I’ll never forget the first time I saw it, hovering at the foot of my bed. My two eyes were met by hundreds, maybe thousands. Even in the darkness I could see them regarding me with hate.
Part of me was impressed that I hadn’t screamed or had a heart attack when I saw it. I was frozen in place, cold beads of sweat on my forehead.
Light from the street lamp came through the slits of my shades, revealing a thing that looked bulbous yet muscular. Appendages would sprout and disappear in between the eyes in fluid movements.
My vision started to blur. Despite the intruder in my bedroom, I started to doze. The beat of my heart slowed until I fell asleep.
When I woke up the next morning, there was no trace of the thing. It must have been a nightmare, I thought.
Two nights later, the intruder returned. Once again I was frozen in place, my eyes fixed on the terrifying thing hovering at the foot of my bed.
I tried to scream, but my mouth wouldn’t move. The thing’s eyes seemed to squint a little.
“Why are you doing this to me,” I thought.
In my head I heard laughter. Not the type of laughter you hear when someone tells a joke, but the type of laughter you hear when someone laughs at someone else’s expense.
Just like the previous visit, my vision blurred and I fell into a deep sleep.
The third visit was almost the same. The laughing was more raucous and cruel.
After the third visit, I scheduled an appointment with my doctor.
She gave me a look over and decided that I didn’t show symptoms of any sort of head trauma. No signs of a stroke either.
“Shouldn’t I get a brain scan or something,” I said in a panicked tone.
“I don’t THINK you need a brain scan,” she said, “but if YOU do, then I am more than happy to sign off on it”.
For a moment I felt stupid, though why should I? I was here because there was a monster floating at the foot of my bed. Or at least that’s what I thought.
“You think I’m crazy don’t you?”
She shook her head and smiled.
“No, I don’t think your crazy. I think you must be under a lot of stress. Tell me, are you too scared to move during these episodes, or is it that you CAN’T move?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think I can move when it happens. Though to be honest I’m too scared to try”.
She nodded and typed something into the computer.
“I want you to make a concrete sleep schedule, something that you follow all the time”.
“Okay”.
“I also want to prescribe some anti depressants”.
“I’m not depressed though”.
She smiled and continued.
“I’m not saying you have depression, but from your description I think you may be suffering from sleep paralysis”.
“What’s that?”
“It usually happens when you are falling asleep or waking up. You’re mind is awake, but your body isn’t just yet. Your limbs won’t move, you can’t speak. Sometimes patients say they see things, like unwanted visitors. Some sort of dark intruder”.
“You think that this thing is, a hallucination”.
“I tend to think so.”
“I’m not big on pills”.
“I know, but I think in this situation they’ll help. It will take a few weeks for them to really kick in”.
There weren’t any visitations for a few weeks. I marveled at how fast the medicine worked. About a month later, the thing returned.
I could hear it laughing in my head.
“Did you think that medicine would cure you of ME?”
The laughing continued.
“Who are you? What are you? Why are you doing this to me?”
The intruders eyes seemed to smile.
“I felt you from across the vast darkness”.
“Me, what makes me so special?”
“Bah, not you. Your world. I felt you from the void. I wonder if you are worthy of being spared”.
“What do you mean worth sparing?”
“Your species is so arrogant. You believe that you are alone in the universe. You aren’t even alone in this room. Tiny creatures and germs, more interesting and competent than you share the space of this room. There are other worlds, other beings. Entities far older, wiser, and stronger than you. We see you. Your thoughts, your prayers, your communications, they find us. In the void we hear you live your measly lives and we go unnoticed. Even now, as I reveal myself to you, you do not show the proper reverence for your betters”.
“What do you mean worth sparing I said”.
“I heard you the first time and did not care. In so many ways, you have shouted out to the stars. Sometimes willingly, sometimes unwittingly. You call to many things, and we come from across the vast expanse of existence”.
“You came in a ship?”
“No, this visage which appears before you is an astral projection. I am grand”.
Before I could ask what it meant, I seemed to be floating in space. In front of me there was a vast form. Black eyes the size of lakes. Limbs the size of buildings grew and shrunk from the mass in fluid movements. The thing must have been as large as a moon.
The entire conversation was through thought alone. My voice and my lips were useless. I could feel tears streaming down my cheeks as I witnessed this horrible thing.
“We come from the darkened pockets of space and time. I am not alone in my journey. Others like me are travelling great distances to reach your world. Some would devour you as leviathans swallow tiny creatures in your seas. Others would conquer you, to bend you to their will.”
I wept, looking into a single eye. Like the thing I was a projection, but I could feel the cold of space in my fingertips and unbearable heat radiating from the mass in front of me.
“Are we a meal to you? Are we slaves to you? Is that what you want?!?”
” I am the great cataclysm. I am the destroyer of unworthy worlds and vile things unfit to exist. Your world called to me, offering itself up for judgement. So far I am unimpressed”.
“Who are you to”….
Before I could finish my protest, I could feel my head squeezing.
“I could pop your tiny mind like the infection it is”.
The pain was unbearable.
“Please, please”.
The thing laughed again. For a moment I thought my skull would crack, then my brain would explode out into space. With every moment of pain, the laughter grew louder. Right when I thought I was about to die, the squeezing stopped. So did the laughter.
“You may be worth sparing after all”.
“Why?”
“Because….I find you….amusing”.
I was baffled and offended.
“I shall spare your world for now. But know this. I am STILL coming. One of the others may reach you first, but for now… I shall spare you”.
I was back in my bedroom. Blood was flowing from my nose my shirt was drenched in it.
“Remember,” the thing said.
From time to time the thing intrudes my bedroom. At first, I didn’t know what it meant when it said I was amusing. In time I learned the thing found joy in my pain. Physical or emotional, it didn’t matter.
I learned I wasn’t the only one it visited. Around the world there are others. Humans and animals alike waking in the night to be tormented by a thing that finds pleasure in their discomfort.
For now it is sparing us. So long as we stay “amusing”.