It Watches Me Sleep
I am afraid of sleep.
It hasn't always been this way. I mean, when I was a kid I, like everyone else, wanted tostay awake at all times, but as I grew up I loved sleeping. Every nightI'd fall into the heavenly soliloquy of my comfortable bed and the surrounding darkness and just enjoy the entire thing. Now that's nothing but a dream in itself. I used to worry about whether this would affect me in a negative way, but now I'm just tired and feel like death. My family worries though, which I suppose I can understand. Imean, I often worry about how long it was there before I noticed.
For a bit of context, this startedaround November 2013. I had just gotten out of high school, I just started college, and I had just started what would become my first long term relationship. An average life for an average kid. I wasn't having sleeping problems in any way and had, in fact, gotten myself onto a normal adult sleeping schedule – one my girlfriend at the time (who we'll call Ashley) pushed on me. The only deviation from this schedule was during school, where her and I would nap in the student union area.This was a daily routine we followed vehemently, a little alone time where family couldn't touch us. It was during this routine that it first happened. We had found our way to the couches outside of the meeting rooms and laid down. I closed my eyes and I started nodding off. I have a weird habit of opening my eyes when I hear noise and so when a few other students walked by I couldn't help myself, I opened one eye with the intention of only taking a second to look and then closing it again. That's when I noticed it.
I saw it in the corner of the back wall, initially catching it in my peripheral vision. It was almost like it was hiding. It feltlike it was hiding. I froze, and kept my sight on it as best I could in the strange position it held itself, large unblinking eyes making contact with my one. I didn't look away, I couldn't, but when Ashley commented on how still I was beingIblinked and it was gone. She looked at me like I was crazy and told me that I had just been spacing out for the last 10 minutes. I checked my phone – there was no way she was right. Ten minutes? That was barely a few seconds. Yet there it was on my phone: 10:40 A.M. when we had initially laid down at 10:29. That's how it became, short instances in my mind that would be much, much longer in real life, the gap growing each time.
Needless to say, I don't really trust time anymore.
After that first incident, it slowly became more and more different. For a little while, it was the same – just a random bit of chance. Then it really started making me paranoid when I could feel it. You know that feeling you get when you see something in the dark, like a blanket draped over a stool, but when you see it you freeze and your stomach flattens and you can feel every muscle screaming at you that this is dangerous? That's how it feels. It would sit in the corner of my room and watch me, and I would know it was there. Once, I tried to get a clear look at it by squinting open one of my eyes. It looks like it might be human, but it's obviously aged years past the capabilities of the human body. If it had a mouth or any way to breathe I didn't see it. The worst part are those huge eyes that never blink, and that always seem to know when I'm looking.
I know when it's there now, and that “when" is all the time. Every night I lay in bed and I dread the wait until morning. I told my friends about it. Of course I did. They didn't take it seriously until one of them brazenly offered to stay over in a sarcastic display of “scaring the monster away". He doesn't like to come over anymore.I can't wait it out, and I'm not really a fan of doctors or the idea of being put in the hospital. I tried to set up a camera for evidence, but the battery usually dies not long after pressing record. This is my last resort.
If anybody has dealt with this before, please help me. I'm starting to get tired, and it's been getting closer lately.
