I have a not-so-loving wife whose name is Mary and a beautiful daughter whose name is Jessica. Recently my wife, if you can even call her that at this point has been screaming at me saying “you look depressed” in the snarkiest tone possible. Ans has been recommended to take medication for it. I went to go to my doctor’s office which is a 35-minute drive from my house just because my wife insisted on living away from everyone and living in the woods good ole Montana and whose office is usually quiet but now all of a sudden I have to wait 30 minutes for a bullshit pill I doubt I even need. My wife keeps telling me to see a psychiatrist but I just want to take my meds and get on with it, you know move on in life.
I was driving home from getting gas when I saw the target that me, mary, and especially Jessica loved to go to. When I remembered her eyeing this doll the last time we were there. So I go inside But something is different. I feel weirder than normal like someone is watching like someone is stalking me. Even with this weird feeling a keep going through with what I originally planned to do which got Jessica that doll and surprise her with it for her birthday. I finished the drive home with no other pit stops. Once I finally got home, I hid the doll in the closet where I know she would never go. Jessica is my everything, I love her more than anything, even my wife. A couple of weeks later that feeling came back the one I first felt in the store now follows me everywhere I go, from the bathroom to my bed, even while I’m tucking my Jessica in at night. I have seen less and less of my wife over the past couple of weeks. I have my worries. Not about my wife.
Lately, I have been seeing things move out of the corner of my eye. I wanted to see if these were just side effects of my new meds so I checked the labels for the side effects. Even though it could’ve just been me obsessing over my failing marriage. I decided to check the side effects anyways. Said all the same old shit diarrhea, vomiting, sleep paralysis, hallucinations,… Hallucinations! That had to be it. Had to be. Right?
Night after night I have just been letting it watch me from the side of my open door. Jessica could tell I was worried about something but she never quite knew what. To get her mind and mind off whatever I was experiencing I decided to teach her how to make her favorite dish. Mashed potatoes with homemade gravy. The gravy isn’t homemade I buy it from the store and put it in the pot to make her think it’s homemade but at this point, I think she knows but pretends not to and just plays along with it. Once Jessica and I were finished making the mashed potatoes we sat down and started eating. I tried to ask her how the 4th grade was. She always answered questions like these with short, usually one to two-word responses. That time was different. This time she asked me a question. She asked, “Are you and mommy getting divorced?”
I wanted to just give her a bullshit answer and be done with it, so that is exactly what I did I told her everything is fine and my marriage was fine. I lied. What happened not too long ago was she said I was insane and that she would come back. And take Jessica with her. This deeply disturbed me as I could not picture my life without Jessica in it. After I thought about a while in complete silence just sitting at the dinner table even long after Jessica went to her room I decided to do exactly what Jessica did and just went to my room. I didn’t even bother cleaning up the mess we made because that was most likely one of the last memories I would have with Jessica. I left my door open and I saw that thing again now that I’m thinking about it I never shut my door. It could just be because I forget or you know, what if it’s not a hallucination? Now I don’t think it isn’t, but there’s always a possibility.
I haven’t seen this thing yet, or at least not fully. I’ve only seen the silhouette, but for most people, just that can make them shit their pants now it has been sitting at my door for a while now but today something changed. I can’t tell if it’s the position I’m in or something about it. I have a bad feeling it has been getting closer, it is invading more of my day, every day. I can see it everywhere. I decided enough was enough. I have been getting way too worried about this imaginary thing, this hallucination. So just to put my fears to rest but when I tried to touch it I couldn’t move, my body was in fight or flight everything told me not to I looked down to see what was happening, but when I looked at it something changed. It wasn’t a silhouette anymore, I could distinguish features on it. It looked human but something was just off. It just looked. Distorted. It saw that something was different and it looked in a different direction. It moved. It was looking at the end of the hall. Where my daughter’s room is. I ran pushed passed it and ran to my daughter’s room and grabbed her and ran to my front door when I stopped in an instant. When I realized. I pushed passed it. I felt it. It is real. It wasn’t a hallucination.
I heard footsteps walking down the halls I told Jessica to hide and when she just stood there looking confused I heard it coming closer so I grabbed her ad told her this was and tried my best to make her know that I was serious so I ran and threw her in the same closet where I hid the doll that I wanted to give her as a gift for her birthday. Up to this point I had tried to keep her away and keep this hidden but at this point, it wouldn’t matter if it was a secret if she wouldn’t even make it to her birthday. I ran back down to face this thing. Looking even more distorted than before I took tried to make it back down and could tell it was looking for Jessica but I wasn’t going to let that thing take my everything. It was all silent as I stared at it. Stared at that thing for I don’t even know how long.
Something broke the silence. Jessica. She must’ve seen the doll. It looked at me and in a moment it looked and ran for the closet where Jessica was hidden I couldn’t let I go I stopped it. I gave it one last chance. I don’t think this thing was able to understand what I was prepared to do. It tried to get by me I wasn’t going to let it get my Jessica. I grabbed it and threw it into the kitchen it surprisingly wasn’t that strong. When it kicked and punched and scratched. Eventually, it grabbed a knife and I let it think it won. I led it on. It walked me over to the closet where Jessica was. I grabbed the meat tenderizer still covered with the leftovers of the mashed potatoes. I ran up behind it and hit as hard as I possibly could it went down easy but I didn’t want it to get back up I pounded its skull in. I wanted to look away, but I wanted to see this thing suffer and just to make sure it was not going to get up I grabbed the knife and stabbed it for good measure until I could feel my slipper getting soaked with blood which is when I screamed loud enough so the whole house could hear out of relief “Alright Jessica, you can come out now.”
I heard the door creek open. I heard little footsteps that resembled Jessica’s. Before she was fully down the halls I heard It whisper and mumble. I wondered two things how in the fuck it was still alive and what it was saying. I decided to focus on the latter and listened as I got closer. When I was about a foot away it turned its mushed head towards me and started laughing I was confused and in a deep scratchy voice it told me “I’m not the only one”
I was confused about what it meant by that, or at least I was before I saw another one of them around the corner dragging a limp and bloodied Jessica with a chunk of her face just gone. The Othe gave me a sinister bloody smile when I put things together and immediately knew that what I heard wasn’t Jessica’s footsteps, but her shoes hitting the uneven wooden floor while being dragged down the hallway by the other. All I knew I didn’t matter if I died or not. My life. Was over.