Teratophilia (Monsters x reader)

Shadow Monster x Female Reader (Part 1)

After just having moved out of my parents house, I've gotten my first apartment. Besides my aversion to the water-stained ceiling of the bathroom and the inconveniently placed shower window that I have to avoid at a specific angle until I can buy shades, lest I expose my nakedness to all of the street, my scrutiny is extinguished by the affordable price and the grandeur of the nearby restaurant lights spilling its multi-colored splendors into my room in the exclusivity of the evening hours like some auroral phenomenon. It is elegant in all its minimalism. Getting ready for bed, I take up some light reading, feeling like an old person and amused at the thought. "Admirer," I mutter to myself, having come across the word and feeling thoroughly fascinated by its spelling, despite having known how to write it. "Ed-my-er-er," I accentuate. "Is that really how it's spelled?" I ask myself, furrowing my eyebrows and looking at my room light as though it were to answer. "Ed-mirror. Ed-murmur...Huh."

I wake up abruptly in the middle of the night, my shirt sticking to my chest drenched in an uncomfortable cold sweat, to see a tall shadowy figure standing at the foot of my bed, almost undefinable amidst the dark room and remnants of sleep fogging up my already obscured vision. I blink once and it disappears. I close my eyes again, concluding that it must just be sleep paralysis, a deduction all too normal for me on account of my many insomniac portrayals. I lay in exhaustion, willing my body to fall back to sleep much to no avail. When suddenly, I feel a peculiar chill against my exposed leg, like the skin of a spoon pressed to my ankle. It slowly travels farther up, pressure gentle. My heart begins to race in accordance to the familiar ailment of sleep paralysis. I feel the presence of its form taking shape by my side, like a pit in my stomach, blocking out the glare of the streetlight across my eyes. I grit my teeth and swallow nervously. I feel its gaze boring into me, studying me, even with my eyes closed. I take this as an initiative to stop breathing and tense every fiber of my being, willing myself to break down into an inconceivable nothing despite my knowledge of it being a conjuration of my mind. And it does something strange, lifting its makeshift hand to cup it around my face. I suck in a sharp breath through my nose at the cool contact, all too vivid, a long appendage stroking my lower lip in an affectionate manner like nothing I've ever experienced during sleep paralysis. My muscles deflate like the helium sucked out of a balloon and almost instantly, I'm taken by a peaceful sleep.

I wake up after a beautiful 9 hours of blissful sleep, with such unfamiliar sentience and connection with my surroundings as the effects of sleep deprivation are shed. Every night continues like this for a few weeks; the odd enigma of sleep paralysis running its corpselike hands over any exposed flesh, as though enamoured with my skin. Before cupping its slender appendages around my face and lulling me into a sweet nothingness. As nice as it was, finally being able to sleep properly, I couldn't shake an odd sense of trepidation as to why my lifelong issue of sleep paralysis and insomnia suddenly became...sweet, and actually let me sleep following the appearance of this particular shadow hallucination. I wasn't one to indulge in the paranormal, but this situation was too abnormal to pass up any theory and I'll be damned if I'm killed by ghost. At the very least, I'll revert back to my sleepless state newly turned terminally-stupid and hate myself forever for it. I test my theory by filling up on caffeine until every sudden movement causes roasted-bean-flavored stomach acid to come up in protest; hoping to use it as an aid so that if I'm not in sleep paralysis, I'll be able to wake up easier and catch the assumed ghost in the act rather than drool on my pillow as my great defense. 

It's difficult to sleep now with all this caffeine pulsating throughout my body; tossing and turning, the covers feeling itchy against my sweaty skin. I halt mid-turn onto my back, at the familiar yet foreign feeling on my leg. It's softer this time, ghostly in all it's irony. Almost, hesitant. As though testing the waters to see how much it could touch me and still go unnoticed. It runs alongside a short distance of my leg, its airy feel akin to passing through a cumulous cloud. I freeze, horror-stricken and not daring to move a muscle in fear of this seemingly non-threatening action being performed to turn sour. Its tentacle-like shape transforms to grow multiple more interchangeable parts, equal in length and gaseous texture. The newly formed hand, seemingly more confident, trails over to my thigh massaging in a circular motion as though awestruck with fascination. I jerk my hand to the insurmountable nerve buildup from too much caffeine, the action nearly asphyxiating me as I come to the realization that I can move, I wasn't in sleep paralysis. It's real.

I kick my legs hastily, scrambling up and pulling them under my rear as I examine the phantom assailant in a desperate frenzy. A charcoal tendril of shadow is caught stroking my calf. It quickly collapses into a liquid nitrogen state, spilling around me like some bad 'Thriller' parody, and off the bed into nothingness. I hold my breath, dizzy with nerves. As the mist rolls off of my bed, I push forward onto my knees and look over the edge after it, partly wondering if my years of sleep deprivation have finally caused me to be irrevocably clinically insane. I quickly look up, almost missing the solid, shadowy form standing by my door. The street lights spill from the cracks of window shades, casting orange stripes across the black humanoid figure. It seems to startle at being noticed, like a breeze through tree leaves, before shifting as it flows out of sight into nothingness.

I sit for a moment, debating on whether it was safest to stay on the bed or run like hell out of my room. The muffled howling of a dog sounds in response to ambulance sirens that wail in the distance. I settle on jumping off my bed and flicking on the lights, instantly sedated by its safe spotlight. I run my hand through my hair and exhale heavily. My heart still screaming in my ears, I scrounge up my blanket into a tight ball and throw it onto the floor. I curl into a ball against my headboard and watch my quiet room suspiciously from my bare mattress. "I'm going fucking insane," I whisper to myself, tilting my head back and inhaling a deep shaky breath. Even just having seen with my own very-awake eyes, the very-real...thing, I still couldn't believe it. Yet the very unfortunate thought dawned on me that I was either crazy or haunted, no option exactly comforting. The caffeine in my bloodstream diluted now, my eyes begin to strain, fluttering closed then open then closed again, each interval of micro-sleep longer than the last. Before they don't open again and I succumb to exhaustion. Needless to say, I sleep terribly. I wake a few hours later with a crick in my neck, a painful soreness in my shoulder, my eyes feeling puffy and bruised, and an overwhelming feeling of anxiety as remnants of my caffeine rendezvous and my ghost secret-admirer. 

A few days pass with no sign of the monstrous entity and the resumption of my restlessness. After extricating myself from an unfair imputation of malevolence in the monster, I reminded myself that it had been helping me sleep better all this time, and it hadn't enacted any harm on me in the weeks that I've been in this apartment blissfully unbeknownst to its presence. It isn't until later one night when I realized any fear I held for this creature had long dissipated that I decided not to lie like a dead horse beneath it's touch and instead invite it out.