" Tonight I Am Going to Look "

    

    I'm going to look. It will drive me insane, but I'm going to look. At the last moment before the pain and unconsciousness, I'm going to sit up and look at it. It may kill me, or leave me maimed, but I have to know.

    It's been ten years of private hell. I can't tell anyone, I can't escape, and I barely leave my house anymore. I'm scared it'll get brave and do it during the day.

    Every night now, I wake up in the small hours. I can't move. The room is warm, but I am deathly cold. I can't feel my fingertips, my crotch, my lips, or the soles of my feet. I try to scream my lungs out, but there is only silence. Silence is bearing down on me, strangling me. I can barely breath.

    Nothing moves, nothing makes a noise.

    Every night, just as I think it's over, just as my left hand begins to thaw out, I hear the noise.

    It is inching down the corridor now. I can just move my little finger.

    It sounds like something obscene is being dragged over the wood floor.

    It comes. It's getting quicker. I can move three fingers on my left hand, and the life is coming back into my left foot. I still cannot scream. My throat now feels like two strong hands are squeezing the life out of it.

    My eyes are shut, and they spasm wildly in my head, but I can see the creature perfectly in my imagination. I've never seen it, but I know what it looks like. It is less than four feet from my door. I can move my left arm, the left side of my face, my left ankle.

    I know that it has fed in the night. It will be bloated on a stray cat, a squirrel, or a racoon. I wish it would feed on me, or else leave. It is not coming to feed.

    It has come home.

    It is slithering up my door now, wrapping itself around my doorknob. My eyes have stopped spasming, and I will be able to open them in a moment. The chill is almost gone. I can almost move my right side now.

    For an eternity, the creature turns my doorknob.

    Click.

    This is the moment of truth. Tonight, I'm going to look. Tonight, I will see the creature.

    The door creaks open. The paralysis is gone, but I am perfectly still. I want it to come in so I can see it before it runs off. Last time I tried to look, it slithered off and didn't come back till the small hours of the morning.

    A few anxious heartbeats...

    The creature slithers inside.

    There is silence for a few more heartbeats...

    I sit bolt upright, and open my eyes. There, reared back like a viper on the bed in front of me, sits my colon.

    It has fed well.