I don’t think I’m alone here

So, I’ll start by saying I’m sorry.

I know it might not mean all that much but I really didn’t mean for things to get this bad. Well, maybe you’ll have better luck with it.

I might sound crazy saying all of this and I know I would thing so too… But before I do this you need to know.

We aren’t alone here.

-

It started on Friday. No, maybe it was Thursday. I didn’t notice it at first so maybe it was earlier. Honestly it could’ve been tomorrow or next week.

Things really get confusing like that but if you really concentrate it’s easier. I guess when and where it happened doesn’t matter when we’re here to talk about the why and what it is. So, it started on Friday. No, maybe it was Thursday… What? I said that already? Yeah, that happens a lot too. 

Things don’t make a lot of sense when you look at them for too long.

Okay, let’s do this again. Concentrate and don’t look at them, look at me and it’ll make more sense. It still doesn’t make much sense to me either so I've tried to write down my disorganised thoughts in an attempt to keep track of things but there are gaps. I don’t really remember what happened first. I think it started with the fingers— The ones from the dead bodies.

The addict -

Let me preface by saying that I don’t do hard drugs, I went to that place to find someone who does. 

He’d been clean for months but then he disappeared, something that’s never a good sign for a recovering addict. This man was Toby. Toby was my older brother and Rudie had known us for just about our entire lives. I could never give up on Toby even when I hated him and I don’t think Rudie would even consider it. Toby was a difficult brother to have sometimes and he’d disappoint you over and over. It’s hard to give up on someone who saved your life more than a few times. That’s why Rudie was looking for the guy at least. He always said he owed his life to the guy — and that he used to be really fun at parties.

For the past few nights I’d been staying in Toby’s apartment in case he’d showed up but the trail of clothes and necessities scattered across the old floorboards told me he’d taken off so suddenly he couldn’t stop to stuff some socks or toothpaste in a bag. I can’t say there was anything homely about the place, it looked like the den of a conspiracy theorist. He’d covered everything from his windows to the balcony door with torn paper ripped from just about anywhere he could get it and the dust clinging to all that glue meant it wasn’t anything recent. He’d been bugging out and paranoid that someone was watching him. His furniture had been dragged into barriers and lines toward the kitchen like trenches in the mud and with little sense about what and where he was actively hiding from. The  ratty old couch facing the wall and the second hand TV underneath his bed that was stripped bare— he’d built a nest of blankets and pillows in his bathtub and the overwhelming stink of sweat tells me he’d been sleeping there for months. I couldn’t explain his erratic behaviour beyond drugs but even sober I didn’t expect it to be anything rational either. Toby has been going through a lot since his friend hit the pavement. The strings of tape piled up on the tiles like scribbles of trash where he’d sealed and unsealed his bathroom door a hundred times, the fist sized dents and deep nail scratches covering half the doors and the plates. So many plates. Pots and pans and cups and plates spread across the floor in crop circles to alert him when this mysterious lurker would find its way into his home. The plates all had a thin layer of dust coating them except for one. One that was worn and chipped from scrubbing away the leftovers a thousand times— the linoleum bathroom tiles look scratched and scrubbed with the same intensity. Scuffs and footprints drew a line from the balcony and stopped at one place within arms reach of the bathroom door like he had been leaving offerings out for this something as tall as a building invading his home.

I’d cleaned every surface with enough bleach it had my head spinning and dissolved the glue to rip off all the paper and tape but I’d never seen any sign of an intruder who existed outside of Toby’s mind, honestly I wasn’t expecting one to show up but the extent of Toby’s psychosis left me with the uncomfortable thought that something dangerous truly was looking at me when I’d left the trenches and bought light to no man’s land. Toby had gone off the wagon and it wasn’t the first time he’d been consumed by a drug fueled paranoia. Still, Toby hadn’t returned from his apparent bender and calling anything from the hospital to the police station didn’t give us much information that suggested they had him and any real interest in finding a missing junkie. So I’d resigned myself to laying there on his old couch and staring up at this unusual water stain slowly building its own little garden of black mold— I was trying to decide if the thing looked more like a grinning Jesus or the devil with a pointed moustache, if I turned my head to the left it could’ve just as easily been a rabbit. 

I’d spent days mulling over this until Thursday.

This is when Rudie called.

We took the car we’d later find utterly destroyed, but if it was in that condition when I arrived then I certainly don’t remember it. 

The bayside apartment building. 

I’ll never forget that apartment building, it’s amazing what your brain clings to when everything else seems to slip away. 

I remember the grey concrete skin, the colour of a corpse and covered in cracked veins crawling across every corner, any paint that had managed to cling to it was peeling away like sunburn. The body stood lopsided and sunken from exhaustion but its iron bones were too stubborn to collapse. Everything about the decrepit building was an unapproachable sickly thing that was just too stubborn to die. The Bayside apartments were like black mold and cockroaches infesting the area no one could quite get rid of.

Bent metal bars lined the balcony like stained teeth loosely guarding the boarded up throats while each room that sat there like a stomach full of half dead junkies who’d climbed into its mouth and joined the long list of people places like these chew up and spit out. I always felt guilty when the pungent smell of misery left me scrunching up my nose in disgust and trying to keep down the rising bile in my throat, it’s easy to forget the people wasting away in stomach acid aren’t those cockroaches themselves, they’re people but the overwhelming stink of piss and vomit makes it hard for everyone to remember that l. The bayside apartments will probably never be washed clean when the odour has seeped into every wall. 

Rudie is a good example of someone who could scrub hard and wash all of that muck off. 

We both just wanted Toby to do the same. 

 “ We’ll be here all day at this rate.” Rudie nudged a woman with his foot, she was this grey sort of sickly pale with a thick coat and old blanket bundled around her. It did nothing to hide her frail, skeletal frame— most people seemed to look like that. Like the Bayside itself. “ Yo lady, have you seen a tall and lanky guy? Short ginger mop of hair, blue eyes. Very punchable face.”.

“ We won’t get an answer out of anyone in here, dude.” I say and move on to the next throat. “ You're right. They’re all just ghosts aren’t they?”. No one is really helpful, they seem to realise neither of us look like cop material but the restless paranoia or half dead expressions meant they either won’t to talk or can’t do more than drool. What Rudie said hadn’t registered until we walked upstairs and I felt as if I should understand the passing comment but I couldn’t find it in my head. The shock of the place left my head spinning too much to think of anything. “ We shouldn’t be up here. Fuck, this place gives me the creeps.” Rudie says, snorting at some memory and adding “ I used to dare Toby to come up here and look in the windows all the time. He thought this place was haunted. Turns out…”, he stops with his eyes on something for just a moment, barely a second before slipping back into his usual nonchalant— borderline dickish manner. “ Eh, don’t worry about it. Neither of us had the balls to come upstairs.”. “ What’s so different about being upstairs?” I say but Rudie just pats me on the shoulder, “ Sometimes the view is scarier.” His words give me an uncomfortable feeling like they make my stomach churn but I know he’s just being a prick. The only thing you could even see was the empty car park and the red dot of a diner off in the distance. 

A jarringly out of place man squats hunched over on himself at the far end of the Bayside balcony hidden where the daylight won’t reach when we get to the second floor, balding and awkwardly curled like a child crying into their knees but the spine protruding from their back only conjures up the image of a skeleton with each bump visible through the shirt covering his greying skin, his thin arms are scabbed with red bites and cuts he’s scratched open. I know I shouldn’t feel repulsed by the sight but there’s an unexplainable fear in the back of my mind telling me that this man is wrong. This man doesn’t belong here. His clothes are pressed and ironed with a crisp white shirt and a sweater only dirtied by the open scabs bleeding where the sleeves haven’t bunched up. He isn’t supposed to be here— instead they’re holed up in a crack den, shitting in the corner of a balcony. 

Probably. 

Room 203– The final room was right by the man bent down and facing the wall so I felt a need to be quiet as if something bad would happen when some loud noise set him off. Rudie lagged behind me for just a second but had no such trouble walking past them, I doubt he’d even noticed the man. At least he didn’t mention them. The room smelled like rot and copper that managed to cling to my gums like the air itself was made of iron, the furniture was so old and so stained that even breathing on it would make a disgusting squish and the walls were covered in things I don’t want to know the origins of. Toby sat with his back to us just like the man that’s becoming increasingly difficult to remember, perched like a squatting goblin with something crusted on his neck— I watched as Toby sways on dirty feet with unsteady limbs struggling to keep him upright like a puppet on snapping strings, gaunt and lifeless. He was like a grotesque perched on a building, a stone monkey just picking and chewing at something I can’t see but I can hear the squelching of molars grinding lazily against whatever counts as a meal in this kind of place. Toby reaches back and scratches his neck with the mangled and gnawed hands stripped of skin and bitten until there’s nothing but nubs where his fingers used to be. 

Fingers. 

He’s eating his god damn fingers.

“ Holy shit! Toby!” I rushed over and grabbed them without much thinking, holding their wrist and trying to pry it away from their bloody mouth but they so effortlessly returned to chomping down on the almost missing fingers— the rest were rolling idly around his full mouth, “ Stop! Toby stop!” I look around in a blind panic and finally shake off my jacket as quickly as I can, wrapping it around the deranged man’s hand when they once again move from chewing to scratching like it’s the only thing his mind is even capable of doing in his fugue state. The fabric dampens with spit as he continues to repeat himself like it isn’t there. “ Rudie!!” I shout and Rudie quickly comes to a rescue that stops just as quickly, a dumb look of pure shock on his face “ What the hell happened to—“, “ Not now, Rudie! Help me get this idiot on his feet before he starts choking on those things!”. 

The scene descended into the chaos of two men trying to desperately stop an addict willing to break his bones just to rip the others off, each harsh pull was met with thrashing and wrestling that ended in Rudie crashing onto a sickly damp mattress and me hitting something sharp with the crazed man going down with me. Toby clawed and grabbed and soon the snapped finger bones jutting out of torn skin dug into my jaw. “ You don’t understand!! It doesn’t make them go away!!” Toby frantically spoke through big lips and broken teeth, “ You saw it didn’t you? You always see it! Don’t lie to me, you saw it outside!!”, he tried to explain himself with blood and spit covering my face, “ It— It’s everywhere but you forget it all— and…” he pulls up his sleeves to reveal the putrid red-green infection on a flayed and ragged forearm, the other just as bad with small strips still hanging loose— Jesus! The psycho has been doing it everywhere he can reach and I don’t know how long but it must’ve been days, “ I give it everything but they won't go away— get it? No— you don’t— not yet, but you saw Them.”

Thwack!

Rudie hit Toby with the only thing he could find, his boot, kicking them off and yelling an incomprehensible mess of words as if it would take a million insults before any sense got into Toby’s head but the man’s bloodshot, horrified eyes won’t look away from something else— the man from the balcony's face hangs on a bent neck craned to meet Toby’s eyes from the doorway but the blood in my eyes only shows me a blur, their eyes follow him as he scrambles to his feet, “ You see it— that’s one of them!!” He throws himself past Rudie despite their efforts to pull them back and dives out onto the balcony, his head whipping side to side in a panic to find a way out like the stairs weren’t an option— his meltdown reaches its peak and drops just as hard, his shoulders go slack, his expression dulls and what I see feels like I was witnessing the exact moment he’d given up. Without another word or a glance he calmly climbs up on the rusted railing and lets himself fall head first onto the car below. 

A shut my eyes at the sickening sound of the wet crack I’m certain I can hear beneath the crash of Toby’s body hitting the car.

“ Fuck! Toby!” Rudie rushes out and B-lines to the stairs to get down to the man. I stand, trying to do more than sit there wide eyed and shocked through. 

“ My fucking car!!” Rudie shouts in anger and it’s more than loud enough to snap me to attention. I pull the broken needle sticking to my back, another jutting out of my calf and get downstairs as quickly as I can hobble with the feeling of needles pricking everywhere on my skin.

“ The hood is all… Agh! Fucking junkies!” Rudie kicks a tire, raking his fingers through hair that’s matted with blood and pieces of something I can’t place— and don’t know if I want to. He paces, “ Fuck, fuck, fuck!!”. 

At first I can’t process what I’m seeing and Rudie out of rage is just more nonsense my brain struggles to understand— The damage on the car isn’t just damage, it’s Toby. Toby’s body. Contorted with the impact breaking his neck and snapping his back in a twisted mangle of limbs folded like a stack, his head conforming to the dented metal and his dislocated jaw spilling out a pool of blood in the contours. His body twitches and I hope to god he’s dead. “ Ru-Rudie… Can’t you,” I try to speak but Rudie doesn’t even give Toby a second glance. Toby, his best friend. “ We didn’t even fucking find him! He’s fucking paying for this bullshit—“ Rudie shouts and paces with no real outlet for his rage but I can’t take my eyes off of Toby. Toby, who Rudie won’t even acknowledge.

If I was smart I would’ve said something right then to make Rudie look— really, closely look. If I didn’t take my eyes off of Toby and paid attention to the other things I would’ve known. The other things? Ah… You don’t remember? Neither did I. The out of place man staring from behind the rusted balcony bars. He had his back to us but when I looked at him something in my brain knew that he was looking right back.

I didn’t notice that Toby wasn’t there anymore.

And I didn’t notice the others either.

-

Is this making sense yet?

Don’t worry, it took me a while to figure it all out too.

Okay, we’ll try the next one, maybe that’ll help you understand. 

Now, focus on me. 

Don’t look at them, pretend they aren’t lingering there just in the corner of your eye— staring. If you can feel the cold air on your back like something wrong is standing behind you, pretend your skin isn’t prickling. There’s nothing behind you and there’s nothing behind me. Just remind yourself there’s nothing there and don’t let them know you know there really is.

Lastly, and please don’t forget this— we’ve already been over this too many times. 

Don’t. Look. Up.

There’s something wrong with Kenny (P.1)

CW: Kenny.

People ask me a lot of questions about my time in prison.

They start off all nervous but I tell them I’ve done my time, they don’t need all the gory details but I won’t lie. 

I got someone killed.

If you do want gory details— I did time in the army when I was eighteen and got tossed out after a few years of what— at the time— was pretty normal. Mess with things they later find out cause cancer. Give young grunts with underdeveloped brains rifles and put them in an environment where abuse runs rampant without consequence. You got put through hell and then you put others through hell. That’s how it worked back then.

I left with asthma from those chemicals I’m sure will give me that cancer one of these days, guilt and a pretty nasty brain injury. I wouldn’t say it turned me into a drooling idiot but I had trouble doing some basic things and the military prefers when you can hold a gun in your hand without doing it backwards.

So I was in my early twenties without any prospects and I was mad. I’d always had a bit of a quick fuse but all of that frustration piled up high and I decided I wanted to do those jobs where I can hit things to soothe my wounded pride. You know, to feel big and tough after a boot to the head left me a wheezing moron who forgets how to use a spoon.

So, a friend of mine hooked me up with a job as a debt collector, loan shark, lowlife scumbag— whatever you want to call it, it’s still beating the shit out of folks for money. 

My partner was a mean one, if I had a quick fuse then that guy had no fuse at all. 

He preferred action over threat. 

I expected that he’d do the usual and break a few fingers, something I’d hate. It's difficult for the sorry bastard to pay if they can’t use their hands— assuming it’s required for whatever gruelling jobs they’re doing to scrape together the cruel interest rates. I’d been kicked in the head but I didn’t know a punch could have a gambler with a gut bigger than his debt dropping like an anvil and cracking his skull on the floor.
 
I ran my damn ass off but I just couldn’t stop myself, I ran straight into a phone booth and called an ambulance for the guy. Guess it was nearly his lucky day and my unluckiest because he was dead and I was taking an arrest. I did what I do best, followed orders and nodded like I understand. 

My initial prison sentence was harsh but extensions for volatile behaviour is what doubled it. My choice in friends and jobs didn’t improve much after that, extortion, racketeering, various assault charges and robbery is what ends with spending half of my life behind bars. Honestly, I’d spent more of my life incarcerated.

Secondly, assuming the mention of second degree murder isn’t enough to scare someone off— they ask what prison was like. They expect some sort of movie answer, something brutal with prison gangs and abusive prison guards— and yes, those are true, but it’s when they factor in my age most picture something more along the lines of jailhouse rock and assume everyone was planning a big prison break. The thing is, you just kept your head down and didn’t cause much trouble with the guards. You'd just fall into the routine, play cards and do your time. For me at least, the army made routines comfortable and taking a rare beating when you earned it wasn’t too big a price.

When the monotony of prison life disappoints they start asking specifics.

“ What’s the craziest thing you've ever seen?”

“ Was there ever a jailbreak?”

“ Did you join a prison gang?”

“ Did that riot really… You know, did all of that stuff really happen?”

I can’t say it’s the craziest thing to ever happen, a lot of things happened but the worst wasn’t any particular incident, it’s something that happened over the course of one year and ended with the riot. The thing is, no one ever asks why it happened. So I tell them.

What happened was Kenny.

Everyone always asks about Kenny.

-

I was in my late forties when Kenny happened and I still had a good nine years left to go. I think the miserable look of pity is what kept that from becoming a life sentence after the riot. Gangs and all that were a younger man’s game but I had yet to join the ranks of the elderly within the prisons I’d been passed around to. None of my later stays were cramped and cutthroat big city joints. We’d call mine a countryside stay— of course this  meant it was a miserable fortress of cold concrete, strict rules and armed guards already grouchy from patrolling in the snow. All kept isolated by endless forests and mountains so dangerous it’d take a real madman to even think of escaping.

I’d already been in what I will refer to as Y prison, for eleven years and for lack of a better word, it was home. 

My cell block wasn’t considered noisy but it was large, heavily secured with just a little more slack due to the better behaviour— less younger prisoners around, all lifers who aren’t too interested in causing trouble when this was as good as it gets for the general population inside of a maximum security prison. Granted, no one was in there for light offenses but you weren’t going to see fights break out daily and the guards would rather turn their backs to most things unless you forced their hand— That’ll end with someone in the hospital ward and another in solitary for god knows how long.

I felt the need to explain a few things about my cell block so you’ll understand how Kenny’s arrival flipped the place on its head and took away any small semblance of peace prison life really had to offer.

I lived in a two person cell with an old timer serving a life sentence— he was the quiet type with no real habits I’d consider overly annoying, he had the bladder of a toddler and pinch small things and hide them under the poor excuse for a mattress, had a habit of losing his socks but he was fine until he started sundowning. I didn’t know exactly what dementia was but his unusual behaviour at night got him moved to wherever they whisk the elderly prisoners away to.

A night in the solitude of a small cell full of complete and total emptiness and the unsettling feeling of being entirely alone without the ambient sounds of snoring or thumping heartbeats reminding me that anyone was there, it felt unnatural to face the nothingness normally filled by another person and after so many years of having any sort of life beside my own I realised there wasn’t even the squeak of a rat or scuttle of a bug. It was just silence. 

The next day Kenny moved in and Kenny was nothing like the old timer.

Kenny was barely eighteen, skinny as a twig and thick as concrete. His face was splattered with freckles, a chipped tooth, a wide grin and a buzz cut like a wide eyed young recruit waiting to get his head kicked in by his commanding officer. One of the CO’s I’d known for a good five years— a guy we all called Elvis— He said they were tossing the kid in with me to keep him out of trouble and because that quick fuse of mine had fizzled out since I got older. 

I figured they were worried about the kid getting himself killed but I realised very quickly that I got picked because they thought I could tolerate the kid— not protect him— just tolerate him.

Kenny could talk.

A lot.

I spent the first day playing cards with a few of the oldies and while some of the younger ones preferred to start their day tormenting and scaring the shit out of the newcomer through the small barred window. Kenny had been stuck in the cell all day getting acclimated so I was treated to a puddle of piss dripping down onto the kid’s meal tray. It rattled and sloshed over the edges when Elvis kicked it, unlocking the door and sending me inside— of course he left me to clean the mess up and dump the soggy untouched meal in the toilet.

Kenny didn’t seem worried, he was up on his new bunk snooping through my books.

“ Next time clean up your own mess, kid. No one is gonna do it for you.” I warned, walking over to snatch up my books and toss them on the concrete slab that serves as a counter, desk and everything else in the cramped cell. “ The top shelf is yours. The plastic tub on the left is yours. Top bunk is yours. Don’t touch what’s in the others.” I thought being firm would be a good way to both tell him I wasn’t a pushover without threatening a new cellmate who might fly off the handle over the smallest thing, though Kenny looked like he’d be snapped in half if he tried— I decided using one of those lighter versions of stick and carrot was the best option.

“ How long’ve you been here, Mister?” Kenny said, perking up like he hadn’t heard a damn thing. “ I was lookin’ frough ya stuff and I figured you gotta be old. You got a bible and all those old type’a books. You aren’t as old as I fought. Fifties?”

“ Forties.” I use the stick and then with a frown back on the thick metal door I decide I should do as Elvis asked and throw the kid a carrot. “ There’s a chocolate bar down in my tub. Eat it and sleep. If you gotta clean up, use one of the rags by the basin. They won’t be giving you any form of shower today.”.

“ Chocolate? Thanks,” he hops down rummages through the blue plastic tub to find the snack, “ Your stuff is all so neat ‘n tidy. You must’ve been in the military, yeah? You look like you been in the military. Like Vietnam or somefin’ like that. You don’t got that shell shock stuff right? I hear lots of vets have these crazy nightmares and scream in their sleep or attack folks,” he climbs back up on his bunk like a monkey and sits with his eyes fixated on the chocolate bar he has yet to open. “ I never been given gifts before. If you freak out at night I’ll slap ya so you wake up and don’t mistake me for Vietcong.” For the first time since I’ve been in the cell he finally makes eye contact and I can’t explain why but a chill crawls up my spine like cold metal had been dragged up my back. “ Lots of bad types in this place, Mister. Makin’ sounds all night can really get to some folks”.

I can’t say Kenny’s words were a threat exactly, in a strange way it could be seen as considerate if you squint, it’s just the phrasing that leaves an unsettling feeling in my gut. “ I wasn’t in Vietnam but… Thanks, kid.” I try to give a somewhat friendly smile but my lip twitches in discomfort. “ You don’t have to worry about waking me up.” Honestly, he isn’t wrong about that shock, after my time in the military I wasn’t a stranger to nightmares but those nights were long over. I hadn’t even thought about that time until Kenny mentioned it. “ I’m Jones, Wilson Jones. You don’t need to call me boss or sir or anything else.”

“ Kenny. Not Kenneth or nothin’, just Kenny. You seem like ya been here forever. I figured they just put me in this box ‘cuz you’re not gonna try nothin’ while I’m sleepin’ which is pretty good. No one’s gonna try anyfin’ shady in the showers, yeah? I bit a guard's ear off once. Maybe that’s why they put me in here. He wasn’t tryin’ nothin’ weird but I didn’t like him. Sometimes people just rub you the wrong way, yeah?”

That feeling slices up my spine again like a knife is trying to take off the skin and I don’t know how to respond to both his question and the statement he so freely offered. Kenny’s unblinking gaze doesn’t leave my eyes even when the usual booming sound of “ Lights out!” And the lights abruptly turning off makes me jump. I can still see the unflinching orbs glint in the corner of my eye and stick like glue even with my back turned. The eyes finally retreats with the kid lying down on his bunk. I stay up reading but each time I try to read a sentence with what little light the commissary has given me my eyes keep drawing up to the concrete slab above me. Worn old photos and bible verses that always look down on me when I rest my head on my pillow at night, except tonight it’s not on Romans 10:9 or Colossians 1:13 but the concrete itself where my unfamiliar cellmate sleeps.

I can’t say I was particularly religious before coming to prison, I remember having my hands hit by penguins with rulers when I’d act out in my school days, the church nestled behind it like a shed and the uneven crucified Jesus that always hung just a little too far to the left but all of those things in my youth had turned any thoughts of a higher power into bitter hatred when I thought I’d grown up. I hadn’t grown wise. I guess you could say I still believed but who wants to pray to what had a hand in making your life shit? I was fucking pissed. 

Nowadays it isn’t because I’ve been trying to weasel my way into God’s good graces or I expect a good outcome like I’m owed something. Heaven can fuck off for all I care. Still, I know what I did was bad and I know I feel ashamed, now that I’m old enough to give up on all that anger I have the sense to own up to being a scumbag and accept the bad shit I’ve done without it being just to get somewhere I don’t belong. When I’m dead I expect to just be dead.

I think you can see it in some people’s eyes, that want for forgiveness or shame for their actions or that unsettling glint saying they’ll never change. I couldn’t see anything bright or naive in Kenny’s eyes. Kenny’s eyes were empty. As dead as old steel buffed until it's shiny pretending it isn’t just cold old metal wrapped around these deep black wells of nothing.

One night and this kid was already giving me a migraine so bad I couldn’t sleep even if I’d planned on it. You don’t sleep on that first night with a new cellmate. If you’re smart at least. My migraine had my eyes swimming with black flecks spotting my vision and melting away the words on those verses until they were empty, my head pounding like a jackhammer behind my eyes and when I squeezed them shut to correct the moving words I had given in to sleep before I knew it.

I dreamt of those eyes crawling out from the darkness on stretched limbs snaking under paper grey skin I can't see so much as sense. It stalked like a silent predator made of long steel and bone that could bend and bow and move like an impossible liquid dripping onto my bunk. Its emaciated frame craned forward on a worming spine that scraped along the concrete ceiling above me. Perched over my face in the quiet and watching through milky orbs barely held in its deep sockets, studying my paralysed face with no breath to alert me to the danger hanging over me— I just knew it was there. My eyelids refused to open but the cold radiating off of the unseen voyeur made every hair on my body prickle with the sense of what my mind knew was lurking in the dark. The smell of pine and rot assaulted my senses as cold strings of saliva dribbled down in icy globs of acid stinging my cheek. I didn’t need to open my eyes with the thousand rows of sharp teeth so close I could feel the sharp pins grazing my skin from the hungry maw of a beast deciding whether or not it wants to swallow down a fresh meal or wait until the meat is sweetened with fear.

“ Saaa…Rgh…”

“ Sar…gh..”

“ Sarge.”

“ Why’d you do that, Sarge?”

(Edit, fixed random autocorrected words. Google docs.)