Hi.
This is the first time I’ve ever done this before… But my therapist said I should start keeping a journal… Writing down my thoughts, and my feelings, and crap. She said that it should help me sort out my… “confusions.”
I’m 17, I’m not a little kid who dreams too much. I know what I’m seeing, I know what I’m hearing, and I know what I’m feeling. And no amount of telling myself “you just have an overactive imagination, CJ, just go back to sleep,” can save me now.
So I am going to take Meagan’s advice, and I’m gonna write down everything. That way, when he comes for me, if no one comes to save me… then there will at least be a record of what happened… I’d rather people at least think I’m insane, than think I would EVER abandon my sister, or hurt my family.
Let’s see, it’s… of course it is.
9:00 am
Who knows what is going to happen next, So I should probably get to writing.
Here goes…
My nickname is CJ, which is short for “Cassian James,” although, I don’t have very many friends… 1 in fact. My little sister, Lily. She’s only 9, but she’s my best friend; and honestly, I think she is the only person on Earth who understands me. We’re not blood related, Dad adopted her about 7 years ago or so.
You see, I have Autism (and stuff). I lay somewhere deep on the spectrum; inside of the iniquities of Anxiety, Depression, ADHD, Autism, and Schizophrenia; so pretty much everyone treats me like I don’t exist; like I’m not there. I’ve always been seen as a mistake, something to be forgotten, a thing that is supposed to just sort of… sit quiet, and not bother anyone.
And I don’t mind much. I stay to myself, read my books, spend time with Lily, and on occasion, will go on adventures in the woods behind my house. I like to hunt for frogs, watch birds, draw, and look at different types of vegetation in the woods… Which is exactly what I was doing when this story really began… when I found… it.
During springtime where I live, in rural Upstate New York, there’s a very odd (and mostly disgusting) phenomenon that tends to occur around our and the surrounding counties. An invasive species of fungus, known as “Clathrus Archeri,” makes its rounds in the various dense forests and swampy areas we have around my hometown; Corinth. What is “Clathrus Archeri,” you might ask? Don’t worry, most people don’t really know what it is. It’s also called “Devil’s Finger Fungus,” “Octopus Fungus” or “Octopus Stinkhorn.”
Mostly, it’s this disgusting fungus that grows in what looks like a translucent/ opaque “egg,” growing from decomposing vegetation. When it’s ready, it breaks open the “egg” and stretches it’s disgusting, blood-red, octopus-like tendrils out. Then it begins to emit the smell of rotting flesh in an attempt to call over insects (like flies) in order for them to land on it, and spread its spores, which take root and start this process all over again…
Thanks to this wonderful attribute of this particularly disgusting plant, Corinth smells like a week old dead body that’s been left in the sun, usually from the beginning of April, until the end of June.
It’s terrible for people who aren’t natives, but have to work here, or drive through, to get to the surrounding counties; however, natives like myself put a mask on, and continue about our lives, mostly unphased.
Now, Octopus Stinkhorn isn’t the only kind of fungi that grows in the many wooded and swampy areas of Corinth. All kinds of mushrooms and plant matter grows here. Corinth is at the very top of a large mountain in Upstate New York; as such, when it’s not winter, and snowy, it’s wet here. And wet is what lots of funguses like.
One of my favorite things to do is go hiking; looking for interesting, delicious, and/or terrifying fungi to capture and take home. You see, my father was a Botanist, so we used to study, cook, and experiment on many different types of fungi together; and my mother is a self-proclaimed psychic and expert Demonologist, who I haven’t gotten to know particularly well, until the last couple of years… So… I have a few interesting hobbies, to say the least.
Oh, Dad… Yeah… Dad died, about 9 or 10 months ago… I’m still adjusting. After all, I lived with him, until… well, until he couldn’t take life anymore, I guess? Now me and Lily live with Mom, because Lily had nowhere else to go. Dad was perfectly healthy, and I’m still not sure what happened to him. The coroner said he had died of natural causes, but the man was as healthy as an ox, and was only 40 years old. I guess life is just cruel.
See, Mom and Dad split when I was 5. At the time, dad said mom was “sick” and had to stay at the hospital to get help. I didn’t see her again until I was 10… That’s when dad explained to me that Mom had had a pretty severe mental breakdown and had tried to kill herself; which ended in her having been catatonic and thought to be brain dead while I was ages 5 through 10.
It was good to see her again, but she was… different. Quieter, weirder… scarier. Her eyes were duller, darker, and she had deep dark bags under them, as if she was perpetually exhausted. She wouldn’t say a whole lot when we would visit, but she would always give me handwritten letters from her, just about every single time we went there, and tell me to read them when we got home.
That was always the weirdest part. I don’t know if they were in a different language, or what; because they were entirely unlegible. They were honestly just pages and pages of gibberish, and intensely strange symbols…
At first I tried to make sense of them, it was kind of fun, almost like a game. But the longer it went on the more frustrating it became… there were no patterns like in speech and most written languages, no repeated characters, or symbols; just lines and lines of gibberish!
After a year or so, I just started collecting the letters and putting them in a box in my room. I didn’t have it in me to throw them away. Maybe it was curiosity, or maybe my love for my mother, or perhaps it was my pride, that wouldn’t let me let them go; which wouldn’t allow me to throw away something she gave me. I don’t know. I’m not sure.
Anyway, I kept them, and sometimes I would ask her about them, but she never remembered writing them, so she couldn’t tell me what they said, just that I had to have them.
At first, Dad would take them to make sure there wasn’t anything in them that would be harmful to a child (Dad was weird; he always said “Words are powerful, and can bring you far beyond the limits of your mind.”) but even he said it was nothing but gibberish.
Sorry, I got a bit off topic. Well. Sort of. All of this ties back into the story… alright so, Mom started REALLY getting better around when I was 15, or so. And that is when she started to read, like, all the time. Everything she could that was as weird as she could; From the Quran, the Bible, and the Torah, to The Necronomicon, The Ars Goetia, HP Lovecraft’s Library of Insanity, Sarte, Stephen King, Descartes; it didn’t matter…
If it was horror, or had any kind of mythology, theology, or possibility of supernatural or unnatural history in it, she wanted to read it. She would devour every single book on any kind of mythology or demonology or enchantments, magic, and expansive amounts of mythological and theologival lore. This is how she came to be a self-proclaimed “Demonologist.”
This in turn, according to her, opened up her “third eye,” granting her access to latent “psychic abilities,” and a connection to the “spirit world.” Or so she says. Bunch of insanity if you ask me. But it did instill an interest for mythology and theology in me.
I’m pretty convinced she still isn’t all there, and that something messed her up when she was in the coma… but I’m not a doctor or a priest, so… whatever. Now, as I said before, Dad was a botanist; specifically he ran experiments for the government, on various types of fungi and other rare vegetation. His research was done in the pursuit of knowledge, specifically on how these rare types of Flora can affect the human body, and interact with one another. He liked to say he was a “Master of Mycelium,” and his research was one of the biggest reasons he brought us to back to Corinth. They had grown up together in Corinth, but had moved to Latham, where I was raised, and when dad got his new contract with the government, he was moved back.
I tell you all of this to help explain my eccentricities, and my actions in the following story.
It was about a week ago, Sunday afternoon, April 21st, after church; and I was outside exploring in the woods, like I normally do. I was following one of the many trails that I’ve made through the woods over the years, and I ended up slipping along a cliff-edge… One that I had never seen before, and I swear doesn’t actually exist; and I fell down about 10 feet or so, hitting my head on a rock, and blacking out.
The last thing I remember before going unconscious was seeing a bunch of Clathrus Archeri in the area I had landed in, which were beginning to burst from their viscous “egg-sacks” and reach out towards the sky, in order to attract insects and creatures to them, in order to spread their spores. I swore I was in a nightmare horror movie as I passed out.
I’m not sure exactly how long I was out, but the sun had started to set when I came to, so it must have been a few hours at least. Rubbing my head, I found a small amount of blood where I had hit it; and I also saw in the center of all of the creepy tentacle-like fungi, was a slightly larger Octopus Stinkhorn, and it seemed to have been holding on to something.
I rubbed my eyes, my head pounding from when I hit it. I managed to stand up and find my balance, but the world was swimming. I definitely had a concussion… But for some reason I had an overwhelming urge to investigate it. I made my way to the strange fungus in the center of this little clearing, and peeled back the tentacles to reveal what it was holding.
It was an Egg. It was weird. What was an Egg doing inside of a collection of fungi? My mind was swimming, but for some reason I felt like I needed to take it, so I put my hands on it. It was… warm. Almost pulsating, under my palms. I swore when I made contact it glowed ever so slightly, in a sickly purple glow. I took it and stumbled home, in pain and tired.
Like usual, the apartment was empty… Mom must have taken Lily with her to her stall at the fair, since I wasn’t here to hang out with her. See, because mom fancies herself a “psychic,” she opened a “Fortune Telling Booth,” at the fair that the town runs every weekend; from the start of spring, until the end of summer.
Personally, I never really understood what people saw in that. I never believed in ghosts, demons, psychics, or the afterlife, all that supernatural stuff was just nonsensical and illogical so I didn’t bother with it. Dad never really talked about that kind of stuff, and he never entertained any of the ideals I would have as a small child of “Monsters” under my bed, or in my closet. He would just say “Knock it off. That’s not funny. Go to sleep.”
So, I went inside, and felt my way slowly through the house. It hasn’t even been a year of being here yet, so I don’t know my way around in the dark like I did at dad’s house… I found the stairs and made the way up to my room. It’s all kind of a blur, but I remember the slight warmth, and the soft purple light coming off of the Egg; not enough to light up the area, but enough to be noticeable. I made it to my room as the world began to spin around me, significantly worse than it was before. The last thing I remember from that night is falling into my bed, and then just muffled darkness until the morning. The strange thing about that night was I could see the slightly pulsating purple light, even when I was unconscious.
I woke up the next morning, but, immediately, I was alarmed. I wasn’t wearing the clothes I had on yesterday; Instead, I was in Pajamas. In addition, the Egg wasn’t on the bed next to me where I collapsed; on the contrary, it was placed on my night stand, standing straight up, as if carefully placed there.
When I touched it, it was cold; like metal that had sat outside in the winter, cold; not just room temperature cold. And it wasn’t glowing anymore. In fact, it almost even looked less vibrant… different even, than it had the night before.
I couldn’t remember a lot about what had happened, but I attribute that to the concussion. However, I remember that the Egg was purple, and had scaling patterns on it, like a snake or a lizard, as well as some different types of strange markings, like things I’ve seen in video games before… but now it was just… plain. Purple. Dull… And cold.
And my head hurt. A lot. That’s when I noticed there was blood on my pillow, and I rushed to the bathroom to make sure I was okay. I had a cut on my forehead, a knot on the back of my head, and some scrapes and bruises from falling. Aside from a bit of dizziness and a headache, I didn’t have any other issues from the concussion. I took a shower, cleaned myself up, and bandaged my forehead.
At this point the sun had come fully up, and was pouring into my room through the window, having just began to touch the Egg as I came back into the room, drying my hair with a towel. As the sunlight touched the Egg, it began to slightly glow in response.
“Oh, do you like the light?… or is it the warmth?” I mumbled to myself, while I walked over and pushed the night stand, where the Egg was resting, across the room, over to underneath the window, so it was directly in the sun bath. I could see it slowly pulsate, almost happily, and started to get some of its texture and color back.
“Ah, NOW, you look happier,” I said as I smiled and grabbed my phone, checking the time. 7:30am, Monday, April 22nd. Not terrible. I had no idea what time I had gotten back last night, but it had to have been before 11, since that’s when Mom usually gets home from her stall.
I got dressed, patted the Egg, and went downstairs, to finish getting ready for school. The rest of the week was quiet, as nothing significant happened; until Friday rolled around again, that is…
Day 5 of having the Egg was Friday, April 26th, 2019; and I also had therapy that day. During the week, I had gone and picked up some of those chemical heat packs that get warm when you crack them, and set up a terrarium for the creature in the Egg.
I figured it had to have been some kind of lizard, or bird Egg, that had gotten caught in the clutches of the Devil’s Finger Fungus. I wanted to care for it and see what hatched. I felt a strange attachment to it, now.
By Friday, it was back to how I had found it; fully textured, with the scales and strange markings, glowing with a purple light, and emitting warmth again. I put the heat lamp on, went to school, anticipating the egg hatching, being mostly distracted all day… and then I went to therapy.
Of course Meagan harped on me about starting this journal, but we did talk about the Egg quite a bit. She said it sounded like a good thing, that it has given me something to focus on, and care for. She said that getting a pet to care for and focus on is a great way to cope with the loss of Dad, and a good first step towards opening myself back up to people, making friends, and being sociable again; but that she had never heard of an Egg like that, so to be careful of what it might contain, in case it’s a dangerous, and/or poisonous/venomous creature. I agreed, but all I could think about was “What COULD be in it???”
I hadn’t let Lily know about the Egg yet, I had wanted to wait for it to hatch and then show her and Mom. She also had soccer, Ballet, and Piano to worry about during the week on top of her own school work, so I decided to just go with the old “Better to ask for Forgiveness, than for Permission,” thing.
I had also begun to feel extremely protective of the Egg, for some reason. So, when I got home from therapy and saw the overhead light was on in my room, when I had turned it off before I left, and just left the heat lamp on; my heart jumped out of my chest. I was anxious, scared, and angry. I felt disrespected, and betrayed. All of these emotions that I never particularly felt or cared about, before.
A side note: I guess part of my Autism is having trouble understanding my own emotions properly, how to feel and process them, and understanding most things normally. Like I don’t understand the notion of “Professionalism” why should I care what I or someone else looks like? I don’t see the difference between a tux and a swimsuit, it’s all fabric, and it’s only purpose is to hide the man-bits and pieces…who cares? Sorry, rambling again. Back to the story.
I ran inside, tore up the stairs, seething, on the verge of tears, and that’s when I saw Lily, standing next to the Egg, very gently brushing it with a soft brush. She turned to me, a big smile on her face, “Bubba! You’re home! This Egg is so pretty, I can’t believe you were hiding it fr—” and she stopped mid sentence; and seeing the anger on my face, her joy turned to fear, and her eyes got big and watery, as she began to bawl, and my brain kind of instantly snapped back to reality.
I immediately calmed down, and rushed over to her, hugging her tight. In my soft voice, I said to her: “I’m sorry, Lilybear. I didn’t mean to scare you. I wanted to surprise you when the Egg hatched. So when I saw someone was in my room, I got scared that something bad had happened to it. It is pretty, isn’t it? Is that Patty’s brush?”
Patty was her fuzzy white Platypus, and she used a soft doll’s hairbrush to brush her fur.
The tears stopped rolling down her face, and instead turned into sniffles as I held her tight.
“Y-yes… It’s s-soft and I wanted t-to be gentle and h-help you…” she said in between sniffles.
“I d-didnt w-wanna break your e-Egg. I’m S-Sorry…” she sniffed pathetically and looked at me with big sad eyes.
“I’m sorry, baby girl, I didn’t mean to scare you. Honest. Here, I got you gummy bears on my way home.” I took my backpack off and she immediately tackled it out of my hands to search for the gummy bears.
“You’re a fiend.” I chuckled and walked over to the Egg, smiling and gently caressing it. She squealed when she found them and started stuffing them in her mouth.
“So, about the Egg; I had found it in the woods the other day. I was hunting for fungus again, and I fell down into a nest of Clathrus Archeri, and that’s where I found it. Oddly enough it was wrapped up in the clutches of an octopus Stinkhorn, as if it fell and the fungus wrapped around it to protect and consume it.”
I went and sat down on the bed, next to where Lily was sitting on the floor eating her gummy bears, no trace of her previous sadness on her face, only pure contentment.
She smiled up at me and mumbled through gummy bears “What animal is it?” I chuckled as some chunks of gummy bear fell on the floor. I reached over and grabbed a napkin from the box on my night stand and handed it to her, chuckling.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full, kiddo. Also, THAT, I don’t know. I’ve been trying to figure it out all week. I thought it had to have been a reptile, or a bird of some sort. I don’t know what else could make an Egg that size, but its design and patterns don’t match anything I’ve seen in the books at the library…And I have been checking different books every single day, looking for answers.”
When I find something interesting, I almost become robotic… another “symptom,” I guess you could say, of my Autism and ADHD. Hyper Focus, extensive researching, robotic tendencies, and over-explaining everything I find even slightly cool. I know I do it, I just can’t particularly help it.
Most people find it annoying, but like usual, Lily just looked at me and smiled her big bright smile, and said cheerily, “You’re so smart, Bubba. You’ll figure it out, and I’ll help you take care of it! Don’t worry. We can do it together.”
She nuzzled my arm for a second before she sprung up and started out of the room saying “I’ve got some homework! I’ll see you at dinner.” I smiled and waved as she left.
I was tired. Strangely enough since I had brought the Egg home, it seemed like I had very restless sleep, and I couldnt remember dreaming at all. I thought it may have been a side effect of the concussion, but everywhere I looked online doesn’t say anything about completely losing your ability to dream…
So, I took a nap until dinner; my head hit the pillow, and I was out like a campfire that had 50 gallons of water dropped on it.
At around 7:00 pm, I think, since the sun was beginning to go down, I woke up to the sound of my mother yelling my name. When I opened my eyes I was completely awestruck.
The Egg looked completely different now. It was green and obviously pulsating with light, and it was leisurely wrapped up in these strange tendrils that almost looked like tentacles and/or vines.
At this rate, the Egg was about the size of a football, as well. It was… enchanting, to say the least; and I felt like the rest of the world got drowned out while I stared at it.
Sound disappeared, and I tunnel visioned in on the Egg. I’m not sure how long I stood there, but when I finally came back to full spatial awareness, the sun had completely gone down.
The glowing from the egg had all but subsided, and I was absolutely exhausted, and starving… The only way I can describe it is that it felt like somebody had just drained my life force. I stumbled down the stairs like a zombie, trying my best to be quiet, so I wouldn’t wake anyone up. Tiptoe-ing through the living room, and into the kitchen. I was so tired, it felt like I was drunk, or delusional, and I swear I kept seeing… something out of the corner of my eye. Some sort of strange shadow.
I was barely there, as I made a sandwich and went back upstairs, as I was eating my sandwich. I sat on the edge of my bed and finished eating, zoning out, as sleep began to creep over me. The last thing I remember, I swear I could hear a small scratching sound, while everything went dark around me.
That’s the first time it happened. Saturday, April 27th, 3:00 AM. I woke up, sitting straight up, my heart pounding out of my chest. I was terrified, and I didn’t know why… but that’s when I felt it. The pain. Pulsating, radiating, hot… like something crawling under my skin, above my skull but under my scalp. Slowly my hands lifted to touch the area, and that’s when I felt it. These vine-like tendrils, made of plant matter or something like it, digging under the skin of my scalp.
I tried to scream, but nothing came out. I tried to turn my head, and it erupted into fiery, blinding pain. I could feel them dig into my scalp, working their way along my skull towards my eyes. I could feel them crawling into the back of my head through my eye sockets, touching my brain, feeling, probing, absorbing… something.
My… energy? My… knowledge? I don’t know. But it was excruciating. I cried, silently, frozen in place, suffering… For what felt like years. In reality, it was probably about 3 hours or so, because the tendrils began to recede when the sun began to come up. The excruciating pain and exhaustion I felt, as the tendrils withdrew from my skull, I can only assume is what it feels like when you stick your head into a vat of scolding hot oil, after not sleeping for a year… yeah. It sucked.
I collapsed back onto my pillow, and as the world went dark around me, yet again, the last thing I remember seeing was the vine-like tendrils receding… and wrapping themselves back around the Egg. And that noise again… the scratching noise… But louder this time…
9:00am. My alarm. It sounded like a million nails on a chalkboard. I reached over and slapped the alarm until it quieted down. “Ugh.. Piece of Sh—“ I immediately sat up in my bed remembering the night before, my hands shooting you to the nape of my neck, where I felt… nothing?
Yeah I was just as confused as you are. I could have SWORN what I experienced was real; not some strange nightmare. I looked at my pillow, no blood. And the Egg was sitting in the exact position it had been when I went to sleep the first time. The only rational explanation was that I was dreaming. It wasn’t real. Just a really messed up figment of my imagination.
I reached over and patted the Egg, and as I did, I felt it crumble, crunching into a million little pieces beneath my hand. My heart fell into my stomach and made a journey to my groin, and I looked over at the destroyed Egg.
There was nothing. No yolk, no animals, nothing; just dust and the remnants of the shattered shell. For a brief second I felt sorrow, anger, and confusion all at once, which was a little too much for me to handle.
I immediately began to cry, and I sat alone in my room, curled up in a ball on the bed. I cried, and cried, and cried… and then Lily came in, I could see the urgency on her face as she addressed me, “big brother, what’s wrong?! Why are you crying? Wh—“ she stopped mid sentence as she saw the pieces of the egg shattered on the nightstand, and her face turned to one of sadness and empathy, and she hugged me tight, burying her face in my chest.
No matter how badly I felt, how broken I was, or how badly I was breaking down, Lily could always bring me back. And she always does. I felt her embrace become tighter and tighter and I could feel my soul being squished back into me, and my breathing beginning to calm down, and my heart beginning to slow. Like magic, her embrace was able to take away the pain.
“I… I broke it, Lil Chipmunk…. I’m sorry. I break everything I touch… I wanted to help this poor animal, I wanted it to help us. I… I miss dad, Lil. I miss him so damn much…” I squeezed her back, and could hear her sniffling, and her little voice as she said “me too, bubs… but we will always have each other. You don’t need to worry about some silly Egg. It’s all gonna be okay.”
We cried together, and hung out for a while. Despite having slept all night and having that weird nightmare, I STILL felt entirely exhausted. Lily told me to lay back down and rest, and she would clean up my room for me, on the condition that when I get up, I’ll make French toast for her. I chuckled and agreed; she could always make me laugh. I laid back down, and fell asleep to the sounds of her cleaning up my room for me.
When I woke up, the clock said noon, and so did the sun outside, shining directly on my face. It wasn’t pleasant, it felt like being hung-over. And I was absolutely hungry. I sat up and stretched, a little sore, a little dizzy, a lot nauseous; and immediately retched into the open garbage can next to my nightstand.
But it wasn’t vomit. No. No, it wasn’t vomit. Not bile, not partially digested food; no nothing like that.
It was…. Him. I could feel him, crawling up my throat, reaching for freedom, slithering, suffocating me; forcing his way out… and that’s when he made his debut.
This… thing. This gelatinous skull with eyes, and tentacles. A truly nightmarish creature; and I saw it, and tried to scream, and as I did it looked right at me, its eyes flashed red, and it was like I was frozen in time. I couldn’t move or scream or breathe.
All I could do was cry silently as this creature stared at me with its horrific eyes, slowly beginning to move, slipping around with its slimy tentacles. It was like it was staring into my soul, as it pushed itself up on its tentacles, climbing out of the trash can and slowly making its way up my body.
It stopped to rest on my shoulder, and I could hear the sickening squelching sounds, as its tentacles wrapped around my face, touching, feeling; investigating. Sweat and tears dropped off my face, as it got closer and closer to my ear, and I could feel its disgusting breath against my neck, as it began to speak…
“Ahana ng ah’hri. Yog Say’z’goht. Ymg’ ah lw’nafh cahf ephais’tain ya. Un se In’Fhtag Eyan. Ymg’ n’gha luln llllnahor, gof’n…”
It was weird, although I heard the creature speaking in the foreign, guttural language it was speaking, in my head I could hear the words in English;
“Stay calm, human. We are Sau’z’goht. Your life force will sustain us, as your expiration grows nearer. So say the Unsleeping Ones.”
These words would echo over and over and over in my head, like a broken record, or an occult chant; as I felt this thing begin to claw its way back into my mind, into my skull. Again, the searing pain shot through my head and body.
And that’s when I woke up. Covered in sweat, panicked, and achy. It was becoming harder and harder for me to understand when I was dreaming and when I wasn’t; everything just continued to feel wrong. I thought I wasn’t having dreams, but maybe EVERYTHING had been a dream, so far.
I remember being confused and asking myself, “What is happening? Why is this happening? Am I really awake? How do I know if I’m awake?” That’s when I noticed it was dark in my room… I looked at the clock…
It said “3:00” but that couldn’t be possible, could it? I couldn’t have slept for 18 MORE hours, could I?…
I took my phone out and it said “3:00 AM, Saturday, April 27th.”
How the hell… that’s not possible. That’s when the fear truly set in. The hair raised on the back of my neck; Everything that just happened was a dream?
I looked at the Egg, and it was perfectly intact. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I stood up and walked over to it, gently putting my hand on it. It was radiating its soft green light & warmth, and felt calming to the touch. I guess I was going crazy, or just had the most wild set of dreams, I didn’t know, I didn’t care… I just knew I had to get rid of the Egg.
All of this weird stuff started happening when I brought it home, and nothing had been quite right, since then. I stopped dreaming, I lost chunks of time; and now, I was losing the ability to tell when I am sleeping or awake. The Egg needed to go.
I picked it up and brought it outside to the garbage can, dropped it in, and shut it. Almost immediately I started feeling better. I went to the kitchen and grabbed a snack to eat, and made my way back up to my room, feeling better than I had all week, smiling, happy. I looked at the clock.
“3:07”
I guess I won, and it worked, since it was gone. I sighed heavily and laid back down, thinking about everything I had experienced. I didn’t know what was real and what was my apparently overactive imagination. Just that it was STILL Saturday morning. I shook my head and decided I’d deal with it in the morning, because I was ABSOLUTEY exhausted. I reached over, and set my alarm.
9:00am. My alarm. It sounded like a million nails on a chalkboard. I reached over and slapped the alarm until it quieted down. “Ugh.. Piece of Sh—“ I immediately sat up in my bed remembering the night before, remembering… that I’ve done this already. But not just last night. The night before. And the night before. And the night before. Ever since I brought that egg home. Somehow, now that I had removed it, certain memories were flooding back.
Every night. 3:00AM. I’d sit up straight in bed, while the tendrils from the egg would slither and crawl their way over to me, making their way up my body, and clawing into my head. Tearing into my scalp and absorbing my energy?… my knowledge?… I still don’t know. Maybe both… But it doesn’t matter, the point is, that this Egg had been feeding on me for a week already
But it turns out, I hadn’t lost my ability to dream, whatever that thing was doing to me, it was also blacking it out of my memory. Probably to keep me complacent, and unafraid. Mom says complacency is the work of the Devil, after all.
Wait… the Devil… Mom… Could it be? Could mom maybe know about this creature, or thing, and maybe tell me more about it? I rushed out of my room, and went to go find her.
I went down the stairs in my typical clunky, ape-like way, and looked around a bit for her. I ended up finding her in the kitchen, just about to make breakfast.
“Hey, Mom. Good morning.”
My entire post was too long to get out to you folks. I’ve found that if I don’t leave my room, and I don’t close my eyes, nothing terrible will happen. I’ll wait until tomorrow to upload the part 2 of this story. The time still hasn’t changed from 9:00…