My eyes open and I find myself in my familiar bed, aware that I have just been dreaming something, but completely unable to recall its events.
Though my venetian blinds are almost always closed, faint hints of morning light still seep through in the small hours of the dawn. But there are none yet now, it is still 3 a.m. at latest.
I lay there with my eyes closed, trying to get back to sleep. But something keeps me conscious, like a barely audible whispering. It takes me a long time to identify the cause of my discomfort. I am being watched.
My eyes open wide very suddenly, and I am instantly aware that although my room is pitch black, there is someone beside my bed. No, that would be tolerable, and make sense. It is over my bed, hovering silently at a level impossible to attain without at least leaning on my mattress. But I feel no body shifting it. This makes no sense. My stomach is starting to grow most uneasy.
Even with my pupils fully adjusted, I am still unable to spot the entity. Then, in the pitch, there is the slightest of movement. Only when I can hear my own shaky breathing being echoed back more clearly do I realize that it is drawing nearer, until I am almost nose to nose with it. Then, almost as if my imagination is doing it, I can begin to make out the eyes-
My head is grabbed roughly by cold, scaly hands and wrenched around 180 degrees, the vertebrae in my neck grinding and crunching until my head is now completely backwards to my body, and now faces the wall by my bed. On its dark blue eggshell enamel, I can see the smearing of a fresh, dark liquid oozing and dripping down the wall; "HELLO JAN"
As my terror reaches new heights, my head is violently jerked back to its original placement, and let to drop on my pillow.
I jolt awake. A dream. Merely a dream. Or was it? I am still lying in the exact same position I was. I am shaking. My head lays where it was dropped, my neck still aching from the contortion. It was a dream, right? Is the entity gone? I cannot sense the thing over me, but it feels as though it has receded to the far corner to amuse itself with my reaction. My imagination....I hope.
What about the writing on the wall behind me? Is it really not there? My logic tells me that that should be true, that the writing was only a work of my own terrible imagination, but the fear that immersed me is hard to shake off.
The writing is not there, I try to assure myself. It isn't there. It can't be. It isn't. Is it? It isn't. Please, don't be there.
I spend what feels like an eternity simply paralyzed with dread, wanting to look but unable to move.
I will never get any rest if I don't look. It won't be there. It shouldn't be there. But if it's there, my soul may never rest again at all, for it will all have been real. I feel like a puppet, strings held taut by a dark force, taunting me like a fish on a hook. Who is holding the rod on the shore? My flesh is frozen, heavy and solid as a slab of ground meat in the freezer. I cannot move. I must. God, if it's there...I can't. But I must. I can't. I must. I can't.
Finally, I manage to make myself to roll over in bed and look.
