MAG 2912 Starry Eye
Content Warnings; Helplessness, Sleep paralysis and an unwanted bedroom intruder.
‘Does this mean you believe me?'
‘I never said that'
‘I know, I'm sorry it's just that I've been laughed out of every other place, it’s nice that I've finally found somewhere that's taking me seriously'
‘That's yet to be determined, are you ready?'
‘I think so'
‘Right, Statement of Fedelm McAuley regarding a creature she called...’
‘Hm? Oh, right uh, Starry Eye?'
‘”Starry Eye”, statement taken directly from the subject on the 15th of June 2016. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, head archivist of the Magnus institute, London.
Statement begins…’
-
‘Have you ever experienced sleep paralysis?
Actually, wait let me rephrase…
Have you ever been visited by a demon in your sleep?
And yeah. I know, you just told me. “No out of body experiences, visions, hallucinations or dreams”, and I suppose sleep paralysis can be all of those things. But I mean… this wasn’t just that, at least I don’t think it was. I just need an excuse to get it off my chest. And I don’t know, maybe you guys will believe me, maybe it wasn’t just sleep paralysis.
I really hope you guys can help me with this. I mean, you know all about ghosts and monsters, right? This place feels weird enough that maybe my story will fit right in.
It may be hard for you to believe if you’ve never been visited by them, but sleep paralysis demons aren’t as bad as you may have be led to think. Although, my opinion is maybe a little skewed since my ones are never really that scary and I’ve had them since I was little; at this point I’ve kinda gotten used to them.
Well, except for Starry Eye, that one was scary, but look, I’ll come to that in a second.
A-anyway, what I am trying to say is that I know them well, I have seen that man in the funny redditor hat peeking around my doorway. I have felt the oxygen in my lungs being squeezed out of my chest by a goblin sitting on top of me and there have been shadow people watching me as I sleep some nights. Standing so close to me, looking down over me with strange blurry faces, that if they were real, I could hear their heartbeat. But they rarely stay for more than a minute.
I like to think of it as waking up halfway, my eyes are fully open, and I can take in my surroundings, but my body and mind are slightly behind and I can’t move. I always need to wait for them to catch up. Does that make sense?
I know this may all sound very frightening, but it never scares me. That is not me trying to look big or lying to myself to keep going. When they appear, my body goes numb, I can’t feel the bedsheets around my arms or my pillow around my head. The physical sensations are replaced by those in my head. But most importantly, it’s like all my emotions are left behind. There’s no frustration at being woken, no relief when I realise it’s still dark and I can sleep longer, and I feel no fear when I notice a person standing in the corner of my bedroom. I don’t feel afraid because it is physically impossible for me to feel afraid. Do you understand?
And I mean my sight becomes numb as well? Actually, blurry would be a better word. Even if I am looking directly at the demon, it’s always like it’s in my peripheral vision, I can never pick out any exact details. Let’s say you drew a picture of a person with a marker and then split your drink over it. You would know that it was still a person, but it wouldn’t look quite right, their just very obscured. Take the shadow people for instance, it’s why they’re called shadow people in the first place, they’re just shadows. They have no faces, no clothes, no features, just a dark wisp of a figure.
Look, I know I might be talking too much, but this is important, I promise. It’s necessary for you, to understand what a normal episode of sleep paralysis is for me, so you can then understand what was so peculiar about Starry Eyes. It was not normal. What I experienced last night was not normal I saw something that was unlike anything I have ever seen before. That is why I'm here, after all.
I suppose I should cut the exposition and actually tell you about him, shouldn’t I?
Well… like I said, it happened last night. Well, more like this morning really… before he came I had a dream, it was a bad dream, a nightmare. And like most other dreams, I completely forgot what happened in it when it was over except that Starry Eyes was featured. I suppose I had more current issues on my mind....
It began with the sound of a woman screaming. Or maybe it was a siren? Or some sort of foghorn? Whatever the sound was it was loud, and it shook me from my sleep, and when I woke up halfway, I saw it, I saw him.
He was inside my room looking down at me, his hands and his hairy toes gripped the edge of the windowsill where he crouched, digging into the timber with brown, dirty, broken nails. The window was open behind him, leaving my room, and me, exposed to the elements. I could hear a storm outside, the thunder roared ferociously and the lightning arched behind the intruder, so that I could make out every detail of his body. Fat droplets of dark, dirty rainwater leapt into my room and onto my roof where they sounded like a thousand angry marbles. I couldn’t see where they landed, but I could feel their little fingers tapping my feet. There was no rain that night, I know that now but at the time, as they broke themselves on my home while thunder shook the world in the far distance, I wondered, was there a flood? Was I about to be dragged away into its dark, muddy depths?
Starry Eyes himself looked unbothered by the rain splashing onto his bare back. His skin was a sickly shade of pale green spotted with dark blue blotches, like bruises, from head to toe. I knew they covered all of him because he was completely naked, thankfully his thigh was in the way, so I didn’t see anything gross. Coming out from the back of his head were a cluster of tentacles, similar to the skin they protruded from, which slithered across to every corner of my room like lost worms. They squirmed over my door, my desk, my head, their shadows grew impossibly large every time the lightning struck. But even from my vulnerable position in my bed over at least a metre away from him, I could see every single detail of his skin, every single hair on his arms and all the blood vessels beneath his skin; I could see him just as vividly as I could see you earlier, sitting at your table, sipping your coffee. Sleep paralysis demons are not supposed to have that much detail, at least not my ones. I am not supposed to see this much, so why did I?
However, what really began to unnerve me was his face. I’ll never forget it. His mouth was open in a partial grimace, exposing his pointed, rotten teeth. It was as if the water hitting his back was hurting him, or maybe my feelings of disgust at the sight of him were mutual. And his eyes they were so vast, so dark, and they took over much of his forehead and cheeks like two puddles of oil. And when I looked into them, into those awful black eyes, I could see the night sky and all its flickering stars staring back at me.
I was trapped there for God knows how long, just looking up at him and he simply gazed at me. He didn’t move a single muscle. Not even a twitch in his cheek as the rain got heavier and drenched him in dirty brown water. I remember shivering in the cold, but the weather never made him budge, I hope it's because he wasn't real.
Then, he began to lean forward towards my bed. Very slowly. Inch by inch, he let go of the windowsill with his hands. He tightened his grip with his feet and extended his legs, gradually pushing himself until he filled my entire view. When I first saw him that night, I expected to feel nothing, to just be a silent observer once again until the dawn broke the illusion, but when he reached toward me with his right hand and his rotten nails touched my cheek for the first time I was afraid. I was so very afraid. I felt a sickening fear that burrowed its way deep into the pit of my stomach. Under his gaze the bile rose up through my body. I thought I was going to vomit.
His mouth that was once twisted in a grimace was now beaming in ecstatic joy, all of his ugly, brown teeth were on full display. A vein popped in his forehead and his eyes grew until they were almost all I could see. The stars in his eyes were so bright, so beautiful, they demanded every sliver of my attention and my stomach lurched as everything, suddenly fell away. I felt myself being lifted upwards to the stars by an invisible rope in my chest. As I rose, my head fell back into my pillow.
Then, he was gone. I’m not going to exaggerate and say he stabbed me, or he morphed or anything like that he just kind of… vanished? He was there one second and the next he was not. I was left lying on my bed trying my best to recover, listening to raindrops falling nowhere but inside my own head.
So, there you go. That’s everything, I think. Even if there’s little you can do, that felt good to get out, like a weight off my shoulders.’
‘I’m glad you benefitted from coming here’
It’s true what they say about this place, its strangely therapeutic, how do you do it? Wow, it’s so dark already. How long have I been here for?
‘Far too long'
‘So, do you believe my story? Was it real?'
‘Yes, I believe that'
‘Ah thank you! You know I...'
‘I believe that diet or a poor sleep schedule can sometimes have an adverse effect on the mind, but I would suggest you seek out a more, qualified, care professional who might...'
‘Oh, you conniving little...!'
Statement ends
One last thing, this short story is inspired by a real episode of sleep paralysis that I experienced last year, the real-life version lasted between 20-30 minutes, and my ears were left ringing for the rest of the morning. I hope you enjoyed and, of course, Happy Halloween!
