heartstringss
Member
The nighttime never makes much sense.
Just when you think you're finally beginning to drift off to sleep, the world shifts out from underneath you, and you are dumped onto the floor instead. You try to convince yourself it is only another nightmare, but it feels too real for that. The fear has made you perfectly lucid, every sense heightened, too aware. Above all else, you cannot deny the literal fingers you feel wrapped around your ankles. (It is the price you pay for letting your feet poke out between the sheets to dangle off the edge of the bed. There were monsters there, in the nighttime-- everybody knows that, so you only did this to yourself, did you not?)
The hands attached are cold as ice, gnarled and rotting like a corpse-- beneath the blanket of fear, you can feel it all. Nails dig into your skin and the whole world seems to tremble. Your breath catches. You cannot find your voice. You cannot feel anything but the hands holding onto your feet, slowly dragging you off the bed. Over the raggedness of your own breath, you catch a voice that isn't yours -- a voice that surely can't be human, for its quality is too warped. The sound it emits before speaking is gaspy and breathless, then the voice itself: overlapped by a million other voices, some male, some female, some old, and some young.
"Come," it whispers as you begin to struggle harder, grasping at the scratched wood of your bedpost, then, when you lose hold of that, your sheets and pillows. "Come with me, child. You must, you must, I do insist."
A scream collects in your chest but goes no further. At once, you are being dragged to the end of the bed and there is nothing you can do about it. You kick at the hands but they only hold onto you tighter, leaving scratches in their wake. When your body thumps onto the floor, you know it will leave bruises but you cannot focus long on that-- not when the hands are now scratching down your back, streaking blood, and the scream you hold finally escapes as you scramble to your feet and run out the open door.
...Or it was open, just a second ago. Just before you reach the threshold, the door slams shut and you are trapped. The light from the hallway is gone, thrusting you into pure darkness. You feel around the surface of the door for the handle, but that is gone too. The voice creeps up from the shadows, laughing,
"You thought it would be that easy? You are foolish, child."
Its laugh echoes around the room, spinning inside your head so loud it feels like your skull might shatter. You're already grasping at straws as you slide down to the floor-- realistically, there is nowhere else for you to go. The monster knows this too, and he reaches out through the dark, a hand grasping onto your ankles once again. This time, you let it grab you. You kick and scream because it is your instinct, but still, you go. You have no other choice. He takes you under the bed. Darkness envelopes you...
...And you wake up, drenched in sweat but back inside your bed; still covered in scratches, bloody, broken and bruised; the inside of your throat torn to shreds.
A cruel laugh echoes up from underneath your bed.
The nighttime never makes much sense.
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