"I'm Not Crazy"

XVI.

"I want to talk about The Thing that used to watch me sleep."

The therapist sat up. Her shoulders straightened and her eyes sharpened. She'd looked quite bored before. I was genuinely becoming boring for her.

The Thing was an idea, or maybe an embodiment of fear. In some cultures or myths, if you're scared of something in just the right way, it bridges it's way into reality. Your terror fuels it, builds it up bit by bit until it comes for you. Your collusion, or more accurately your cooperation in building its essence, will not save you from the fate. The creation is fueled by your fear, and so it comes for you all the same.

I saw it for the first time when I was 11. Matthew had been recently shot. It was maybe the same day or encompassed in that same week. Days had blurred. My mind was regularly preoccupied by the visage of blood and carnage and viscera. An educated guess could easily tell you that The Thing came for me as a result of what my eyes had seen. It was a punishment, but also an unfortunate given. Scared children aren't meant to sleep. Children whose mind have been rotted by the lies they told can't rest.

The Thing was hard to describe. It was tall, but not exactly excessively towering in the sense that everyone towered around children, and I had a very low capacity for comparison. It stood in the shadows, so it's features were blurred. Describing what it looked like seemed mountainous as a task. I know that it was pale. The blood and grime coating it's skin stood out against the palor, pockmarking the body like festering infectious holes. It was naked, so the damage coating the body and the face were obvious even in darkness. It was also mostly bald. Its head was only slightly decorated by long stringy hair in patches. It's eyes were milky as if it were blind, and where it's mouth should have been sat a gaping toothless maw, like a hole or a tunnel back to its exposed spinal cord.

To say it stood may be a lie of sorts. If anything, it loomed high in the corner of the room, naked and disgusting and watching me with the milky blind eyes that still saw. The Thing did not speak with a voice. Instead, it's intentions penetrated into my head silently. It's violent desires were present. It's urge to intimidate clear.

The first time The Thing came to me, I couldn't sleep. The room was dark. Matthew could no longer turn on the light outside for me and so my bedroom did not reap the benefit of the warm glow. I was back to trembling under the sheets as I had done before. Every movement or shift in the shadows had me paralyzed with fear.

The Thing appeared in the corner. I didn't know if it had always been there, or if it had materialized from the shadows in some unseen instant. One second I was truly and greatly alone and the next I was suddenly aware of the thing that loomed, watching me.

It looked at me, then it took one solitary step closer as if to show me it's power. The singular step was all it took. I began to cry.

It cried louder than normal. My mother burst into my room shortly after. We'd been sharing the house together alone for several days in the wake of what happened to Matthew. Franklin was spending time out of the house and although things were nothing like they'd been before the marriage, it had felt nice to have time with my mother in some capacity.

She sat in my room with the lamp on until I went to sleep. She didn't add comforting words or anything she had used to do, instead opting to sit quietly wringing her hands while she watched me find a way to self soothe. I don't blame her for that. After the week we'd had, I'm certain she just had no idea what else to do.

It happened the next night. And again on the third. Franklin finally came home at that point, and that was the turning point I hadn't seen coming in the sea of other things I hadn't predicted. While my mom had attempted to use her presence to comfort me before, Franklin's presence marked a change in her ability to do so. He slept in his own room and demanded that she sleep there too. That meant she could no longer hear my cries.