TW: child death, gore, descriptions of graphic scenes.
I have a habit of staying on my cell phone after eleven reading Creepypastas and listening to horror podcasts, although they rarely scare me, these things pollute my mind with unrealistic scenarios of entities, monsters and brutal murders, making me think about these things all day and even dream about them.
One Saturday night, at a time when the whole neighborhood was plunged into total silence at dawn, I was the only person awake at that time, and I was brushing my teeth before going to bed, looking in the mirror, with my back turned the cold and dark corridor, while listening to some story through my headphones. Suddenly, I heard the strange sound of something falling behind me.
I was startled by the sudden noise and quickly paused the story and turned around to see what had made the noise. For the moment there was nothing behind me, just an empty corridor that was dimly lit by the bathroom light. So I decided to leave the room and take a look through the door in the direction where the sound seemed to have come from, my bedroom.
Worried that I might have any object damaged, I went into the other room and turned on the light, but there was nothing different, as far as I knew all the things were in their proper place, so I thought the noise might have come from the neighbor or that it was some sound effect from the video I was listening to, so I just went back to brushing my teeth.
Having finished, I went back to my room and put on my pajamas before going to bed. I was already taking my shirt off very sleepily, as I had spent the whole night listening to horror podcasts while playing some FPS games, and also swearing at some players, and clearly I just wanted to sleep, and the only thing I had on my mind was my soft bed, which was already becoming more and more attractive as I put the sheet and pillows over it.
Until I noticed that the window was wide open, which I found strange because I didn’t remember opening it before, well, since it’s been so hot lately, maybe I should have done it earlier since I spent the day distracted by my chores, of course I wouldn’t even remember opening it that day.
I finished making my bed and went to turn off the light, but just as I was about to flick the switch I looked down the corridor, which was in total darkness except for the light coming from the living room window at the end of it, until I saw something pass very quickly in the hallway.
I froze with the sudden fright and tried to think what it could be, maybe it was just a cat, but, I don’t have any cat, so I went to check if some animal hadn’t suddenly entered my house through my bedroom window, that would explain the sound I heard earlier.
When I got back to my room, I was even more doubtful than before, there was no cat in my house, but I decided to ignore it because I just wanted to rest, and as I have big hair, maybe it was a lock of hair that passed my vision at the time.
I finally turned off the light and went to bed. It was the best feeling in the world, the bed was as soft as a cloud in the sky, and as cool as a waterfall, it was like those hot days when you have the chance to dive into a pool and soak your body that was already begging to be refreshed because of the heat. It felt so good that I quickly blacked out, it was as relaxing as sleeping on an inflatable mattress on top of the water.
But it was just as I was falling asleep that my peace ended, suddenly I was in the city center but everything was different, the place had plunged into complete chaos, but it wasn’t a chaos of people looting or destroying stores and cars, but something much more bizarre and difficult to understand.
There were cars, people, poles and heavy objects flying in all directions and being thrown at each other, there were lots of people running and screaming in all directions, people trying to save themselves, others trying to save their loved ones, and people also colliding with the objects or other humans who were thrown, their bodies being partially destroyed and broken, leaving pools and stains of blood everywhere.
Stores had their windows smashed, some cars were destroyed while others were on fire. I saw a man running hand in hand with someone smaller than him who seemed to be his son, he was going faster than the boy as if he was pulling him, and suddenly, they were both crushed by a jeep that fell upside down on top of the child while the man screamed in pain with half his torso crushed by the car, leaving a pool of blood slowly forming on the ground around the vehicle.
After that, I saw a young woman crawling by with her legs destroyed, one totally torn apart and looking like a red rag, and the other with only half of her thigh, or what used to be a thigh, because now it looked more like a mass of flesh with a sliver of bone sticking out.
The young woman sobbed in pain as she tried to take shelter inside a store to be safe. But as soon as her hands touched the entrance, she were pulled of the ground and was thrown towards a Post, her neck snapping backwards and her head pointing in my direction with those eyes that displayed her last moments of anguish before losing the sparkle of life.
In front of me on the right was a man in a completely deplorable state of suffering, his nose and jaw were broken, oozing small crimson rivers of blood, his sclera were red and oozing blood, his knees were broken and his forearms were badly bruised, as if he had tried to protect himself from the impact against the ground.
- Please help me, Lord! I don’t know what I and these people have done to receive such a cruel punishment! - said the old man desperately.
The man was on his stomach, crying out to God for help in a weak voice as he choked on his own blood. Those scenes destroyed me, I felt like I was in hell itself with all that horror and chaos going on, it was worse than any nightmare I’d ever had before, too real, I could even feel the wind of flying things hitting my skin, I could feel the screams vibrating in my eardrums, which were very vivid, and I could feel the cold drizzle that was going to start right then.
Until my vision started to blur and the sound of the surroundings was becoming more distant, and in my peripheral vision I saw from a distance a dark greenish thing with a humanoid shape appearing, it turned towards me and it seemed that its face was completely white, except for two dark orbs that stared at me like those of a demon. The thing strangely began to appear sharper in my field of vision, much more so than the scenes of death that were taking place around me.
That’s when I finally woke up, but with a horrible feeling taking over my body, my heart was pounding as if I’d run a whole marathon, and then I started to cry quietly after remembering the terrible scenes of that nightmare. How could it have been so real? But it wasn’t long before I started hearing footsteps in the hallway as if something was approaching my room.
I quickly turned my eyes to the bedroom door which suddenly opened by itself, making my whole body freeze with fear and my heart race even faster until my vision blurred with the sensation. I then instinctively struggled to see the perpetrator, but it was too dark to see anything that could have opened the door, so I began to calm down as I tried to find an alternative that was more in line with reality.
It could have been the wind, or that I hadn’t looked properly for the animal that had broken into my home earlier. Then out of the darkness appeared a white face with two empty eye sockets, just like the one I had seen in my nightmare earlier, as if it had left the mental plane and come to the physical plane after me. I broke out in a cold sweat at that moment, the creature stood in the doorway and walked over to my bed, and then the door closed on its own behind the being without they even touching it.
The thing stopped next to me and stared at me with its black orbs, which, on closer inspection, looked like its face was made of plastic, like a mask, which was very worn and dirty by the way, because it had several cracks and scratches. It also had a bizarre and big smile in such a way that it didn’t look human.
It was clear that the thing was wearing a dark green outfit and was hooded, looking more like a person than a demon or an entity, which didn’t make me any less afraid. The masked invader stared at me motionless from beside my bed, it seemed too real to be a nightmare. Until something clicked in my mind that reminded me of the stories I used to read and how they filled my imagination.
And then it all made sense, and from my nocturnal history it could only be sleep paralysis, and the thing was clearly an amalgam of everything I’d been thinking about all day. Obviously, the mask, the door closing by itself and all these elements were mixed up in my subconscious because of the legends and cases I kept seeing, forming a hybrid monster of all these things, it was clear that I was going to have a personalized paralysis.
And in the midst of the excitement and happiness caused by my relief, I abruptly moved my right arm, then paused, while trying to reason out what had happened, I moved my arm again and put it in front of my face, so I thought I had woken up, but the thing was still standing next to me, not even reacting to my actions.
I heard the sound of wood creaking, which seemed to be coming from my bed. I looked at the being again and saw in more detail how clear it was as I felt the bed float, and slowly break apart, with both ends rising as if the bed was going to turn into a “V”, and crush me right there, and that’s when I realized that this wasn’t a sleep paralysis.