Beady-Eyed Monster

On that night, on that horribly frightening night, in my home, where I should have felt safe, I didn’t.

Because on that night – on THAT night, everything in my life changed – EVERYTHING!

Searching my brain for answers, I reasoned that somebody must have injected me with acid. Nothing I saw, nothing I heard, nothing I felt made any sense. I had to be hallucinating – what other possible explanation could describe the insanity?

He begged me to say his name. I couldn’t bring myself to utter it. I just couldn’t call him that! Smoke plumed from my ears. I couldn’t stand his voice, his presence. My mouth spewed flames when I even thought about calling him that. I was burning from the inside out. All 5 million pores of my skin felt as if they were being spiked with needles and, like a pump deflating an air mattress, my very essence was sucked from my shriveling soul.

Like shrink wrap, my skin pulled tight around my bones, and my whole body felt trapped inside a cold, damp vice. I collapsed into a heap of terror, begging God to make it stop!

I was experiencing sleep paralysis – while I was awake. “I’m only dreaming, I’m only dreaming,” I kept repeating to myself.

But as the room eroded around me and the walls closed in, my heart hammered inside my chest, bruising me, cutting me, and destroying me. My breath became so shallow, I thought I must have been dying. And, as my skull shrank into my brain, reality collapsed around me and the Earth quivered beneath me. I wasn’t dreaming!

Blinded at first, I cautiously opened my eyes, but I shouldn’t have, because what I saw before me – slits of reptilian eyes – frightened me beyond any fear I’d ever experienced. I froze in sheer terror, trying to define the odd shade of humanless color that tinted his skin. I couldn’t believe he was in my home, my sanctuary.

Why? Why was he here – in my home? How? How did this happen? Did I unknowingly invite him? Did somebody else? The stench of him filled the room, and I felt his slimy substance slither around me and reach into my brain, confusing me and perverting my sense of reality even more.

My shivering and shaking wasn’t strong enough to excise him from me, and a cold, dank mugginess permeated the room with discomfort so profound, I wanted to scream.

No, no, no! This can’t be happening! I wanted to wake up. I wanted to rejoin the real world, the world that felt safe and comfortable.

Though I begged for mercy, he refused to leave. I needed the strength of millions of levels of power just to imagine him gone. I prayed – I fervently prayed – for him to go away, but every time I opened my eyes, I saw him, I heard him, and I felt his presence.

As if from somebody else, I heard the screams, WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! Somebody, please! WAKE ME UP! And then I realize the sound was coming from me.

For nearly 3 years I have suffered through his daily torment, endless stupidity, fake prominence, and inexhaustible, ludicrous, farcical, and vacuous tweets, awaiting the end of four years when I hope to deliver myself from this terror, this torture, and this alternate reality.

Until then I cry.