It began with a soft, rhythmic tingling, a sort of sub-surface pulsing in my skin. First at my temples, and then behind my eyes, continuing on downward to my cheeks, lips, chin, etc. At first, it was almost relaxing, a descending, rippling wave of curious sensation. But upon reaching my feet and reversing, it became uncomfortable, disconcerting. Where before there had been a pleasant tingling, there was now a burning, an ascending wave of heat. Instinctively, I slapped at my body, my mind thinking that I’d been set on fire; but there was no outward indication of heat, only that subdermal burning.
When it reached my head again, I thought I’d lose my mind, have to tear off my own face. The heat was immense, unlike anything I’d ever felt; searing and terrible and mind-wiping. Luckily, I was at home, having just woken up from a nap. Otherwise, I would’ve assuredly drawn a crowd with how I flailed and twisted about in my agony.
Somehow, I managed to make it to the bathroom, and once there I splashed water onto my face, hoping to somehow douse the flames beneath my skin. But the water didn’t help, and the wave began its downward bath again, intensifying as it did so. I fell to the floor, unable to stand, unable to take the sheer awful immensity of the pain. The cold tile of the bathroom floor didn’t help; the puddle of water in which I was lying didn’t help. Screaming out, loudly and wildly didn’t help. There was no relief, and when that molten wave reached my feet and reversed again, I wanted nothing more than to die—to leave my body, to end the excruciating cycle.
And, somehow, I got my wish.
I don’t remember verbally asking for it, to be freed of my body; dispirited from my physical form. But something answered me, something heard or sensed my soulful desire and granted me that desperate wish. In an instant, at the apex of my pain, I was ejected from my body, displaced like a leaf, wind-swept from its mother branch.
At first, I thought I’d died; that somehow the pain had shattered my mind, or caused a massive heart attack, or some other physiologically debilitating thing. But when my senses remained, and I saw my body, still writhing insensibly on the bathroom floor, I knew that something else had happened.
As you can imagine, it was pretty weird to see my own body suffering below me. To watch yourself move independently of your will—it’s very trippy. It was then that I realized I had been floating for the last few moments, and somehow, through some intrinsically held control of my new state of existence, I brought myself down to the floor. There was no sensation of contact, I didn’t feel a surface beneath my feet, but I nonetheless accepted that I was standing.
Regardless of the temperature in the house, my bathroom is always cold, and yet in that spectral state I couldn’t feel the slightest chill. I had no perception of the ambient temperature at all; everything was simply…dull, atmospherically imperceptible as far as tactile sensations went. Sight, sound, and smell—I could smell the faint stench of piss from my pants, which I had soiled in my distress—were my only ways of perceiving the world.
Carefully, I reached down to try and calm my writhing body, but my hands passed through the pain-contorted arms, sinking immaterially into the heaving chest. I reeled back, a sense of vertigo overcoming me. As if activated or awakened by my attempt to calm myself, I heard a whisper from somewhere, a direction neither behind nor before me, but beyond—from a plane or facet of reality not immediately placeable. I spun around, hoping to hone in on the faint, ever-distant whispering, but couldn’t pinpoint its location; it always seeming just beyond reach.
It was unsettling, but I sensed no immediate harm from it, and returned my attention to my body, which had not calmed at all in its spasming. I didn’t want to re-experience the agony—which I was sure was continuing to cycle through with mounting intensity—but I felt strangely, inexpressibly vulnerable in the open space—in my ghostly state. There was something else, if not just the unseen whisperer, amidst the ether with me, and I felt that I’d be safer within a physical shell, than without.
Since I had managed to remain on the floor without falling through, I figured I’d be able to lie down on it without issue. I turned away from my body, and then allowed myself to fall backwards, gradually, onto and into my body; and then aligned myself within its framework. The idea was to try and re-possess it, which I figured I might be able to do if I got my spectral body in line with my physical one. But instead, I merely laid there, while my flesh intermittently seized and spasmed around me.
Despite not having any physical lungs with which to perform the gesture, I nonetheless sighed; and in response, my body went rigid—and stayed that way. Shocked, I held my breath, initially thinking that the animal nerves of my body had sensed the approach of something hostile. But after a few breathless moments of quiet, I allowed myself to “breathe” again, and the resultant exhalation drove my body to another action—it got up.
The realization that I had breathed life into my own body then finally dawned on me, and it was both exhilarating and terrifying. Clearly, I was some sort of disembodied spirit, ejected from my physical form. And, just as obviously, I could restart my body—or at least give it some modicum of cognition—by imparting a little of my soul-self into it.
Still lying on the floor, I watched as my body struggled to its feet, its skin twitching and shoulders heaving as the pain gradually left it. I was overjoyed at having relieved “myself” of the torment, and hoped that the cessation of it meant that I could return. But my body then turned on the faucet, slapped some water on its face, looked at itself in the mirror—and smiled.
This was no automaton of flesh I’d simply reanimated with a vestige of life—there was a cognizance at work within; a mind other than my own had assumed control.
Again, a stunned breath left me, and my body turned to look down, at me; its eyes alight with some demonian hunger. The expression on its face was one I had never knowingly held before, a look of malice and desires unthinkable. Without a word, it drew in a great breath—its chest expanding and shoulders rising to almost inhuman proportions. I thought it was going to shout at me, perhaps let loose some ghoulish scream; but then I felt myself being pulled toward it, drawn in by that great inhalation.
Panicking, I reached out for something to grab ahold of, but my hands, fleshless and immaterial, only passed through the toilet and edge of the tub. I was lifted from the floor, and for a single, dreadful moment I glimpsed my body’s widening gullet, and knew that it meant to swallow me whole. But just before that could happen, I screamed, expelling a great burst of “air”, and I was immediately propelled backwards. I spun in mid-air, but quickly reoriented myself so that I was again facing my body. It looked dazed, as if my scream had disoriented it; and I capitalized on the opportunity by soaring past it out the bathroom. I could’ve gone through my body, but I didn’t want to risk being absorbed into it. What had once been my goal now became my greatest fear.
Something else was piloting my body, and wanted to consume me as fuel.
Naturally, I tried to escape. I first went to my bedroom window, confident that I’d be able to survive the twelve-or-so-foot fall to the ground; but before I could reach it, I heard that omni-aural whispering again, only now it was distinctly understandable. The voice, seeming to come from all around me, said, “Locked and contained, within this house you’ll forever dwell. Siphoned into nothing, a drop in the well.” There was an unmistakably evil intonation to the cryptic rhyme, but I ignored it, wanting only to leave. But when my hands met the glass of my window, they were not only stopped by its surface, but felt the heat from the sun contained therein.
I pushed, pressed, and even threw myself against the glass, but it didn’t budge; and the terrible, sinking feeling that I had somehow been made partially tangible set in. I turned around at the sound of a groan and saw my body stumbling out of the bathroom, still somewhat affected by my reversal of its suction. There was still a devilish malice in its eyes, one that inspired a new level of horror in me. I quickly floated toward the door to my room, and upon entering the hall tried to shut it—but I couldn’t grasp the doorknob. The conditions of my interaction with the environment were inconsistent, unreliable. Giving up on the action, I turned around and fled.
Hovering down the hall, I tried to think of some way out, and remembered that I had left the window above the kitchen sink open before starting my nap, to air out the smells of the lunch I’d prepared. I hovered down the stairs, hearing my body stomp down the hall above just as I reached the landing. It made no vocalizations as it descended the stairs, but its footfalls were heavy; as if the body was over-burdened by more than just its organic contents.
Crossing the living room and entering the kitchen, I immediately went to the window, and had almost gotten my hand through its frame when that omnipresent voice spoke again, this time rhyming: “Doomed to this house, in a ghostly form of naught; Destined for annihilation, your withered soul will rot.”
And at that, my hand collided with nothing; solid air itself preventing my escape.
By the whisperer’s lyrical incantations, I’d been trapped—sorcerously barred from exiting my home, no matter the blocking substance—or lack thereof. I managed to hide just as my body stomped into the room, obviously guided in some way by the unseen observer. The thing wearing my face peered around, its expression hideously, inhumanly evil; the face of a fiend newly freed from hell.
This will sound crazy, but I’ve since hidden myself inside my laptop. I haven’t really possessed it, but I am inhabiting its form in a sort of spiritually compressed state, and can manipulate the machine from within. But I don’t sense or feel as it does—I have not become one with the wiring. It seems like the circumstances by which I may physically interact with something are nebulous at best; subject to the whims and will of something else, if not just myself.
My body has no idea where I am, and the whisperer—if they are two separate entities—doesn’t seem to know, either. I don’t know how long I can hide here, if I’ll eventually need to venture out for some kind of phantasmal sustenance. The pilot of my body hasn’t given up its search for me, but it also seems interested in other things as well; namely the various objects and pictures I have around the house. As if it’s trying to learn about me—or how to be me.
I can only type when it’s not in the room, so that it won’t hear the depression of the keys. It moves from room to room every few minutes, roving hungrily as it searches for me or works to further its knowledge of my identity. Meanwhile, the whisperer has been silent—I hope that’s a good thing.
I don’t know what I’ll do, but for now I suppose I’ll get my story out and hope someone can offer some advice. I am a geist hiding from my own body, trapped inside my own house. I don’t really have any other option than to seek help from beyond.