The Peculiarist

When I was a child, half a decade in age or thereabouts, I awoke in the depths of an innocuous night. I wondered what had woken me, when I experienced terror such as I had never before encountered nor since had to deal with. A cold, heavy constriction on my heart, my balls, my mind. More than fear for loss of my life, or the death of a loved one, it was the idea that nothing was OK; the unnatural and malignant would win everything and death would provide no release.

I suddenly fell to the ceiling, hovering a few centimetres from it, eyes shrieking wide and mouth gaped screaming. I knew my sheets draped over me, hanging towards the bed, immobile in the still air of the room. For maybe twenty seconds I hung there, and all of it screaming and terror-hearted and unable to think. Then I fell to the bed.

I had a few seconds respite, gasping for breath and wondering what had happened as the terror receded slow as a tide; then it rushed back and again my thoughts left me and terror had my limbs. Again my eyes were against the eggshell-blue paint of my ceiling, and again I knew the bedsheets hung from my body. Again I screamed at the top of my voice.

This second time was shorter, as if the dread power waned; maybe four or five seconds passed before I fell again to my bed. I lay there, sweat soaked and trying to breath quietly rather than pant, until I was convinced whatever terror had been in my room had left. Then I ran to my parents bedroom.

I asked why they had not come at my screams, and my mother replied that they had heard nothing.

You face the ultimate malignancy alone; your screams will bring no aid.