Chapter 1

I stare at the dimly lit ceiling just like every night to drift off to sleep. I hear the fan oscillating as the darkness drifts over my eyes. My eyes are not closed, but the darkness makes it feel that way. It is a comfortable feeling, a welcome one after a long day. Every night has been like this ever since I can remember. Eventually, the numbness takes hold of my limbs, slowly spreading from fingers, to hands, to arms, and then, the rest of my body. I am at ease because I know soon, it will come.

It has no name. Every night, without fail, it is there. No words are spoken. I watch it, and it watches me until I drift off to sleep with eyes wide open, until last night. As the darkness began to encompass my vision, I dared to speak. I asked this midnight creature, “Who are you?”

I received no response at first. Then I felt a prickling sensation along my skin leaving gooseflesh. A droning noise, almost like static, takes over every other noise in the room. My vision began to blur as the sound got louder until all I could see was its small yellow eyes on me as they began to move closer. By the time it reached the bed to peer over my catatonic body, the static was deafening. At last, nothing.

I woke in a large white space the color of a hospital room's wall. Although I could not see the walls, I felt how vast of an area this was. I raised my hand to my face just to see. It was my hand. I felt normal, comfortable even from temperature, body condition, and emotion. The possibility of being awake was completely thrown out the window without the regular pains and hot, miserable room I sleep in every night. No sound could be heard other than my breathing and once I began to move, my footsteps. There was no echo; there was just simply perfect silence.

The silence was broken by a voice in the emptiness. Not mine but a familiar one. I sought out the source to hear what it is saying because I couldn't make it out from the distance it seemed to emanate from. The voice continued to speak, and I began to make out small phrases like “Be sure to brush your teeth. Please change over laundry. Don't forget to feed your brother first. Just walk home, you're fine.” Many more phrases I remember hearing from childhood and some even now. The voice belonged to my mother. The same voice I heard through the phone every night when she worked two jobs. Mom worked two full time jobs while Dad was away for work just to make ends meet, and she left it to me to raise my brother.

At some point I came upon the source of the voice but there was nothing. There still was just empty white but the vocal oddity remained, almost chanting phrases I remembered. Her tone began to shift. I felt strange, shorter, and pudgier. The anger and frustration began to well in the speech with words like, “I told you a million times not to! Why is it not done? Wipe that smile off your face. Stop that!” These harsh words were exactly as it was when I would be scolded for not doing things perfectly or the “right way.” My mother continued on into more harsh words. “What the hell do you think you're doing? Are you stupid? I trust you to do one damn thing and you couldn't even get it right!”

I felt tears well up in my eyes at her harsh words, but the breaking point was a simple sentence. “A good son would do better for his mommy.” The tears began to fall, and I felt 10 years old again. I hung my head and saw something odd through the tears. My feet and body seemed to have shrunk. Inspecting my hands as the voice went on, were also younger. It wasn't that I felt 10 years old; I was 10 years old.

I felt yellow eyes upon me from a distance so I did what I had done all those years ago. I ran to hide. It made sense at the time. The shame and guilt eating away at what were, in my mind, my childhood failures. Never to be the son she wanted, feeling it was my responsibility to keep things in order, doing what must be done to survive.

With nowhere to hide, the white emptiness absolute, another sound bled through the sobbing. It too sounded very familiar. My sadness turned to fear as the realization dawned upon me. My father’s voice, deep and slurred, “Be a good kid and bring another. I'm not sure when I'll be able to come home. This is the last time I'll tell you.”

I heard the ripping of a belt against the loops of jeans and immediate searing pain erupted from the back of my legs and then my back. I cried out in pain as the blows continued until I eventually felt numb to it all. Just like it was all those years ago. I stared out into the white just waiting for it to stop.

Once the onslaught stopped, a quiet moment lingered just a little too long. In a drunken slur of words and the smell of alcohol in the air, I heard him say, “If you think you're such a big man, get your ass down here and fuckin’ fight me.”

I froze. The fear crescendoed to an anger I had first felt as a teen. I had done it again. I angered him with my existence. I was no longer 10 and my 17-year-old body was far more capable of defending my pride, but I felt no reason to. The outcome is the same. A lose-lose situation fighting your own dad.

My thoughts and feelings were cast aside as a hand touched my shoulder. Cold, delicate, but yet, almost caring. I turned my attention to the source of the intrusion to witness it looking at me. Its hand placed lightly on my shoulder as all other noise disappeared and all that was left was it and me. Its yellow eyes were glaring. The closest I had ever been to it. I saw its black pupils inside those yellow eyes, the nearly skeletal face with sunken sockets and ground down teeth showing through a lipless mouth. Its body was much the same. A thin, bony, and frail frame covered in a cloth that looked not unlike a long dead animal covered in a worn tarp.

It moved its hand with purpose back to its side and began to walk. The bones looked as if they would snap at the slightest misstep, but to my surprise, it moved with unimaginable grace for something with the appearance of a corpse. We continued walking with dozens of others shouting, screaming obscenities I've heard throughout my lifetime directed at me. The strange aspect was that I felt in control. No anger, guilt, shame, nothing. True apathy.

All at once we are met with silence again. It turned to me and wordlessly beckoned me to a door I had not seen. I asked, “do you…” but before I could finish my sentence, the buzzing began again and I silenced myself. Quiet again, and the door opened. I nod to this ethereal abomination of skin and bone in understanding. It does nothing in response. I step through the door.

Every night, it still comes to watch me as I watch it. Yellow eyes are the last thing I see as I drift to bed. As it lays in the bed beside me, a cold comfort envelops my very being.