My sleep gremlin has grown increasingly malevolent of late.
Initially, it was content merely to wake us from our sleep with its unearthly screeches and wails, shattering the warm embrace of slumber before slipping back into the shadows once its goal was met.
Eventually, it escalated its tactics. It began clambering onto me in my deepest of sleep, tiny claws digging into my skin, ferocious kicks jolting me awake. I must confess, it succeeded many times. There is little else as frightening as being wrenched from dreams by the thrashing of a beast.
In recent months, its actions have me re-evaluating its very nature. For now, I find it prowling our home even in daylight, maliciously knocking over water glasses and tormenting the cat with sinister glee. Just yesterday, I had barely set down a stack of important papers before it seized them, scattering them across the floor.
It has me fearing for my young son’s safety, if not my own. Consequently, we have forbidden him from sleeping between us, terrified of what effect this malevolent presence may have upon him. It has gotten so that I flinch at the ominous thump-thump-thump of its hurried crawl down the hallway, each sound a harbinger of the horrors to come.
I have prayed to god and goddess alike, begging for deliverance from this relentless nightmare, but I know in my heart that this haunting is retribution for some act we once committed. It has been with us a year today, and its invasion of our sanity grows greater each night. Neither my wife nor I have slept soundly in what feels like an eternity—the nights blur together, each one a torturous echo of the last, our marriage straining under the weight of our fragile grip on reality.
Until it has seen fit to release us from its torment, we must endure the suffering. And when it awakens us with its bone-chilling howls, we must appease it with the offering it demands–a six-ounce bottle of warmed milk and a fresh diaper.
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