As far back as I can remember, I’ve been suffering from hallucinations. As a kid, my mom always told me it was normal to see make-believe monsters in the dark. I had my doubts about it, but she was my mother, and she knew more than me, so I didn’t question it all too much. During this time, I had a cat named Fluffy, who was my only light in my dark room—metaphorically speaking, of course. Though now that I think about it, like most cats, Fluffy’s eyes tend to light up in the dark. It used to freak me out as a kid because I’d think she was a monster. Fluffy slept in my room, and when she was with me, the monsters and shadows became irrelevant. She was everything to me.
The first time I had hallucinations was when I was six years old. It was almost midnight, and I was trying to get some sleep when I heard a rustling sound coming from my closet. As a kid, a part of me of course assumed it to be a monster. The other part of me, however, was not so convinced. That was until I heard the rustling again, along with a creaking noise. The same noise that my closet made when it was opened. One of my stuffed animals, a blue dog, was tossed out of my closet. Being too afraid to do anything else, I hid under my covers, hoping whatever it was would just go away. I was, however, just as curious as I was scared to know what it could possibly be. So after a while of hiding under the covers, I lifted them, just for a quick peek. I saw two small white eyes poking out of the closet. I immediately threw my head under the covers again.
After a while of hearing nothing, something broke the silence in the room. A faint meow sound came from beside me. I opened my covers to see Fluffy sitting next to me on my bed. I immediately felt at ease seeing my cat there. Before going to bed, I looked out towards my closet one last time that night to see it was now closed—no monster in sight. Fluffy then took refuge under my covers, as she oftentimes did. When my mom came to wake me the next morning, she found the stuffed dog. She told me I shouldn’t play with my toys after dark. I tried telling her it was a monster with white eyes, but she obviously didn’t believe me. She remarked that lying wasn’t okay, and went into the kitchen. I sat there for a moment, staring at the closet, before joining her.
Some time later, Fluffy went missing, I was devastated, as any child would be after losing their first friend. When I found Fluffy, she was just a stray wandering around our neighborhood. One day, while I was playing outside, she came up to me and let me pet her. I had heard somewhere that cats don’t let just anyone pet them, so I was overjoyed, to say the least. I had her follow me up to our house, where she stopped at the door. She stood there till I told her to come inside. My mom, who was cooking dinner at the time, asked me who I was talking to. I pointed to Fluffy and asked if we could keep her. I saw her face turn to one of concern before sighing and saying that I’d have to care for her. Without Fluffy, the hallucinations got worse, and this time they were relentless. They only appeared when I was almost asleep, and only for a split second. I never got a good look at them apart from their heads, which were always twisting into different horns and hairs, and their eyes, which were always a piercing white.
One night, however, was different from the rest. After a, so far, restless night, I went to the kitchen for a glass of water. After getting my water, I was headed back to my room when I tripped on something and broke the glass over the ground. Looking back to see what I tripped on, I saw those same white eyes looking back at me. After what felt like a century of staring, the light flicked on. My mom heard the glass shattering and came to see if I was okay. My mom brought me into the kitchen to make sure I didn’t have any glass in my hand. As I was leaving, my mom asked what that red mark on my leg was. I looked, and there was a scratch on my leg that was still bleeding. My mom thought the glass had somehow cut my leg and ushered me to the bathroom. I was just looking at the scratch, wondering how a hallucination could have hurt me. My mom rushed me to the doctor because the cut wouldn’t stop bleeding. I told the doctor what had happened, and they said it sounded like hallucinations, and he gave me a prescription for it. After that, the shadows and the monsters disappeared. After a while of sleeping normally, I forgot about the hallucinations. They became nothing more than a distant memory.
Until today, more than a decade later, I was a teenager, so shadows and monsters were the last thing on my mind. We were sitting in the seats in church, listening to the pastor go on about how God is good and so on. I didn’t listen much, as I had more important things on my mind at the time, but something he said caught my attention. He was talking about demons and how they can’t enter your life unless you allow them in. I don’t know why, but somehow that made me think of Fluffy. I had always wondered what had happened to her.
After church, I asked my mom about why Fluffy never came home, like she said. My mom chuckled a bit at the thought before realizing I was serious, and her tone changed to match. She told me, in the calmest voice she could muster, that Fluffy wasn’t real and that she was surprised that I didn’t know. I was shocked at first, but then things started to click in my head. Fluffy wouldn’t eat food I’d drop for her, or any food at all. She rarely, if ever, interacted with my mom, and my mom would never even acknowledge her in turn. My mom went on about how she thought it was a phase for me to imagine the cat since, at the time, I had no real friends of my own. I couldn’t focus on what she was saying after that because I noticed something behind her. A creature’s face contorting and morphing into horns and tendrils and the like—something I once only saw at night. Fluffy was watching me with those piercing white eyes.