The Monster

Post date: November 15, 2023

By Alea Gillen 

First of all, I would like to apologize for the acid and the blood stains on my paper but I need to tell you all this. 

I lived in an apartment just outside Tallulah Falls, Georgia; that's where this all started. It was just a little over a year after I moved in. It was a Thursday, in August. It was getting dark, and it began to rain. 

I was sitting on my couch watching my new favorite series, Locke and Key when I felt the raindrops coming in from the window. At first, I didn't care and thought it would pass quickly but it just kept raining harder and harder. Eventually, I got up to shut the window because it was leaving a puddle on the floor and some water was soaking into my blanket. I was shielding my eyes with my arm from the water as it kept pouring on me, for some reason it stung a little. I got closer to the window and shut it as quickly as I could. I’ve always loved the rain, the storms, the thunder, and the lighting, but tonight it seemed different. It wasn't the sweet, cold downpour with the relaxing roar of thunder. It looked the same as always but the feeling was…off. I didn't think anything of it because my friends always told me I got paranoid for no reason.

 I wish I listened to my gut that day.

 I woke up around 4 a.m., I couldn't feel my arm. I lifted my blanket to see if I just slept weirdly. But when I lifted the blanket my breath stopped and my face went pale. My arm was black and yellow, the skin seemed to have melted off into a weird puddle on my sheets dripping off the side of my bed. My veins were popping out of my arms and not the normal popping. I mean my bone was on the outside of my skin, my veins were hanging off my arm and in between my muscles, there was black and yellow sludge melting out of my muscles. I screamed, the natural response. But I wasn't prepared to know what that scream woke up. At the foot of my bed, there was something, it wasn't human, it wasn't animal. It was a demon or a djinn. It looked that way anyway, its eyes were wide and white, the retinas were red, blue, and bloodshot. Its smile was wide like a killer clown, its smile stretched unnaturally across its face and ended just almost an inch away from where ears should be. After I screamed the thing rose filling the air with freezing, breathtaking, bone-chilling fear. I quickly passed out from the suffocating black smoke filling the air and saw dirty water pouring out from the creature's ribs. I woke up a little past noon. I jumped up and ran to the bathroom to get away from my room thinking it was still there, the phantom thing. I noticed my arm, it wasn't burning anymore, I hesitated but I had to know, I looked at my arm and it was fine. It looked normal but there was a black line just above my wrist.

 I wish I had cut my arm off that day.

 The next week everything was normal, except for the fact that every night I would see these demonic phantoms out of the corner of my eyes, exactly after 12 am, drooling as they watched me. I was not prepared for next week's adventure. It was Thursday the 17th, that evening I was making myself dinner, I had a groggy day and I was excited to go to sleep with a nice full stomach full of beef stew with the new mushrooms I bought. As I finished making the stew, the smells filled my nose and made my stomach rumble. I sat down to watch the last episode of Locke and Key, I looked at the clock and it said 11:42 pm.

I should have stayed awake, maybe that would have stopped it all. 

I dozed off in the middle of the episode and my stew was all eaten. I was woken by a loud crash in my kitchen. I sat on my couch wondering what it could be. I don’t have any pets, maybe a burglar? No, the doors were still locked and I left the lights on and the TV still going. I sat there panic-stricken, afraid to breathe, I looked at the clock which read 1:08 a.m. That's when I saw it, a phantom…but this time it was missing a tooth... Staring at me from a now broken window grinning ear to ear, drooling, making a smell that could curl flesh from bones. It was trying to get in. My wrist started to burn and I slowly looked down, the blood draining from my face and my lips going numb. The black line on my wrist started to twist and curve and burn, it quickly turned into an agonizing bite mark of  none other than the phantom staring at me. A tooth appeared to be stuck underneath my skin. I didn't know what to do so I grabbed my empty soup bowl and threw it at the phantom in my window. My arm was starting to melt and the sludge began eating away at my shoulder. The bowl went through the thing. It seemed startled by my poor attempt to get rid of it. I looked at the window again and it wasn't there. I felt rain on my legs, the same acidic feeling rain that was here a few weeks ago but instead, my legs were just melting and turning to mush in small patterns like raindrops were melting my flesh. I screamed again, not sure what to do or who to call. I thought I was going to die. My flesh slowly began moving towards the broken window, piling itself up and into the mouth of the satanic drooling monster.

 I wish I did. 

This kept happening over the next couple of months. It didn't matter if I stayed awake or if I went to sleep I always was food for this beast.  Every night. New Year's Eve is when the worst was upon me. At exactly midnight My wrist began to burn like usual but this time I ran outside to see if the house was causing me this torture. I hoped that I could escape this fate. I wished the New Year would do something to help me. But as soon as I stepped onto the front porch I was met with an unholy broken disfigured monster. Its mouth was on the top of its head with pointed teeth like stuff out of horror movies with limbs hanging out of the crevices of the teeth. It was bigger than a school bus with its down limbs being sharp and pointed, it looked like a spider's legs, hairy but with human hair. The eyes stared down at me greedily excited for its next meal. Its body was black and cloudy. The stench made me puke, my arm already mostly dissolved and my legs were getting the rain feeling. I took off running. I felt that was all I could do; As I took off the ground began to shake, as if Mother Nature understood the terrible monster that was ruining the precious earth. It made a sound like a baby crying mixed with a disoriented level of demonic laughter, it called out to me, my name sounded as if a two-year-old would call out to its lost mother in a supermarket. It said “Kaitlynn! Come here! I need you!” Then its voice dropped down to an octave no human has ever heard. The monster then said "I'M HUNGRY” I looked back as its head twisted a full circle and a laugh came out of its bloodied mouth. It sounded like nails on a chalkboard mixed with a child's laughter and a cackle. I am now in the stomach of this thing. I am being slowly dissolved in its stomach; my only entertainment besides this insufferable torture of being dissolved is watching the previous victims melt. This has been happening for a full year now and every night at midnight I am eaten and dissolved and I wake up the next morning just fine. I can't take it anymore. I have to end this. When I wake up I will leave this by my bedside. Tell my mother I love her. I love you all. But I cannot keep going on like this. I don't want to be in this monster for the rest of eternity, I'd rather burn in the deepest depths of hell. Goodbye. See you all in hell.