Anencephaly

I’ve never had nightmares like this before. I’m not a fan of horror, I’m not depressed, I haven’t even been under any especial strain lately. I’m just a good person, and I’ve always had good, normal dreams. You need to understand that what happened to me wasn’t something natural.

God didn’t put that thing inside of my head.

It was eerily life-like, this nightmare, but I’m sure you’ve heard that before. I woke, in the dream, and was still perfectly aware of each of my senses. When I sat up, I felt the air shifting against my face; I could have counted the creases in the duvet as it crumpled to accommodate for my movements. There was something nagging, an uncanny feeling of dread which I had pushed to the back of my mind; something that I was trying to ignore. An elephant in the room. I knew it was there right from the start, but it took me a moment to accept it; to acknowledge the frantic rattling and dull, hollow thuds that were sounding in the bedroom’s furthest corner, just out of sight. It was a moment more before I turned my head to see.

I still wish I could take that back.

I could tell you that it was something like a spider- but that would be wrong. Structurally, perhaps, it was similar- but in its essence, it could not have been more different. It was a mistake; a glitch of nature. It consisted entirely of legs; a twitching, writhing mass of them, all joined together where the pelvis should have been. They were thin, fleshy and pale-white- and much as I tried to ignore it, there was something awfully human-like about them. Its movements were nothing like a spider’s; it moved as though it were in agony. Like something dying and helpless, unable to control the contractions and spasms that racked its muscles. Aside from its appearance, there was something deeply disturbing about it- because not only did it seem to be dying- it struck me as having the air- perhaps it was something to do with the blindness of the way in which it moved- of the not-yet-born. It reminded me, more than anything else, of those rare cases of conjoined twins, where the children are fused together at the skull, sharing a single brain- except one baby is already dead or dying by the time it leaves the womb. Or else, it reminded me of the children that are born with their hearts outside of their chests, or half of their bodies gone, like they were never even meant to be alive. It was like that; as though the thing had been born dying, and knowing that, was trying to escape from itself, from the death assigned to it by the failures of its own wretched body.

It was only a reflection. Truly, I was alone in the room, and the creature was nothing more than an image in the glass of a mirror that stood in the corner- but this did nothing to lessen my fear of the thing, because in a heartbeat I realised what it was doing; where exactly it was trying to escape to. It was throwing itself against the mirror, this thing that wasn’t supposed to be alive and wasn’t even supposed to be able to move. It beat itself against the glass, struggling through its own convulsions, heaving, throwing itself through the air until it came to collide with the gleaming surface, before it crashed to the ground again, a twitching mass. I sat there, immobile; transfixed by those awful erratic movements, as it lifted itself up, threw itself forwards and collapsed, over and over again. I could hear it breathing; this thing that had no mouth and no lungs, it was panting with exertion. Each time it came into contact with the glass, the mirror shook violently, the creature letting out a hideous wheeze as its bones crunched beneath it. Its movements were quickly growing more violent, more desperate- and the thought that hit me was worse than anything that had come before.

It was about to break through.

I can’t tell you how afraid I was; I can only tell you that at moment, there was nothing, and I mean nothing in the world, that I wanted less than for that glass to break. I would have killed myself- hell, I probably would have killed everyone I loved, if only it would make the thing go away. The creature’s breathing had mounted, sharpening and warping horribly into a piercing whine; like the sound of a pig, screaming.

No; it was more like a hundred pigs, screaming, crying in the burning fires of hell. Its legs rotating, gruesome and senseless, on its fleshy axis of a body, I watched as it raised itself once more, as it heaved its weight forwards, throwing itself against the glass with all of its force, and knowing that this was it; this was the time when it would make it to my side, to our side of the mirror.

The blissful ecstasy that flooded my body when I found myself awake, lying in silence and peaceful darkness, was beyond words. The screaming was gone; the relentless rattling had ceased. To know that I was safe, that I would never see that thing find its way onto our side of the mirror, was something that surely can only be appreciated by those who have suffered nightmares like mine.

I waited for some time in silence, unmoving, savouring the knowledge that I was safe. There was a part of me that vainly felt as though I myself had destroyed the creature; as though some transcending power of will had woken me just before the thing broke through, destroying it forever. When I finally sat up, I found myself smiling, right until my eyes landed on that mirror. It was standing there where it had been last night, in the furthest corner of the room- but the sight of it made my blood run cold.

The frame stood empty. The glass lay shattered on the floor.

Credit To – Ripple