Behind Closed Eyes

The soft blue light blinks, pulling shadows from the darkness for a brief moment before returning them to the black mass of night. I close my eyes. Visions of the shadows creeping closer fill my mind until the effort to hold my eyelids in place proves too great, and I open them as the dehumidifier light blinks again. The room is unmoving, unchanged.

A shelf lines the wall across from me, books stacked in haphazard piles across it. To my right two doors stand in opposition. One leads to a hallway with a bathroom and the stairs to the first floor. I peeked through the second earlier, before the pragmatism of day had faded completely. It leads deeper into the basement, to dusty shelves of junk and a collection of weights around a bench press lurking in the gloom. My room is the only oasis in this concrete box.

I will the languorous prelude to sleep to wrap me in its blissful embrace, but it remains steadfast in its refusal of my advances. Instead, my focus is infected by a mild urge to pee. The thought of slipping from beneath the warm covers into the dark is enough for me to resist for a time, but soon the slight pressure in my bladder is all I can think about, and I know sleep will remain elusive until it's gone.

Consigned, I pull the covers back and swing my legs onto the floor, hopping forward quickly to the hallway door as my heart skips a beat. I flick on the light and spin, ready to face whatever might be lunging towards me, but there is nothing. 

I eye the space beneath the bed as I pull on the door. It doesn’t open. I didn’t lock it, did I? I twist the lock and sure enough I feel the deadbolt slide into place. I re-unlock the door and pull again. It doesn’t budge. “What the fuck, what the fuck,” I mutter, surveying the room once again. I take a deep breath and yank on the door as hard as I can. With a screech it pulls free from the frame. I sigh in relief. “Hoookay.”

The concrete floor of the narrow hallway is cool beneath my feet. I pass the steep staircase and think of the nice, normal floor above where Sarah sleeps in her nice, air conditioned room. I could have slept on the couch, I could still try to sleep on the couch, but I know I wouldn't be able to sleep a wink in the heat. It might be a little unsettling, but at least the basement isn't eighty degrees. 

The bathroom light flickers for a moment before righting itself. Jesus. A mix of fresh spiderwebs and decrepit cobwebs alternate along the corners of the floor and ceiling, but at least I don't see any spiders. The toilet is immediately inside the door with the sink to its left. A mirror sits propped against the far wall, providing a view of my legs and the gap beneath the door. Perfect, if someone walks by I can give myself a heart attack. 

As I lift the toilet seat I catch movement out of the corner of my eye and look back to the mirror. Its reflection reveals little of what may be outside the door, and nothing that moves. Then I spot a spider the size of my thumbnail skittering across the floor beside the mirror, making its way home to one of the intact spider webs. I keep an eye on it as I relieve myself.

I wash my hands and return to my room. The door is not nearly as resistant to being closed as it was to being opened. I hesitate with my hand on the doorknob, and lock it. Trying not to dwell on how ridiculous I’m being, I stride across the room to the second door and lock that one too. I flick off the light and dash to the bed, half expecting something to grab hold of my leg as I leap onto it.

Beneath the covers once more, with the nagging urge to urinate finally quenched, I close my eyes again and try not to beg too hard for sleep to come. The harder I chase, the faster it runs.

It's odd that I feel safer beneath the covers than I did standing in the room, as if they offer some sort of magical protection. I thought I'd outgrown that. I also thought I'd outgrown freaking myself out about monsters in the dark.

Of course, I know there isn’t actually anything down here with me. It's just the basement of Sarah's roommate's boyfriend’s apartment. Maybe a little bizarre, but maybe he's a bizarre guy. Or he doesn't spend enough time down here to justify turning it into a pleasant space to be. I wonder if Sarah has even stepped foot down here. Tomorrow I can tell her all about it, and how it would make the perfect set for a horror film.

Finally, my thoughts begin to drift. My leg succumbs to a hypnic jerk and I do my best not to let it veer me off the path I've finally stumbled upon. But the fuzzy warmth has taken hold, and I let it whisk me away from the uneasy space and the nightmares my imagination conjured to fill it.

I awake disoriented, my senses tangled as they attempt to decipher what's happening. It’s still dark, apart from the dehumidifier’s blinking light, and a hand covers my mouth. For a brief moment, I think it must be Sarah, playing a joke. But Sarah isn’t beside me. There is only a long, thin, hairless arm that disappears beneath the bed. I twist my head to pull away and the hand shoves it back down with unbelievable strength, the clammy palm pushing my lips into my teeth. I scream, but the muffled sound only serves to catalyze the panic that grips me. 

I try to pull my own arms from beneath the covers to push the hand away, but the sheets tighten against me, trapping me against the mattress. They ease at the bottom, cool air running over my feet, followed by a warm breath. A slimy tongue licks the underside of my right foot, sending a tidal wave of nausea up my body. I twist my foot back and forth, trying to escape it, but the tongue matches my every move, tracing a lazy line up and down my sole. I try to thrash, to scream again, to do anything, but it’s no use, I am immobilized by the cotton prison.

A second hand snakes into the air above me, serpentine. Dirt fills the cracked fingernails. It reaches lower and pinches my nose closed just as something horrible and hot and wet engulfs my foot and I know for certain that I must be asleep, that at any moment I will wake up to sunlight filtering in from the small window that peeks just above the earth. That this cannot possibly be real.

But I can see the window and the murky void beyond it. I can feel the teeth that drag along my skin, and my chest convulse as my body begs for oxygen that will not come. And I can see the shadows that move in the darkness as the soft blue light blinks, blinks, blinks—