Feetsies

Usually I like to let my feet hang out over the bed when I sleep.

Occasionally, I like to let my arms flail about during sleep as well. But all that is changed.

One night, I felt a light breeze on my heels, gently puffing on them as if a breeze passed by. So I drew in my feet, and fell back asleep, dismissing it to be the broken window.

The next night, it happened again. Somewhere in the middle of a pleasant dream I was awakened by the sensation of someone breathing on my feet, ever so softly, ever so gently.

Irritated, I drew them in once again under the blankets and fell into a horrible sleep pattern.

The next night is when things got strange.

I woke up again, my eyes barely able to open crusted over by sleep-dust. In the half-light, I could barely make out a figure, poking through the slates in my bunk-bed. My befuddled mind flitted from brother, to my Jack Skellington doll, and finally rested on an animal that had somehow broken into my house.

It was none of the above.

Soft, porcelain skin shone in the darkness, framing two large, pale black eyes. It was breathing on my feet.

I froze with fear; remember I could barely see, it was 2:00 in the morning.

“…Does it have small feetsies?” came a tiny voice, soft and child-like.

“W-what…?” I stuttered. I couldn’t move now, I was so flippin’ scared.

“…Doeth it have feetthies?” the thing repeated, a little louder this time. I could now make out that whatever this thing was had some serious speech impediment.

“…Look,” I grumble, “Kid, you better get the fuck out of my house, before I call the cops.”

That’s when it responded by opening its mouth and by this time I was fully awake.

I wish I wasn’t. Inside it’s mouth was rows and rows and rows of sharp, thick teeth, lined all the way back to the cavernous hole of it’s mouth.

Strangely, the story I read once called God’s Mouth suddenly repeated itself through my pumping brain.

Then it opened it widely, so wide that I knew this was some kind nightmare.

It glomms on my foot, and I feel a piercing pain on my left three toes.

I shriek into the night and the night inhales me.

****

Sometime in the morning, I wake up to my parents sitting over me, frightened expressions on their faces.

Apparently, I had woken them up with my screaming and rushing into my room, they found me passed out with my foot crudely cradled in my arm: I had somehow held on to it during the night in an awkward fetak position.

Upon inspection of my toes I found nothing wrong, except a few faintly visible marks lining the skin around the nails. And it was slightly clammy, like I had dipped my toes ina vat of water for too long.

My parents insist there was nothing in my room that night, and that I had suffered a series of night terrors.

But I know better. Oh yes.

I’m never sleeping with my feet out again, lest that freak come back here.

No siree.