Part 1 The telemarketer - Glimpse IV

He opened his eyes, but it was so dark he couldn’t see a thing, yet he could hear something moving in the dark, beyond his bed. His eyes strained to see, but nothing could be glimpsed. 

“A break-in!” Was his first thought, but he had nothing worth stealing. Thus, he listened carefully for any new sounds and soon after heard footsteps and claw scratches as if a dog was walking on his linoleum floor.

The creature stepped on his bed; he could feel its weight shifting from one leg to another. He couldn’t turn his head to see it, only his eyes. And then it stepped into his field of vision, eyes like scorching coal lighting its skull.

Before he could get a good look at the creature it sank its teeth around his neck, into his flesh. Warm blood was gushing out as he struggled to regain sense of his limp body. The pain the came soon after took his breath away.

He couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore and just as the pain began to dull and a feeling of sleepiness started to take hold of him,  his left arm finally did what he had been desperately trying to make it do. He hit the creature over the head and it dissolved into a thick glittering smoke absorbed by the night's darkness.

Scared, he scrambled out of bed frantically and ran into the bathroom. He closed the door behind him and waited while holding his neck.

Nothing came; no sound was audible, therefore he looked in the mirror hastily. No bite marks were visible, so he took his shirt off and again no trace of any lesions. He touched his neck again and it hurt. It hurt as if an old bruise was still inside.

After some cold water on his face he felt more lucid. “What’s happening?” He asked himself. He seemed to be alone in the apartment, but he grabbed his mop, for protection, from behind the washing machine and slowly began to turn on the lights in every room all the while looking for what it attacked him.

It was a quarter past 3 in the morning and  he would have to go to work soon, but he couldn't go back to sleep, his heart was still racing, the adrenaline still in his veins. “I haven’t felt like this since I almost got hit by a bus.” He looked at his hands and they were still trembling a bit, so he put a kettle on the stove for tea. “This will calm me down.” He thought.

He decided to do an internet search for what happened. After all who could he call at this time of day? “SeaBacon may be online; it’s 1 o’clock in Britain.” But he was not online that night.

His desk was facing the wall, so he pulled it and moved his chair, so his back would be against the wall. He couldn’t bear to sit in his bed again, he still felt scared. He knew it was silly, but he figured nobody could see him anyway. He opened his laptop and started to search all the while he peeked over it to check the room.

“Sleep paralysis. Looks like it.” He concluded after consulting Wikis and WebMD pages. “But it seemed so real.” He couldn’t shake the feeling of fear off. “Lucid dreaming … nightmare.” He mumbled. “Causes … include stress. Yeah, well … who isn’t stressed?”. His body felt cold after the adrenaline wore off, but the feeling of fear persisted in his gut and he started to feel annoyed he couldn’t shake it off. It was as if he didn’t have control over his body which only increased his overall feeling of anxiety.