Bogleech.com's 2014 Horror Write-off:

" Nightterror "

Submitted by Pumpkinheadeddoll

I try not to sleep anymore, or at least not to dream.

I hate dreaming, for me it’s not really a pleasant experience. Allow me to explain...

Since I was little, every dream I have ever had has slowly turned into a night-terror, and the choking fear of not being able to escape a world created entirely by your mind giving in to your worst fears has been an idea that has haunted me even into my adult life. I still remember some of the dreams from when I was little, all slightly different but they always have a single connecting point; they all end with me being choked. Whether it be by strangulation, suffocation or my throat being filled with something, they all made me feel the air being pushed out of my lungs and being left with the futility of having no way of filling them. Then I would wake, soaked with a cold sweat, sitting upright in my bed. Weeping.

I tried sleeping pills, but they only made the dreams more vivid and the induced sleep made me feel even more helpless and weak, being forced into this terrifying world of my own creation. I tried therapy and I was sent through a multitude of tests and scans; none of them showed anything abnormal apart from some problems due to habitual lack of sleep, for all intents and purposes I should have been perfectly healthy. They asked me to keep a dream journal and keep track of the dreams when they did happen, hoping to learn something from them; alongside this my brother suggested that I keep a camera in my room to see if it was something to do with the way I was sleeping, like my arms blocking my airways or something, and it was after going over the tapes after one of my worse nightly escapades that I saw IT.

Not so much entering my room as much as just materialising, there it was, vaguely humanoid but with a tiny head, big watery eyes, a wide slit of a mouth and exaggerated, almost comically large hands. As I drifted into my deepest sleep I saw it wrap its hands around my neck, its small bug eyed face lighting up as I writhed in pain a wide grin splitting across its face revealing not teeth, but hair filled maw similar to that of a whale. It was hard to watch as this thing strangled me, looking almost in ecstasy as it held my life in it its freakish mitts, but I couldn’t draw my face from the screen. Moments later I woke up, that thing disappearing as quickly as it appeared if not faster, but for a few moments towards the end, I could swear, for a split second maybe not more than a few frames of the video it turned its tiny smiling head with that unnatural look of pleasure towards the camera. I rushed to the bathroom to go throw up my body still quaking in fear.

It’s been about week since then, I haven’t slept in days.

I’m so tired.