To sleep and dream many take it for granted that they would fall
into the forgetful arms of sleep. Many sleep and dream of loved ones of the things they
had or the places that they would go. So lucky are they and how very unlucky am I.
For as
my eyes close there is the other waiting for me to plague me in my sleep.
I am neither a remarkable man nor a very handsome man but as to
why I'm haunted in my dreams by disembodied limbs and voices is beyond me.
I shall try to
express to you the things of my dreams so that I may sleep if just for awhile.
Not that I
would wish the other upon you, but perhaps by sharing it, it would lose some courage and I
would gain some.
My night starts like any others I eat a light meal shower and
prepare for bed my wife who sleeps next to me usually slips in under the murky waters of
sleep quickly and easily. I lie next to her and wonder will it happen again this night
will the Other call me forth shall I see it again?
Filled with a feeling of dread I let myself slip in to the
troubled waters from the rivers of sleep. As the slow murky waters cover my eyes it
starts. The sensation that someone is with me not my wife but some Other to my left at the
foot of the bed. Shaking myself from sleep wiping the shadows from my eyes I peer in to
the dark there is no light, knowing the light was on but now there is only darkness.
Again
the feeling that some other is here with me, I reach out to wake my wife.
She is no longer
there only the heat from where she once lay. Franticly I scan the dark looking for the
other that has come again. It is there near my left leg the thing sometimes it has a form
other times it has no form at all but it is here none the less.
A hand reaches forth from the darkness and grasped my ankle in a steely grasp.
Paralyzed with fear and I am unable to move. The hand feels cold like
flesh that has never knows the sensation of blood pumping through it.
The hand is attached
to an arm that fades into the dark near the elbow it is luminescence with the unhealthy
glow of newly scalded flesh just before the blisters begin to form. An impulse starts in
my brain I have to break free from this thing grip, find the courage to set up and
pull away from the other in the darkness. Cold so cold the Others flesh I can feel the
warmth leaving my body I must free myself! The courage from with in starts to surge I pull
my leg back from the Others grip.
Truly awake I set up in bed the lights are on my wife is back it
was just a dream like all the others a dream. The Other is gone but there is still the
feeling of the cold on my leg. My flesh stings the heavy feeling of its hand lingers.
Fitfully I try to go back to sleep the lights are on my wife is here all is ok.
My eyes close the other is waiting the lights are gone.
The other
reaches out from the dark the same as before. The same hand and arm the same unhealthy
radiance. But now it reaches for my face I can feel the cold radiate from the other.
The thing did not touch me I did not feel it grasp upon my flesh.
But again I wait in the near darkness will it come again some new thing?
But still I will
now it is the other. How I envy you that you will sleep and the other will not come for
you with its sinister unknown intentions and cold flesh. Keep others with you as you
sleep so that they may wake you and help to keep it at bay. But how will you know when are
you asleep or when you are awake? How do you know you are not sleeping now with the other
waiting for its time reaching out from the dark?
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