Bite Me

I forgot to tell you--about a week ago, the kids had gone to their dad's for the weekend and I was alone in the house with my dog and two cats. I love it when the house is so quiet; I rarely turn on the TV or play music. My house is my sanctuary; my place away from the world, where I can be completely myself, and do whatever I want to do without worrying about offending anyone or being judged. I have always been a bit of a nervous person; it manifested in extreme shyness when I was a kid and as I grew and aged, it morphed into anxiety and even full-blown depression. I lived my life feeling as if I was under a microscope, an alien germ in a petrie dish. My home was the one place in the world where I felt totally safe and secure. Which is why this experience freaked me out as much as it did.

It was around one o'clock in the morning and I had just watched a movie (not a scary one) and was heading downstairs to get myself a snack before bed. I keep the living room lamp on at night, so any of us going up or down the stairs can find our way without tripping and falling, so it wasn't dark. The big black cat was sleeping across one of the bottom stairs, as he tends to do, so I was careful to avoid stepping on him as I made my way to the kitchen. I was walking through the doorway from the living room to the dining area when I felt a sudden chill crawl up my back and neck, and creep down along my arms. The sense of being watched overcame me and I froze in place, terrified even to turn my head in order to look around. The dog came trotting into the kitchen, tail wiggling as if she expected a treat, and I shook off the inexplicable fear. If something was wrong, surely the dog would be barking or afraid. I laughed to myself and continued on into the kitchen, snapping the light on as I went. I froze again. I could have sworn that, as the room was illuminated, a shadow seemed to dart away just beyond the reaches of my peripheral vision. Again, I looked at the dog, who was still wagging her tail, staring up at me quizzically. My heart pounding, I forced myself to turn the corner and walk into the kitchen. Nothing was out of place, and the curtains were closed as usual, but I still had the sense that eyes were watching my every move. I jolted over to the window, yanking the curtain back, and threw the window open, so that the glare of the kitchen light on the pane wouldn't obstruct my vision against the darkness of the backyard. Nothing was out of place out there, either. I closed the window, locking it, and pulled the curtains shut again. Standing there in the silence, I listened for something unusual, but the house sounded just as it always did. I couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong, and I quickly fixed myself a sandwich, grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, and hurried back upstairs and down the hall to my room.

As soon as my foot crossed the threshold, I knew someone was there, and I screamed, almost dropping the snack I'd thrown together in my desperate panic to escape this exact feeling in the kitchen. I looked up, stomach flip-flopping and heart filled with dread. No one was there. This was crazy. My eyes darted around the room: into the closet, over beside the bed, even under the table I use to write at sometimes. Of course no one was there; the dog hadn't raised an alarm, and the white cat was asleep, curled up on one of my pillows, exactly where she wasn't supposed to be. I put my plate and water bottle down on my bedside table and put my robe on. The chill I'd felt downstairs had still not passed, and I had goosebumps. I picked up my laptop from its spot on the floor and carried it over to the bed, getting ready to sit down and do some writing, or some gaming -- I wasn't sure which. I had just picked the machine up and begun to turn towards the bed, when someone grabbed my arm. I screamed and instinctively swung the laptop like a board in the direction of my assailant and simultaneously squirmed away. I had reached my bedroom door when I realized I hadn't heard the laptop hit the floor, or hit anything else, for that matter. I fumbled for the doorknob as I braved a look back over my shoulder. My breath caught in my throat as I stared at my laptop, floating in mid-air. It seemed to be turning over and over, as if held by invisible hands owned by someone who had never seen such equipment before. As the laptop stopped moving, the invisible hands seemed --was I completely insane now?-- to adjust their hold on it until it stopped, the positioning of it ringing a bell in my head that I couldn't identify. The laptop started to move back and forth, sort of half-turning each time it made the forward movement, and then, half-turning back again as it went backwards, almost like a...

I screamed and ducked, just as the word frisbee popped into my head. With a whrrr sound as it flew by, the laptop smashed into the wall behind me, and had I not gotten out of the way, it clearly would have connected with my face, or at least my head, had I managed even to turn quickly enough. That was when I heard the laughter, and when I began to believe I was losing my mind. When  I think of that laughter now, I think of movies. I think of horror movies where the antagonist is a demon or an evil poltergeist. Alright, I'll be honest: The Exorcist was what came immediately to mind at the time. Please, don't stop reading here and dismiss what I'm telling you as the ramblings of an eccentric shut-in who has watched too many scary movies and read too many Stephen King novels. I have all of the pieces of my laptop in a box near my front door, for whenever I get the courage to take it to be repaired, and explain what happened to it.

I must have been in shock, because i think I stared at the remains of my Gateway, my baby, for a solid minute or two, while that evil, demonic-sounding laughter echoed around me, as if whoever was making the sound was speaking into the world's loudest microphone. Finally I turned my head to look, in spite of my mind's desperate pleas not to, and what I saw I will never forget, and yet I pray every night that I do. The teeth were what I noticed first: rows upon rows of pointy little teeth, like a piranha had, I supposed, although I'd never actually seen a piranha outside of cartoons and movies. And when I say the teeth were little, I mean they were tiny, maybe about as big as the teeth in a kitten's mouth, but this was no kitten. Inside the mouth where these teeth lived -- and they did seem alive somehow, I'm not lying -- there were so many that it seemed an endless oblivion of teeth. There had to be millions of them. And the more I looked, the more those teeth seemed to be moving, back and forth, in alternating rows, like a crazy, living multi-blade saw or something.

The teeth were tiny, but the mouth was not, and that must have been how so many could fit inside of it. The mouth, which seemed to be fixed in a rictus of terrible, mocking joy, was only about half-open, yet I could have stepped inside without lowering my head. The giant mouthful of saw-teeth was plastered onto a face that could only have been spawned from evil, and the eyes that bore into me from just below my ceiling were orangey-red, as if flames blazed inside of them and who knew? Maybe flames were precisely what lit those hellish orbs. And the worst part of all of this, even worse than all of those screamingly terrifying teeth, was the sound of the laughter. That sound will live in my nightmares forever, if I don't go insane thinking about it; or rather, if I'm not already insane. But I'm not, I tell you! This happened! I swear it! Oh, I wish I knew how to convince you, but it seems fruitless to try.

That face, with the teeth, and the laughter that sounded like the entire population of the netherworld was howling in pain-ecstasy, it all came delightfully packaged with a fabulous gigantic reptilian-like...thing. I suppose it was the thing's body, but it had no discernible shape to it; just mass and scaley brown-greenness. I'm sorry to have to do this, but the only way I can describe the colour is to bring to mind some kind of bowel infection or ailment, where the feces come out looking like greenish tar. Except this thing had  what looked to me like a kind of armour plating, instead of skin. It was shapeless, but I didn't get any sense at all that it was a gelatinous blob or anything. Quite the contrary: this thing looked like it was strong. And angry. And that laughter...

I can't explain what this was, or what actually happened that night, because just as the millions of teeth began to move toward me, it seemed at lightning speed, I guess I passed out. I know I pissed myself; there's no denying that, based on the evidence when I woke up. if it feels like pee, and it smells like pee, and it's all over the crotch of your pajamas and in a puddle on the floor where you woke up from a terrifying nightmare, it's probably pee. I know I didn't hallucinate or dream this: the bite marks in my torso, kind of like a shark started to take a chunk out of me and then changed its mind -- a shark with way too many, too-small teeth -- are kind of hard to explain away as the stuff of dreams. But I can tell you that whatever it was, it's still watching me, day and night. And it will be back.

And maybe it's watching you, too. If you hear that horrible laughter, you'll know I was telling the truth. Of course, by then, it may already be too late for you.


Okay, so this type of thing is what happens when I am sick, and so exhausted I'm not exhausted, if that makes any sense, and Dylan the Cat is literally GNAWING on my kneecap(?!) and the kids are arguing downstairs, so I'm inspired, but wiped out, with stomach cramps and cat teeth in my knee, and I'm distracted and feeling annoyed and angry. I started out being pretty proud of it, and that went right down the toilet as soon as I finished it. (I know, I know -- my own worst critic and blah blah blah).
Next one will be an attempt at either romance (bleurgh) or...I dunno. Suggestions? Let's find my niche, shall we?
Thanks for reading.