Mindy wakes up reciting terms and important events she’s been memorizing for her cultural anthropology final, squishy and wet in her brain. Then, a wave of panic rushes over her as her eyes dart to the clock in the corner of the room. 2:58. She’s going to be late. All of the notetaking, hyperfocus during lectures, hours of commuting to campus, money from her part time job, the overtime her parents worked for her tuition, all of it will have gone to waste unless she can jump out of bed and speed over to class. She thinks that she might be able to at least get there and finish half of the final. Or at the very least plead with the professor.

She tries to get up, but finds that her body won’t move as she’s always willed it to. She desperately exerts all of herself to lift herself. But her limbs are weights, pinning her to the bed.

A wave of panic washes over her. 

She can’t waste all of the efforts from her and her family, all of the compromises she had to give into, all of the relationships she had to leave behind or miss out on just so she could focus on her studies. She tries to move again, but it seems that her body is even heavier. She shouts with a frustrated fury, straining her throat as she never has before. But the room is still only filled with the ticking of the clock. Her eyes dart to it again, desperately hoping that no time has passed. But rather than reading the time a flash of sickly yellow eyes catches her attention.

The panic now turns into dread.  A sound she’s never heard before fills her head. It is deep and booming. Every pulse vibrates her skull, and she’s afraid that her head will snap off of her body with how intense the vibrations feel.

“Ngngngsapratlne.”

She tries to reach for the touch lamp by her bed, knowing that the light will scare away this intruder. She feels the first nub of her pinky move and a hope rises in her that this is all a nightmare conjured by her own mind. Then, she feels her index finger wiggle. She convinces herself that she’ll wake up in a few hours and life will continue on like it should have been. Feeling returns to her entire hand. She focuses on how it must be the middle of the night, that it’s too dark, that she must be having an anxiety dream.

“Strotejvdnbng.” The booming sound becomes clearer, a voice. The vibrations dampen so that instead of decapitation, she’ll die from being stuck with thousands of needles. Her heart is now beating rapidly. The sickly yellow eyes are saying something to her. She looks at them and sees that they are glowing brighter now. Her dread takes over once again.

“Get away from me!” She shouts in her head. She flicks her hand upward with a sudden snap. The eyes look from her to her hand. The vibrations are now a dull pain that are more an annoyance than anything else.

“This is nothing!” She shouts through the pain. She lifts her arm until it clumsily slams the lamp, turning it on but knocking it to the floor. She watches the eyes look from her to the lamp on the floor. The light should be illuminating something, exposing whatever nightmare she has conjured into her senses. Instead, the light only shows a flowing cloud of darkness that stands as if it were another wall in her room. Terror takes over once more.

“Imprestife.” The word sounds familiar. But something about it is off. The shifting timbre? The uneven cadence? It’s almost as if the voice is gurgling into water to speak.

Her arm is pinned once more to the bed. What look to be tentacles slither out of the dark cloud, thrashing around violently as if they were fish taken out of the water. They have sharp teeth that snap as they whip around. She prays that her parents, one of her brothers, anyone will hear the lamp crash to the floor, the tentacles slapping against the floor, anything that will alert them and check on her. 

“No one.” The voice says. The vibration in her head has stopped completely. But fear has taken her over again, alongside frustration and helplessness.

“I, An-jts,” the voice says. Anger rises in Mindy.

“I don’t care! Get the fuck away!” She shouts. She wants to rush this thing, to tackle it to the ground and pound her fists into it until everything is still in her room once more. 

“Cannot do,” the voice says. Its eyes glow brighter and Mindy sees patches of red and tentacles spouting from what should be the thing’s mouth. Then, she feels as if more weight has been slammed onto her body. The wind is knocked out of her. The thing steps closer to her, the dark cloud continuing to shroud its true identity. Mindy screams in her head, begging God to save her, to wake her up from this nightmare.

She can feel that the thing walking toward her wants her to feel afraid, to feel angry, to eat her brain while it’s firing off and receiving those signals. Again, she desperately tries to slip out from under the extreme weight.

“It makes more delicious,” the thing says, now standing at her bedside. Their gazes meet each other for a moment, Mindy’s eyes full of desperation and the thing’s with hungry anticipation. Then, the cloud of darkness fades away and Mindy sees the figure: a naked man. But his skin is a sickly gray and wet and shiny. But from his torso and below he is held up by multiple snapping tentacles. But his arms are long enough to touch the floor by simply standing. But his head is perfectly symmetric. But his face and hair are what Mindy might consider handsome, if not for everything else about the thing.

“After fear gone, no more emotion. Only thought survive. Empty. Better,” the thing says as it brings its face closer. Mindy feels her ears and nose fill up. She can’t breathe and there is a tight silence that fills her head. Then, she’s briefly watching herself, the tentacles pumping chunks and fluids from her brain. The emotions are drained out of her, lost. Then, she’s back in her body, looking up at unblinking yellow eyes staring down at her. She blinks and when she opens her eyes there is only her dark room, gently illuminated by the distant streetlight and filled only with the sound of her ticking clock. 

She puts her hands to her ears, then to her nose. There is no evidence that anything has happened. She takes a deep breath. But instead of relief, the only thing she feels is a tickle in the back of her head. It says that a part of herself, something ethereal and abstract, is missing. But, she can’t feel what.