Waking Nightmare

I can’t sleep.

And this isn’t for the usual reasons – My brain isn’t on rapid-fire mode, I’m not crying over how lonely and unloved I feel, and I’m not on and off of my iPad (well, now I am). No, the reason I can’t sleep is that recently something’s been watching me for about a week now, and I’m only just starting to realise what this thing might be.

Since last Monday, I’ve constantly felt a pair of glaring eyes burning right into the back of my head. I had rationalised it as stress-induced paranoia, but now I’m not so sure. It seemed unnatural, not as in ghosts or aliens but just not of human understanding.

   After a thrashing 20 minutes of sleep, I woke up dripping with icy sweat. The alarm opposite to me indicated it was 11:35, and now it’s 3:40. I have it set up so it only indicates the time when I press it, so finding it in the pitch-black was a pain. But, there’s a good reason for that – I can’t sleep without any visual or auditory stimuli.

Combined with my crippling fear of the dark, this was not the best of situations to be in. I’ve been pressing the button for at least an hour now, but I feel bound to my bed, as if I’d just awoken from a coma and only my arm had not suffered from entropy. The soft glow of my iPad has made things slightly better, but the blackness in my room was still swallowing most of the light emitted. I keep going into spasm, and when it happens, my body feels like it’s encased in a block of ice. The worst of it is that I can see shapes – incorporeal forms in the darkness made from darkness themselves.

I’m feeling more and more desperate by the second. I can’t scream – believe me, I’ve tried. The shadows are touching me now, sliding their fingers through my torso with both flaming heat and terrible cold at the same time. It’s torture. My heart is pounding, I’m afraid I’m going to have a heart attack.

The pain is getting worse and more frequent. The spasms are now near constant, and it’s hard to control my body enough to type. I’m seeing faces, horrible, disfigured faces screaming silently right in front of my eyes. Their wordless shrieks were horrifying – and the detail was perfectly realistic, not like something my usually fantasy-orientated brain would come up with.

Oh, God. I can hear them. The thousands of screams piercing my skull. I feel like I’m about to explode, and I’m crying uncontrollably. Both of my shoulders feel gripped by a series of what can only be described as long, thin pieces of metal. Amongst all the screams, I hear demonic whispers promising me an end to all this. But I know this will not end soon.

2 hours. It’s been 2 hours since I could last write. My whole arm went fully paralysed and I was subjected to a lot of things since then. Whatever this thing was is using me and has been for the last 2 hours for some kind of cruel fun. I’ve been burnt, cut, beaten, and, rather recently, raped. But when I look to where I feel these pains, there are no marks or scars. But that’s just what it wants. My mind is at its edge, and I feel like I’m going to break any minute now. But I won’t give that thing the pleasure of seeing me do it.

Another hour. I think this thing is letting me type this so it can be recognised or something. I’ve now been eaten, ripped apart and had my eyes gouged out, and I even went blind for about 15 minutes. I must be strong, this night can’t last forever. Maybe this thing counts on that, though, maybe it has some kind of plan. I’m just praying it doesn’t.

Oh. Thank. God. It’s over. I was paralysed for another hour but it’s over. Upon dawn breaking, that horrible demon left my room and I could feel the darkness shy away as sunlight shone through my windows. I’m laughing uncontrollably, the spasms have stopped and I can move my whole body freely again. I’m hugging myself. I’ve changed, and hopefully this won’t land me in an institution somewhere.

Wait. I just realised something. That thing didn’t die, it just left. It skulked out and slipped through the walls and the other shadows just dissipated. Could that mean…. No……

Oh, god, help me….