THE RAVENOUS SHADOW
"But we, the seven there assembled, having seen the shadow as it came out from among the draperies, dared not steadily behold it, but cast down our eyes, and gazed continually into the depths of the mirror of ebony." - Edgar Allan Poe
OCTOBER 13th, 12:37 am:
Slumber interrupted, his eyes snap open as if summoned by an unheard voice. Enveloping darkness, midnight's gloom, spreads from end to end. But all is numb...all is suffocating. Like a horrid limbo betwixt dreaming and rousing. The brain is awake, but the body remains dormant. Thrashing like a madman to fully conjure himself aroused.
He could feel it...a presence. Unknown, unseen, uncaring. A figure completely at one with the shadows around him. The gaze is invisible yet fierce, keeping silent vigil from somewhere amidst the inky vastness. The pressure increases, the stifling sensation growing more steadily to the point where he cannot so much as meekly gasp. Everything seems to cave in around him, the very blackness itself tightening more and more until it feels as though his very breath would cease.
...and then it was over...
His eyes blink more into existence, and he finds himself fully awake. He is sluggish, tired, but his mind was ablaze with thought. Was it just a mere night terror he couldn't wake from? It all felt so real...so inhumanly real...
OCTOBER 17th, 2:14 am:
Slumber is again interrupted, but more fervently than before. It feels as though the encroaching black was malevolent, almost vengeful. Again, that same sensation of tangible paralysis overtakes, like gossamer chains rendering him helpless and exposed. Amidst the struggles and the fearful confusion, he turns to see it...
A figure...a human-shaped silhouette, like a sentient shadow come to horrible life. Silent, unmoving, yet emitting an aura of hunger and steadfast menace. Invisible shackles weighing him down, air ceasing to flow into his lungs. Eyes unable to focus save for that central figure, that damned specter, out of reach and almost taunting in its quiet wrath.
It is longer than before, more drawn out and terrible, more insidious in design and presentation. For a second he senses an almost mocking delight in this. Do shadows grin? Do they smile a devil's leer at the sight of confounded misery?
Breath grows tighter, harder to initiate...eyesight is distorted, almost to the point of pure haziness...he is only able to clench a pair of tight, panicked fists until...
It's over.
His eyes blink back again, and he turns to the corner where the shadow stood.
Nothing was there.
Nothing but simple darkness.
What, where...WHY?? Was someone really there? Was it real? It felt too real to be dismissed as little more than a nightmare. It had to be...it just had to be...
OCTOBER 23rd, 4:22 am:
Slumber came to an end with the abruptness of a thunderclap. No sense of easing, no gentility...just a suddenness that kept him held fast. But there is more to it. There was deep-rooted agony, fear, dread; the discomfort of nights with little rest because of it coming back worse than ever. This weakness makes him all the more vulnerable, all the more tantalizing and easy to feed upon. And this, in turn, would make the ordeal that much more agonizing.
He would gasp, but he has no breath...
He would scream, but he has no voice...
Vision blurs, head spins, the siphoning more pronounced and ravenous. Pain begins to sink in through the numbing sensation with an ever-racing heart. The darkness seems to creep in, caving in inch by horrific inch, where a single second further is all it takes until all light ceases to be.
Drained cleanly, without a single trace of presence, no mere hint to betray its feast.
He lays still in his bed, seemingly still asleep, but at dawn he will not rise. What life force remained was drunk away, leaving him almost at peace in his eternal rest. But he knew that it was anything but peaceful...the horror, the agony, the hellish incapacity that bordered on absolute torment. Drowning in a room full of breathable air, help fast by a multitude of unseen and unfelt hands.
Imagine...helpless, choking to death even in the safety of your own bed, by a beast inhuman in nature but so very real in our world as the perpetrator. How even peaceful rest maintains its own vulnerability, where hunters of the night could sneak in and do us harm for their own needs and disappear without a single trace. Imagine, if you will...if you were next for a feeding...
Sleep tight…