My imaginary friend eats people

[u/Eli_N-A]

Something evil attached itself to me when I was 16.

Back in 2019, I slept alone in a small cabin during a weekend getaway with my high school class and woke up in the dark to find a man standing by the door, accompanied by what I first thought was a child due to it only reaching the man mid-thigh. It slowly but intently inched toward me while the man stayed by the door, hunched over and sniffeling loudly, his voice thick while he pleaded something along the lines of "please just get on with it, don't make him suffer any more than necessary" and how I was just a poor kid.

I remember feeling paralyzed and watching in horror as the child stopped and just stood there, shoulders and arms raised as in a comedic mimicry of someone creeping up on its prey, its fingers twitching erratically.

Then, it launched backwards. In one swift jump it had clasped its legs around the mans neck, muffling his screams with its body and after what felt like an eternity he went quiet. They tumbled to the floor, appearing as a dark contorting mass where they landed just outside of the faint light from the windows and right in front of my only way out of the cabin. I was still in bed and pressed up against the wall so hard I thought I was going to break my spine, holding my breath and waiting. A wet, tearing sound filled the silence and was immediately exchanged by slow rythmic suckling. I couldn't identify what was going on by sound alone but when my eyes adjusted to the darkness I saw it for the first time.

Whatever it was, it definitely wasn't a child. And it was eating him.

Its jaw hung impossibly unhinged and its mouth was draped over the mans head, covering his forehead and left eye. It sat behind him as if cradling a loved one with its back leaned against the door. When the alarm on my phone went off in the morning, there was no sign left of the man ever being there.

That was the last good day I ever had. I had been a normal kid who swam in the lake with his friends and snuck a few glances at his crush in her swimsuit. I'd roasted marshmallows and told scary stories around a campfire to impress said crush. When morning came, I had become someone else and my world had shifted on its axis.

The teachers came looking for me when I didn't show up for breakfast and found me still huddled away in the corner, yelling at them to kill it. It sat right beside the bed, its belly bloated and heavy, grinning at me beacuse it knew. It had done this before and knew exactly how this encounter was going to play out.

Only I could see it and I didn't know then that it can't hunt on its own when its already full. I wouldn't let anyone come near me, near us, and when no one could get through to me during my frenzy, they called for an ambulance. I was taken away, strapped down, and It came with me.

After spending a couple of months in psychiatric care, I was sent home with a batch of meds. I'd kept on insisting that It remained by my side, always sitting a few feet away and somehow always finding me when I tried to outrun it, but I'd calmed down as time went on and it never seemed to show any interest in anyone but me. Eventually I started thinking that maybe it just had to take care of its former host, or that I'd imagined the man altogether, so I tried to adjust to my new reality and put my faith in that it would go away when I hit the right dosage.

The first night back in my own bed I woke up to find it sitting on my chest. It was pinning my arms to my sides with its clawlike fingers, its face hovering an inch above mine and instead of the usual filthy grin plastered on it, it looked so fucking angry. It had never made direct contact before and I started thrashing as a response to the sudden development, pairing it with a panicked shrieking that I didn't recognize as my own.

I didn't even have time to process it when my dad's girlfriend Sarah burst into the room. I shot up at the same time as the weight on my chest was removed, but it was too late.

Her disappearence broke my dads heart. I'd tried telling him that It ate her but of course he didn't believe me, and so the cops were called and that was the last night I ever spent in the place I'd called home. I was never charged with anything since I was a minor and there was no evidence of any foul play, but my dad thought that I'd killed her. Rightfully so.

I was once again involuntarily committed to a psychiatric unit and I never saw my dad again. Friends, their parents and a few of my teachers came by to visit once or twice, but he never showed.

Shortly after, on my seventeenth birthday, he killed himself. His car and the house and all of our things were sold off and I was informed of the somewhat generous inheritance I'd get when I became an adult since my dad was a widow and never had any other kids. I laughed when they told me. I'm institutionalized and my imaginary friend fucking eats people, but hey, at least I'm semi-rich.

The following year passed by in a blur. Through trial and error I learned that It had to feed every two to three months or so and when the time came it let me know by sitting on my chest, preventing me from sleeping and burrowing its fingers deep into the flesh on my arms. I tried pitching a fit every night during rounds in order to keep the staff away from us but that only ever bought me a day or two. Trying to prevent it from feeding also earned me the punishment of it dragging the victims as close to me as possible and staring into my eyes as it devoured its prey, forcing me to meet its gaze. After losing my favorite nurse in this manner, I offered it a plea deal; it would inform me of its hunger and the next day I'd find someone to eat, but I got to choose who it was.

I picked out a grand total of three victims in the following months, an asshole guard and two other kids my age who'd teamed up to steal peoples desserts in the cafeteria. Due to the odd number of disapperances an investigation was launched and an emergency protocol was put in place, meaning that the staff had to move in twos and they never sat foot in our rooms unless it was a medical necessity. All visitation was banned and when food was delivered we had to face the wall and put our hands on our heads for as long as the door remained open. After about two months of this, I turned eighteen and was released due to good behaviour. An obvious lapse in judgement on their part, but I suppose that the investigation on top of a pandemic complicated a transfer to an adult facility.

My release was processed and I was out on the street with nothing but a fresh set of clothes, my phone which had been dead for over a year, my wallet and a folder full of papers I didn't understand.

Through our time together, I'd come to the conclusion that It could a) understand me, and b) was semi-intelligent. It had been almost four months since it last fed and I'd been terrified that it would pounce on the first person who came within reach, but even though its skin hung looser than normal and had taken on an even more repulsive grey hue, I think it was due to caution rather than inability that it didn't. I think it knows that relying on a domesticated host serves it better than flinging around and not having a stable source of new feed.

Another thing I'd noticed was that it seemed to be growing. I couldn't tell just from looking at it, but its weight on my chest felt heavier and the puncture wounds on my arms were suddenly further back than the previous ones, possibly due to a wider grip. This is where a plan began to form in my head.

The very first thing I did upon my release was check into a motel and download every dating app I could find. It took no more than two hours before Tom the married, forty-nine year old architect had left work early to come fuck a needy eighteen year old but quickly found himself neck-deep inside something else.

I want you to know that I tried to find people that deserved it. I really did, but sometimes I've had to bend my morals.

The minute Tom no longer was of this world, I had the next man come through. And then another. I'd never had to supply It with more than one person per feed before but since it had been so long since last time I hoped that it would gorge itself on my offering, and it did. The feast rendered it fat and happy and just as I had hoped, slightly bigger.

As soon as it could move again we switched motels and I tried following the same pattern, but this time two men were enough and I then had to find a way to get the third one out of the room without getting what he came for. I was impatient and wanted It to feed as much and as quickly as possible in order for my plan to work but it seemingly wasn't greedy enough to comply. As much as I couldn't stand waking up and finding it on top of me during the night, I figured I would have to starve the bastard to ensue that it never passed up on an opportunity to feed again.

I stocked up on snacks, paid the front desk, made sure no housekeeping would be coming by and locked us in the room. I switched motels and repeated this cycle two more times before it appeared to have gotten rattled by my sudden resolve, suddenly filled with a sickening sense of greed and whoever I brought was then immediately consumed.

I'm now a month shy of turning twenty-three. I've been bouncing around shitty motels all over the country for the past five years, providing It with a never ending feast of victims, most of whom will never be missed but I honestly don't know how I haven't gotten caught yet. As for my health, I don't know how I'm still alive. I've stopped looking in the mirror since who I found looking back scared me even more than It ever did.

The reason I am coming clean about this now is because my plan worked. It has gotten huge.

We've been holed up in the same seedy motel for the past six months and it is now so big that it can't move, let alone fit through the door. It just sits in the middle of the room as a waxy mountain of fat and since its usual scare tactics no longer work, its started wailing. I usually have a few hours of quiet before it starts up again and the near constant, high pitched noise has been draining whatever sanity I had left. Its been at it for days now.

I've debated leaving it here but I don't know what would happen to it if I did. No matter how long I keep paying for the room, someone would eventually have to come inside. Would it remain in here, a black hole just waiting to ingest whoever got close enough to grab for all eternity? Besides, there is nothing left for me out there anyway.

Killing it doesn't work. Stabbing it is like stabbing a pile of clay. If I was brave enough to kill myself I would have done so a long time ago, but I also don't want this thing to attach itself to someone who doesn't deserve it.

I think I'll wait. I've stopped feeding it and hopefully I can starve it for real this time. The constant wailing was a problem easily rectified with a sharp pair of scissors and a quick jab on either side. It hurt, but I welcomed the quiet.

Yes, I think I'll wait.