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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/sandboy810 on 2024-09-16 03:48:59+00:00.
I had planned for this story to begin at the very moment I discovered ‘it’ had arrived, but after a day spent doing nothing but running through last night’s events over and over again in my mind, I’ve realized that this story actually should begin hours earlier. Hours before ‘it’ showed up, there had been signs it was coming to visit, signs that I understandably missed before gaining the clarity of hindsight.
Innocuous as it seemed at the time, this story truly begins with the making of a cup of chamomile tea yesterday evening. Call me neurotic if you want but I’ve had a cup of chamomile tea before bed every night for the past six years. Back then I’d been suffering from a string of particularly nasty panic attacks and had tried to settle myself with some tea on the advice of a friend, and it did wonders. Since then, I’ve made myself a cup every evening, and at this point, if I’m being honest, the actual brewing of the tea calms my nerves more than the drinking itself- the ritual is soothing. I imagine it’s kind of similar to how smokers always tell me that they get more of a fix from the act of lighting up a cigarette than the nicotine itself, but that’s beside the point.
The REAL point here is that I’ve had a cup of tea every night for the past six years, except last night. When I went to my kitchen yesterday evening, the last rays of orange sunlight seeping through my windows, I was unpleasantly surprised to find the sink broken. Turning the knob, I was graced with a few fleeting sprays of pressurised mist and a horrid grinding noise not dissimilar to the sound of a hefty chair being dragged across a wooden floor.
With one hand over my left ear and my right ear buried into the crook of my neck to block out the awful sound, I quickly shot my other hand out and frantically twisted the knob the other way to shut off the sink. Thankfully, the sound soon faded away into a blissful silence and I could breathe a sigh of relief.
I didn’t dare touch that knob again, as I was petrified of messing something up and flooding the place. I couldn’t help but imagine a cartoonish scene wherein the pipes under the sink swelled with fluid like a rusted copper water balloon before finally popping.
Honestly, I was terrified that I’d already broken something, so I tried to take a moment of silence to listen for any signs of a drip. Crouching down to kneel on the floor, I pulled open the cabinet below the sink and poked my head ever-so-slightly inside, and I listened.
No drip. I could breathe a sigh of relief, but as I began to draw my head back out from the cabinet, I was struck by the realization that I was still hearing something. It was very faint, nearly eclipsed by the ambient hum of the fridge’s freon coils, but it was there.
I don’t exactly know how to describe it, but I’d say the closest comparison I could imagine for that perplexing sound would be half of a snore. You know how when people snore, there’s always the deep, pig-like snort of an inhale, and then the light, breathy exhale? Cut out the exhale, and I’d imagine it would sound almost like what I’d heard. Just brief, baritone, mucousy drawls interspersed with moments of utter quiet.
I had certainly thought it was an odd noise, but then again, I was no plumber. I had no idea what pipes were supposed to sound like, so on what authority could I have surmised that this was in any way out of the ordinary? I just prayed that the pipes would be fine until I could speak to my landlord in the morning and shuffled off to my bedroom, anxious and agitated.
Unsurprisingly, I couldn’t sleep a wink. Beyond the sheer anxiety that I felt that my pipes might burst at any moment, there was also the fact that for six years now tea had been a bigger part of going to bed for me than the actual bed itself, so obviously I was more than a bit distressed.
Needless to say, when I heard my dog begin barking up a storm from the next room after laying in bed wide awake and bleary-eyed for a full three hours, I was not very happy. For a while there I tried to stay in bed and tune it out, hoping if I didn’t engage, she would just stop of her own accord eventually. But no, she just kept on barking, and barking, and barking.
Eventually, I’d had enough. I knew she wouldn’t be able to understand a word of it, but I couldn’t help myself- I rolled out of bed, ready to tell her off. Staggering out of my room in a huff, I marched my way into the living room and fixed my furrowed, bloodshot eyes on the shadow shifting in the wire crate at the other end of the room.
“Quincy!” I yelled, almost startling myself with the ferocity.
No response, she just kept on barking.
“QUINCY!” I shouted louder, clapping my hands as I stepped towards her crate.
Again, nothing. Just more barking.
I stopped inches away from the crate, eyes fixed on the young labrador barely illuminated by the gentle moonlight as she threw her head back, howling like there was no tomorrow.
I tried snapping a few more times, hollering, and banging on the cage, but she just wouldn’t stop. She wouldn’t even look at me; after every shrill bark, her gaze would return to a corner of the room, her dark eyes wide and terrified. And she was right to be, as when I finally turned my head to follow her gaze, I understood. I understood that if I were Quincy, I would also be terrified. For that matter, the actual me was already terrified when I saw it hunched over in the shadowy corner.
‘It’ was here.
I’m sure you’re dying to know what ‘it’ was by now, but I’m sorry to say that I really don’t know. From a distance, it looks a lot like a person, and when I saw it in that dim corner, hidden behind the fronds of a potted monstera, I thought it was a person.
It knelt in the corner, a frond of monstera in its mouth and its hand clasped around the stem. Naked and bare, its eyes were as fixed on me as mine were on it, and its slow chewing of the broad leaf slowed to a halt.
We’d both been spotted.
It slowly rose to its feet, legs wobbling as it did so. Upright, beams of moonlight danced across its form, enough so that I managed to get a decent look at it. Bulbous and fat, smooth and hairless, its plump body was completely bare. I would say it was smooth from ‘head to toe’, but that expression doesn’t work here, as, yes, it may have had a head, but it didn’t have toes. Instead, its legs ended in mangled, fleshy blobs which were obviously difficult to stand on given how it staggered and swayed on its ‘feet’. Hair and toes weren’t the only things ‘it’ was missing, though. Nipples, nostrils, a navel, fingernails, and yes, even genitals, were all utterly absent from it.
And its eyes… blank. Blank and white, like ping-pong balls in its sockets.
After a few terrified moments of just standing there, frozen in fear, staring at each other, I saw its eyes narrowing at me, as if, at that moment, it was trying just as hard to figure out what I was as I was trying to find out what it was.
It must’ve realized, as its eyes soon widened as if in surprise, and its body jolted forward, staggering towards me with legs quivering and bowed as if its bones were made of mere jelly. Its back arched backwards as it rushed me as it pushed through the stagnant air like a leaf bending in a stiff breeze, and I felt another surge of adrenaline coursing through me as I saw it shakily bring a hand up to its mouth, jamming two fingers deep into its throat like one would to try and make themselves vomit. I’d wager that was precisely what it was doing too, because it began to make these awful retching sounds like a cat trying to hock up a hairball.
Maybe it was my instinct as an on-and-off boxer, but while my brain told me to run, my body had its own plans, and I found my arm swinging through the air to clock it with a left hook. I connected hard with its left cheek, but to my shock, my clammy fist didn’t stop there. It was like a bowling ball being dropped on a trampoline the way its face bowed inward, and I found its flesh so soft and malleable that my fist not only managed to connect with the outside of its right cheek but the inside of its left cheek as well. Don’t get me wrong- I hadn’t punched a hole clean through it- its face just crumpled beneath my fist like its skull was a flimsy house of cards toppling over.
I can’t be sure, but it seemed just as shocked as I was. Its head had caved in so immensely that while its lower jaw was still firmly attached to its neck, the rest of its head sagged so limply that its upper and lower jaws were now almost at a right angle to each other. As if in disbelief, it brought its hands up to its head and started frantically patting its face, before, perhaps realizing what had happened, a low, guttural moan began to croak out from its throat as it sobbed, red, gooey tears trailing down its cheeks, thick and congealed like strawberry syrup.
Still wailing, it made one more shivering lunge for me which I was just barely able to sidestep. Nearly tripping over a 25-pound dumbbell, I made a fumbling grab for it, holding it up above me, readying myself to club its head.
But I wouldn’t have the chance. ‘Tears’ still oozing down its concave cheeks, when it saw the weight in my hand, it bolted, barreling clumsily down the hall towards the bathroom, leaving a syrupy, gloopy trail behind it.
Perhaps feeling slightly emboldened by the fear it now seemed to display, I charged after it, the dumbbell still raised above my head as …
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