Yesterday, I draped sheets over every object in my house that can cast a reflection. I’m terrified at what’s becoming of me, and I can’t stand to look at those hideous marks on my neck any longer. I’m not sure what I will do when the sun resurrects from the cold tomb of night, but know that whatever happens was not my fault. It couldn’t have been!
But until then I’ll write this, not as a warning, not for your sick enjoyment, but to occupy my mind—until the light takes me.
What I am about to describe is strange, maybe even otherworldly, but I assure you that I’m sane. Or, at least, I was before it all. I’m a University student and, especially at this time, I was extremely stressed about the school’s financial demands. I constantly scoured my town for new employment opportunities, but the lower-paying job market was a dried oasis. It started to become apparent that I would probably be unable to pay my tuition fees, thus I couldn’t receive a degree, and wouldn’t be able to seek any higher-paying jobs.
It was a vicious domino-effect that fell on repeat in my mind through many sleepless nights. It’s funny how quick ones hope can dissolve in uncertainty. Eventually, I began to meditate as a means to cope. I’m not a spiritual person, I’ve never been interested in that sort of thing, I just didn’t know how else to manage the stress. It was so overbearing.
To my surprise, it worked. I could feel other emotions again, and sleep finally returned to me on most nights. My fear was still there, but it was no longer that unbearable force it once was. I felt normal, almost happy, for about a week.
But I changed the last time I practiced. I remember how, on that day, It took longer than usual to reach a meditative state, with the stress and all. Herding and centralizing all those loose thoughts was like bailing water from a sinking vessel, but the more that I let go and channeled my mind into breathing, the further I slipped into that distant and primordial void.
It’s impossible to say exactly how long i could’ve been in that state once I got there; time is beyond perception, as it is when you sleep—-for all i know it could have been seconds, it could have been years (I say that figuratively, of course, as years did not pass in the physical).
At some point I began to feel a sense of resonance, as though my body were hollow like a bell that had just been rung. It was a deep, subtle sense of vibration that oscillated from the solar plexus at a single, harmonious baritone. Pressure began to build on my chest like something gradually tightened around it, and my feet started to violently convulse.
My mind remained in the abyss, keeping my composure as my body fought the assault of these intrusive new sensations. It was like phantom limb syndrome, in that I could not feel the body itself, only the disconnected sensory feedback.
The oscillation grew and bombarded my being with vibrating waves, each crest and trough like pins and needles. A warmth grew in my hands. My feet thrashed around, my chest squeezed into the neck of a bottle. My body fought helplessly against relinquishing control, but I could not bring myself to think lest I break my state.
Then it stopped. Just like that, it was all gone. Quicker than the passing of time and I returned to homogeneity. But it was fleeting and that ancient, intuitive feeling swallowed me. It was stronger there, that feeling you’re no longer alone. I just knew it. I mean, I could physically feel the presence of another conscious. And then it appeared to me.
It was shapeless at first, a shadow of a shadow against an eternally black void. But I could see it. The thing was a different kind of black entirely, a kind that I could not yet fathom or judge. It drew a similar form to the patterns made from injecting an aqueous dye into a viscous solution, though it moved inward rather than expanding.
I watched it condense into the crude silhouette of a seated man before its final metamorphosis, once it perfected the outline.
The sitting figure then took 3-dimensional form, color, etc. as a perfect, mirrored replica of my physical self. I couldn’t believe it! I was staring into the same brown eyes, the same ovular face, hair, bone structure - even the same, small, scar at the center of my forehead that I got as a child.
Whirlpools of awe and terror thrashed in my consciousness, my brain felt like it short-circuited trying to comprehend the enigma, and all I could do was stare. Defenseless. Unmoving. While this thing wore my identity like a suit.
But it just smiled. It never attacked me, or even moved closer for that matter. I felt… strangely trusting of it. Intuitively I was scared and confused, but that trust felt stronger. And I was a fool not to see that trap. Such a fool!
“Don’t be afraid.” it told me through my mouth, though not my voice.
“What are you?”
It laughed at my question.
“Well, I suppose that I’m you.”
His voice carried that condescending tone of sarcasm, but I couldn’t dismiss it as a snarky comment. I just hated those words.
“Why are you here?”
“I have taken interest in your affairs.”
“Are you like a guardian spirit?”
“No.” it said almost defensively, “though my eyes have long seen the transpiring events of your time.”
His stare changed then. It was a subtle shift, and yet I felt violated by its depth.
“Do you wish to see through my eyes? I can show you true clairvoyance, free from the constraints of corporeality and linear time.”
“Yes.” I replied. I wanted so desperately to find reassurance from my stress, to know that perhaps one day I could feel some sort of ease. I know how stupid my decision sounds, I know. But you have to understand, or at least try to understand, the crushing burden I felt in life.
“What do you wish to see?”
My answer had been made long before he asked, and I eagerly told him, “I want to see my future.”
“Come closer then,” it beckoned, “and gaze into the scrying mirror’s gleam.”
In its hands, a reflective disc of a deep onyx-black had been conjured. The edges were crude and jagged like a flint-knapped arrowhead, but it retained a perfectly circular shape. He slowly lifted it above like an offering to the Gods.
I stepped forward in my mind’s landscape ever so warily, and felt nothing beneath my feet. The thing just sat there, hunched over, arms stretched and head bent to the “sky”. I noticed how statuesque it was, not even the rises and swells of respiration broke its pose. I continued, one meticulous step at a time, but it sat near, far too near for my stalling to invoke rationality or introspection.
“Look.” it beckoned. And I did. I noticed how its surface projected the same uncanny shade of black that the entity did on its intrusion. But by then it was too late. The creature howled and cried a distorted laugh as I watched myself sway like dust in the wind, suspended at the neck by a rope.
I could feel everything I saw in that pool of glass. Filaments of an unseen rope frayed beneath my weight, searing my skin as I choked on desperate gasps of air. That sense of vibration surged through me with each cackle, but it was violating and hostile this time. I became lightheaded, tears trickled around my cheeks as I frantically clawed at my throat, but my vision was fading and soon, I reawoke in my regular world.
I fell forward, coughing and breathing heavier than I ever had before. The blinding light from my ceiling felt like I woke up on an operating table mid-surgery. I didn’t sleep that night. I could only breathe, wide-eyed, in my bed. Nothing brought an end to my trembling, aside from the fatigue that came with the rising sun.
Come morning, a great fog polluted my mind and I forced myself out of bed. It was Saturday, and with the weekend’s freedom I had more job hunting planned. I should have rested, mind and body, that day. My brain could not begin to process the flow of conversation—-and even if it could I doubt that I would’ve had the will to say much of anything, but, regardless, I felt obligated.
After putting on slacks and a wrinkled shirt, I watched myself in the mirror as I flipped up my collar and coiled a tie around my neck. I stood there for a moment, staring at the knot below my larynx. I pinched it with one hand, and pulled at the tie with the other. I tightened it. And then I tightened it harder. And harder, and harder, until a redness clouded my skin and veins broke the surface of my temples.
In the following days, rest would restore my clarity, but with it came the true horror of my experience. I don’t know why, I don’t know how, but in those few minutes I spent with that entity my brain was demolished and rebuilt with an overwhelming desire to hang myself.
I may have not been happy in the past, but never had I been suicidal. Why? Why am I feeling this now? What is happening to me? The desire is so compulsive, I sometimes need to physically fight against it. It’s been days at this point but, still, I find myself tightening things around my neck just to feel again what I felt then.
I don’t know what to do.
I’m a slave to the will of that being now, there’s no hope of escape. My shackles are tempered in hellfire. I want to live, I want so badly to live, but not like this. Not in this constant state of battle against my own mind. I have to give in.
It’s getting late now and the sun will rise soon. I’m afraid that will conclude my story for the foreseeable future, as I have preparations to make. I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help from smiling. To meet an end at the beginning of a new day! I only hope his golden rays can purge my soul of the entity’s corruption. But part of me fears the life beyond. Part of me knows that the entity already stands there. Waiting.