was strong, audible. The darkness around my vision was growing. “H-hey Ali. Who’s in the chair?” My voice was weak, softer than I know it to be.
Ali shifted in his seat, facing me. He was angry, impossibly angry. No real face can express such hatred, eyebrows raised high and lips curled into a snarl. “Watch the movie. Stay on your bed.”
I was having a nightmare. Lucidity had returned to me as the dream became more lifelike and I closed my eyes shut, returning to darkness. I took a deep breath and felt awake again.
I opened my eyes and Philly, Ali, and Dakota were all staring at me.
I jerked in my bed, now pushing myself up and staring at them. My breathing became gasping and I struggled to speak. Air escaped me. The dark figure in the chair continued tapping his foot, but it sounded more intense. Louder.
“Wh-what the fuck?” I remember that clearly. It no longer felt like a dream. But it had to be. Nightmares could feel real. I knew I was still asleep. I had closed my eyes at some point at I was now in bed, asleep. I could control this.
Dakota’s face was contorted. He had turned into something else entirely, almost inhuman. “Lay back down. Watch the movie.”
The dark man in the chair rose to his feet and the room went cold. I got up and felt the hardwood beneath my soles. “Get the fuck back!” I tried to scream but my voice came out in a whisper. I couldn’t move my arms, or my legs to take another step.
Philly got up from the couch. “He’s here for you! He’s here!” His voice was echoing, layering on itself and becoming deeper in pitch. Dakota and Ali got up as well, getting closer to me. They grew bigger, taller and taller until their heads were scraping the ceiling. “He’s here for you!”
I screamed. I screamed in a soft voice, unable to say anything else.
The dark man moved forward, taking long strides and pushing the three aside as he grabbed me by the shoulders and suddenly his face was visible. He was horrific. His face was pocked with sores and gaping wounds. Maggots, centipedes and spiders crawled out from bleeding holes and down his arms onto my body. I can’t begin to describe what I felt, but it was beyond any terror I’ve felt before. He screamed in my face words I’d not even repeat here. Philly, Ali, and Dakota got on my sides, joining the dark man and screaming in my ears until I felt near deaf.
The dark man let go of me and I fell to my bed, covering my head and ears as they continued to shriek. I don’t know how long it went. After what felt like days I noticed light was streaming in from the window and the screams had stopped, leaving only the ever-present faint ringing in my ears.
I’m sitting here typing this out the morning after. I’m exhausted, and I’m honestly not sure of how much I slept, if at all. My sleep drifted straight into that… I don’t know when I woke up. I’ve always believed in the paranormal, but never had my own experience with it. And even now, whether it was real or a nightmare, I somehow feel like if I had kept my eyes shut, I never would have seen it. I don’t know who else to tell, or where to even post this. But I know r/nosleep has Rule 9, which is frankly what I need right now. No one would believe me if I said it was real.
But I found a dead centipede under my bed.