DELLY

As I woke from my light sleep, I don’t try to open my eyes. I don’t want to see how long I’ve been asleep, because once I see it then I’ll only start calculating and imaging and I’ll never get back to sleep.

   As I’m trying to lull myself back to sleep, I hear some pressure on wood that makes it groan inside, from what I can only assume is, my parent’s room. I groan to myself thinking that it’s probably dad getting ready for work, meaning that I only had two measly hours until I would have to really get up. Ughh, I need to get back to sleep.  

I am working on staying numb when the familiar creaking of my parent’s bedroom door opens or closes, but as they who ever they are steps into the hall, there is nearly no sound and it peaks my sleepless energy. I had always thought it was the blessing and curse of this old house, that if you know how to manipulate the wood to have no sound then you can sneak around the house without alerting the rest of the house. I have learned to excel at this from when I can’t sleep and I like to move around the sleeping house. The fact of how light of a sleeper my dad is also impacted my learning but, as I have learned over years, my parents always have had a distinct pattern to their gaits. My mom, because of her flat feet sounds like quiet paddles while my dad with his height puts all his weight into his heels. But for some reason whoever is up is hiding their movements on the edges of the boards. Strange, normally I’m the only one to know how to do that.

I hear another door open and close, thinking that its the door to the bathroom and I wait for some sort of sign or clue of who it is.

I don’t even know why I’m still up for this. My sleepless probably blowing this out of portion. But when I try and move onto my side to try sleeping again, I find that I can’t move. Something is keeping me from opening my eyes or moving my body. It feels as if a fog has come over me and as my mind struggles I can still hear water rushing in the distance.

After what I assume is the bathroom door opens and creaks close to closed without the click those slight footsteps return and start towards me. As I continue to struggle against myself I hear them outside my door and I fall still. Oh god, what if I’m drugged, what’s happening to me?, my thoughts are racing but then the fog increases on me and I drift, unwilling, back into sleep.

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DELLY

I suddenly jerk out of sleep and realize that I can move again. As I see the moving starlight of my unchanged room, I calm down slightly but I still slowly rise to my feet, cautiously navigating my room to get to my door before looking at my alarm clock seeing that it’s only 1:00. Before I open my door I wonder if it was just one of my dreams or if they, whoever has been moving around is standing out there waiting for me. Carefully I grab my knife from its usual place on my bedside table and open the door.

Softly stepping out into the hall I see nothing out of the ordinary. Down the stairs, the family room seems normal and nothing looks stolen, the wifi box blinking its small blue light. Though the bathroom door is slightly ajar, I first check my parent’s room. After seeing the shadowed forms of my parents and hearing their light breathing I resolve that it must have been just a dream. After going into the bathroom and splashing some water on my face and body to calm me down, I start walking back to my room when I see it. A light from underneath the study door is casting faint shadows on the wood floor before me. But suddenly the door opens on its accord and my vision flares and goes black again.

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DELLY

Again I wake in my bed and I can see but I can’t move anything. Strangely everything seems… bigger somehow and even though my body is fully under the blankets I feel colder somehow. Like all my heat has been leached out of me and dissipated into the air.

Then I hear it come again, the doors opening and sometimes closing, the rushing of the water and those eerily quiet footsteps. Oh dear god what is happening, am I going mad, please make it stop! I scream inside my head but no one comes to answer.

When the footsteps drift back towards me and I resolve to the madness, make it a blade of anger and fear and suffering stillness. Though I still cannot move I will fight if possible. So when the door to my bedroom opened, I thought I would be ready when the robbers, murderers or monsters walked through that door. I was not ready when my body walked through my door, looking half asleep and moving like the dead. I was not ready when I got close enough to see my necklace, the necklace I never take off, on its chest. I was not ready when it raised up my bedcovers and lay down beside me. I was not ready when I suddenly felt its large arms around me and felt warm again. I was not ready to go when sudden sleep came for me again. Sleep, baby says a voice that is not my own inside my head, Sleep though this is no dream.

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THE VU

Her fear was tantalizing to me as she without a mouth screamed, without eyes cried, without a heartbeat panicked and raced. I had been haunted her steps for years as all my kin do but she was especially special. She was controlled by fear and madness from another world inside her head. Though she felt my and this others presence, she wouldn’t talk to others about it. Perhaps she thought it normal, the pounding in her head when she would realize that she had seen and lived this before, yet somehow maddenly and muscle different. Trapped in loops that she wouldn’t remember in the two seconds, filling my gullet with stolen moments, memories and fear. Tonight I had been trapping her in things outside her body as a new way to grouge myself on her as she sleeps, when she suddenly awoke. My kin must have forgotten how sweet they tasted when covered, laced and doused in fear and doubt. I was half tempted to keep her like this, writhing in agony, but I know she would not last long in this state. Not with her already addled and breaking mind for long.

After all, as I have heard the humans say “Savor your dessert for sweetness can turn to bitterness with time.” So I, ever the thoughtful companion, let her sleep another ever restless sleep.

For now…