The Sleep Chamber, A Short Story

The whole Story

A shadow crept into the room, faint, barely noticeable at the entrance of the door. The dim lighting of the room hardly made it a challenge for the shadow to creep closer to the boy it now noticed laying on the bed. Slowly crawling, the shadow halted its advance. One of the bears on the bed had shifted, just enough to see the shadow slide under the bed.

My name is Seth and I have a psychological condition that makes me afraid of sleeping called Somniphobia. I usually only get rest when I pass out from sleep deprivation.

I lay awake in my bed, clutching my favorite Teddy bear. My room was decorated with stuffed bears and bookshelves that had all varieties of stories. The door opened and gave me a scare, resulting in myself jumping, and falling off my bed.

"Darling!? Are you all right!?" My mother was at the door.

"Perfectly fine, just a little startled," I groaned, clutching my bruised head.

"Alright, well goodnight darling," she started to walk away.

The door creaked closed.

"Goodnight," I responded back.

Now I lay in the moonlit room, by myself, or so I thought.

"I feel a presence, do you? Young man." ...

"Did you just talk Ben!? You're a stuffed bear! How are you able to talk!?" I soon found myself flinging the bear across my bed, only to find him get up and start walking towards me. He then paused, starting to speak, revealing tiny, razor sharp, pearly white teeth.

"Well, that was uncalled for, but also expected. Now, I am here to inform you that we are in for a rough night. Fifteen of my kind have taken possession of your stuffed bears' bodies in hopes of feeding off the pain of other ghouls, or as you refer to us, "demons"."

"Why me?" is all I could muffle out.

But my question was never answered, because before I could hear the response, I was knocked out cold. I was locked in pure lasting silence, though I couldn't remember what led me to this. That is until my question was answered, clearly. I remembered, a large shadow-like monster had knocked me out soundlessly while others like it were fighting with my stuffed bears, or demons?

"How did I get myself into this mess!?"I shouted aloud, sitting up on top of the bed I was currently laying on.

"That is a great question kid," an unfamiliar voice stated coming from nowhere. I could just barely make sense of the words due to the endless ringing in my ears.

"Though I guess it is kind of unfair you got to die this way, at four-teen," another squeaked out, at that moment I snapped out of the faze I was in to check my surroundings.

"What the..." it looked exactly like my room but only without any means of escape. It had my books, no bears, no windows, no door, my cabinets, and closet, but no way out. The monsters crawled on all fours out of their hiding places, slowly closing the distance between them and myself. Searching for escape, I could make out the bloodlust and murder in their eyes. I ran past them heading toward where one of them came through the wall. I just then, came crashing through what seemed to be glass and landed face first on a soft cushion. Lifting my head, I was in another kid's bedroom, and then as I turned towards the bed, a motionless body lay with its head at an unnatural angle. They seemed to have been trying to escape but seeing the claw marks on the headpost showed it would have been impossible since one of the monsters was already there to return a killing blow. I turned around to find one of the creatures that had been seeking my demise. It met my gaze. The creature was walking on the broken mirror I had shattered upon my arrival not caring about the large pieces of sharp daggers going deep into its clawed fingers.

"This is going to be fun~" It cooed as I leapt out the other side of the room and into another one. There I found a living victim, hurt but also not dead.

"Run! One of them is after me and may hurt you as well!" I shouted just as my pursuer burst through the wall. Honestly, I felt insane, no normal person would be this composed facing a torture chamber such as this.

I turned, "Run, now!"

The young boy complied, and I let him Pass  me and watched as he escaped into the next room, just then the creature flew towards me in hast but got struck in the face with a nearby cabinet door on the wall next to me. It got flung against the wall being forced back into the room it came from. I jumped into the room ahead and found three more kids other than the one I saved before. There were metal chains and posts keeping their bunkbeds from collapsing and I just got a brilliant idea. I took the chains and posts and set one of the bookshelves against the wall where the creature would soon emerge from creating an obstacle. I looked through the drawers and cabinets finding anything that could pass as a weapon such as a pair of scissors, a wooden dowel, a metal baseball bat, and a mini league sports baseball trophy that had a sharp pointed top. I gave each weapon to the kids and then I set the chains in a position on the floor connecting to the ceiling. If the creature stepped in it, surely it would be picked up and flung into the air getting trapped. As I predicted, the frightening beast came tumbling into the bookcase only to stumble into the chains and get caught by my brilliant trap.

"Why are you trying to kill me!? And what are you!?" I shouted, clearly desperate and needing answers. It soon started talking in a hushed raspy voice.

"You and most children are prone to fear and that is what feeds us ghouls, the taste of your dying screams fills our stomachs. Nothing else gives use more pleasure and you, you somehow escaped my grasp!? But no matter, others will dispose of you mongrels. But there is one escape, though no human was able to reach it before their demise. If you kill me now more will come. I hope your ready to die!" it then disappeared without any sign of it being there in the first place.

I ran over to the children, we went through room after room of the dead and of the living. We soon reached an orb that glowed so fiercely I had to shield my eyes upon our arrival. I touched it, making contact ever so slightly, the layout of every single room was shown. There must have been at least ONE- THOUSAND, I was amazed at how many kids these demons captured, flabbergasted even. I saw a control center on the side of it and immediately sent an order issuing all Ghouls to stop all combat and stay in their positions, I then sent all children to their homes and issued a self-destruct sequence to the pocket dimension. Now my plan was set, since the Ghouls did not know what I was doing, and they were commanded to stay in their places they would get demolished with this place. I was sent home after all the issued orders of that strange orb and just like that I was free, saved a lot of kids and was permanently scarred for life. At least horror movies won't scare me anymore, nothing was ever going to be as scary as that night, where I faced a fear scarier than any movie. Who knows, the demons will come back, and another adventure will begin.