It’s the sound that wakes me up. A quiet scratching, like
when you’ve just cut your fingernails and a stray edge catches and scrapes
across cloth. I can’t really tell where it’s coming from, and I don’t really
want to move around. It’s cold outside my warm quilts and blankets, and if I move
all the cold air will rush in and it’ll take ages to get comfortable as well. I
try to ignore the sound and go back to sleep. No luck. I think it’s getting
louder, which must mean the thing is getting closer to me. I open my eyes, but
of course I can’t see anything. I drew all the curtains before I went to bed.
If I want to find this thing, I’ll have to stick my arm out and turn on the
lamp. Ugh. No way. I close my eyes again.
The sound is even closer now, scraping around my sheets near
my head. There’s something else too, very faint. A sort of hissing, it makes me
think of the sound an angry rhinoceros beetle makes. That’s it. I am not having
any bugs in my bed. I sit up and flick the light on. Except I don’t. I can’t.
My eyes opened when I told them to, but nothing else responded. I can feel
everything; my arms, legs, chest and head; but I can’t move. I try to move my
arm, nothing. My legs won’t move either. No matter how much I want it to,
nothing will move. I try to scream for help, but nothing comes from my lips,
not even a whimper. I feel trapped inside my own unmoving body, as if it’s all
so much meat. The sound is very close now, somewhere behind my head, and I can’t
turn my head at all, can’t move. Then it touches me.
I can feel it on my neck, cold and prickly, like a bouquet
of pins. More and more pinpricks appear, as the thing claws its way up onto my
skin. My flesh crawls underneath it as it crawls on me. I want to slap it away,
to jerk my head, to jump out of bed and run screaming out of bed, but I can’t.
I wish my senses were as dead as my body seems to be, at least then I wouldn’t
feel this thing clambering up my neck. The scratching sound, obviously its
claws on my sheets, is gone and I can hear it hissing at me. Every step it
takes irritates my skin and makes it itch, a long line of itches I can’t
scratch, all the way up to my ear. Oh god. No. Oh please no. Its foreclaws
touch my earlobe.
In my mind I am screaming, jumping, crushing, anything. In
reality I lie completely still as this cold spiky thing pulls itself onto my
ear, teeters on the edge and then falls into my ear. Its barbed legs flail around
as it tries to right itself, its squeals of anger harsh and shrill in my ear.
Blazing pain as a forefoot touches my eardrum, building to a wave of white
blinding agony as it hooks in and tears it open. The thunder in my ear is gone,
but I can hardly think for the pain. I feel nauseous. It’s inside my head. I
want to open my eyes. This has to be a dream, it has to be.
The pain stops. My ear doesn’t hurt any more. In fact I can’t
feel it at all. I don’t feel warm, or cold. I don’t feel anything from my body.
I can’t smell anything, can’t hear anything at all. I know what’s happening.
That thing is in my head, crawling around, tearing and breaking, and I’m
damaged. Soon enough it will hit something important and I won’t be able to breathe,
or else it will hit something else and I won’t be able to think anymo
No comments:
Post a Comment