Sam had thought his life would change after his horrifying encounter with a sleep paralysis demon. That's what it had to be, a vision conjured up by his overstressed, exhausted brain had conjured. It wasn't uncommon, apparently, though he had found no other reports of them combined with wet dreams. Like any time he thought back on that night, he felt a dual throb of agony and arousal, the lines the creature had drawn once again clear on his skin even as his cock swelled involuntarily.
In reality, nothing much had changed, other than his outlook on the work he was doing. A night spent in abject terror and overwhelming agony had changed his perspective, letting him see how truly pointless his job was. The old rhyme, "Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime," played in his head whenever Mitchell yelled at him about his TPS reports, or got on his case for being behind on his emails. Unfortunately, all that did was make his work even more unbearable. Not only was it never-ending, but the true futility of it had sunk in now as well.
Still, as the weeks went on and the grind had kept going, Sam had settled back into his terrible routine. The Tetris effect of Excel sheets and the damned ribbon in MS Word had started again, lines and icons appearing in his vision as he tried to sleep.
Today had been especially bad, his manager dumping a ton of work on him last second. He'd had to cancel a date for tonight, the first one he'd had planned in over a year, and hadn't made it home until well after 11pm. His stomach growled, but the idea of waiting for the water to boil for a cup of instant ramen filled him with existential dread. He used mouthwash, ignoring his toothbrush for being too much effort, then stripped naked and fell face first onto the bed. The dirty sheets were in a pile in the corner, ready to be washed, with the fresh ones still sitting on the top of his dwindling pile on the clean-laundry-chair. Putting them on now was impossible, so he just yelled at the lights to turn off, set up his white noise on his phone, and tried not to see the "Next alarm in 5 hours 37 minutes" notification.
The white noise helped mute the voices that had been a constant companion to his nights since that first night. The creature hadn't been back, or rather the hallucinations hadn't gotten that bad again. A tiny niggling thought floated in the back of his mind. He'd had a wet dream, or that's what he kept telling himself. But his boxers had been clean when he woke up, and he clearly had dried cum on his stomach. Had he sleepily jerked off and forgotten? He distinctly remembered putting his phone away frustrated...
Sam could feel the emptiness of the room behind him, drawing his focus enough to make sleeping harder, but couldn't bring himself to roll over. Sleep would come or it wouldn't.
He tried to focus on the white noise, the gentle hiss of static filling his world. It seemed to grow louder and wider somehow, as if the entire room hummed with it rather than just the tinny phone speaker on his nightstand. The noise threatened to wash him away, and he tried to reach for his phone, but his arms wouldn't listen.
When he felt the bed shift underneath him, panic gripped him, constricting his throat. His heart pounded in his chest and felt like it would explode. During the visit from the unspeakable cosmic horror, the mattress had stayed solid, not moving an inch despite the presence crushing his chest. This was different. Someone had come into the room. Someone or something of flesh and blood was going to kill him, or worse. He could feel where the blade would slip between his ribs, a gaping emptiness that would soon turn to searing pain, a gurgle of blood passing his lips and then unending darkness. He tried to force words out, but he was entirely paralyzed again, as if the knife had already slipped between his vertebrae and severed his spinal cord.
The hissing white noise became unbearable, and the dim illumination from the streetlights outside seemed to grow in intensity to painful levels, even with his eyes closed. Every fiber of him hummed with sensation, and he swore he could feel every fiber of his mattress press against his skin. The bed shifted again, too many points of weight to be one person, too many to be a werewolf or vampire or whatever else he didn't believe in. Was it back? Why was it different? He tried to scream, a soft gurgle escaping his throat. I was back, ready to finish the job, to end his life for not heeding the earlier warning. Sam had no clue what that warning would've been.
When the pain started, it eclipsed what he'd experienced last time. Two bright lines of incandescent agony ran up his legs, slow as a lover's touch, two more along the backs of his arms. Worse than the pain, he could feel the texture of his flesh as the nothingness sliced through skin and muscles and tendons. The pairs of lines ran up onto his butt and shoulders, then merged at his spine, before moving together and finally ending in the middle of his back.
His heart threatened to rip out of his chest. He'd told himself he knew what he was in for if sleep paralysis happened to him again, would be able to rationalize and maintain his composure. This felt so different, so much more real, so much more intense. Every fiber of his being thrummed with agony, all his senses overwhelmed by white noise. Somehow, through it all, he could hear the thing's breathing. It hadn't breathed last time. It rasped and gurgled, in and out in an unnatural rhythm.
More tendrils descended, sliding into his shoulders and around his collarbones, deep under his skin. It hauled him up bodily to his elbows and knees, his head hanging limply. The familiar tendrils of nothingness, glimpsed beyond his own arms and legs, stood out like darkest night against the blinding light of his bedroom, infinite in their depth.
