Spiral

Crawl

 Syler awoke with a start that night. His forehead was covered in sweat and his heart raced. The dream was far more in detail than the ones he had experienced over the last few months when they had come back. It scared him really, that his mind would even dream of something in such a violent manner. The image haunted his mind, the hooded creature hadn't just done its' killings like it usually did, no, the hooded creature had taken out the intestines of the victim, choked out the victim and then it had eaten what was left. It had bared its' teeth into the moonlight, as they were now tainted with droplets of blood, as if it was a trophy of some sort, as if the it took pride in what it had just done. The aftermath of the hole that had been bitten into the intestine was hard to stomach for Syler's subconscious. There were maggots that had fallen out of the long organ. They seemed to have squirmed out in a haste that no one could describe, only to shrivel up and die as they hit the ground just as fast as they had been released into the forest, they just died.

Syler shuddered at the images that his dream had left him with. His heart rate began to slow back down again, and his breathing began to stabilize. He'd grown accustomed to these panic attacks and late night disturbances in his sleep, they had been happening since he was a kid, but he never thought anything of it until they had started to become more frequent a year ago, when he was still 16. His disturbed sleep cycle started to bother him more now than it did when it first occurred, as he knew something was causing it, and it wasn't that he used to eat later in the evening, as his parents would warn him that eating late at night would cause nightmares.

He heard the crickets chirp outside his window, he sighed. He knew that it was still late at night, and he knew he wouldn't find the courage to go back to sleep, he feared it really. His nightmares caused a lot of strain on his heart and his conscious brain. He didn't want to stress his body out more than it already was, so he turned on his lamp and he pulled his phone from the bedside table to check the time. 3:34 am. Syler laid back on his pillow and sighed, as he didn't know what to do, especially at this ungodly hour, while everyone was still sound asleep, so he decided to just mindlessly scroll through Tumblr hoping his body would fall asleep again on its' own. He wasn't too keen on falling back asleep, but he knew he had to, and eventually his eyes started drooping again and he fell back asleep for another few hours before having to wake for school.

His alarm startled him in the morning, and his eyes slowly opened to the sun, which had started to shine through his window. The birds chirping felt better to him than the crickets from the night before. Syler was surprised by the lack of nightmares that he had in the short time he had fallen back asleep, and it felt nice to him to not have nightmares about the hooded creature every time his eyes closed, as they seemed to haunt him in his conscious mind as well as the unconscious. It seemed to him that he'd dream of these almost every night, or at least he'd have more nights where the nightmares came to him, than he did of calm sleep . They also seemed to get worse as time went on, they were once calm, much calmer than they were now. The years before, they'd only be unsettling or unnerving. The hooded creature only lurked, he wasn't set out to kill.

Syler had awoken in panic attacks numerous times throughout the week. They were the ones where he would breathe heavily, his heart would race and he'd end up just sobbing until he either fell back asleep or he had to get up. Syler welcomed the morning sun with every fiber of his being, as the light was the only thing that could make the shadows disappear, or at least hide in corners that were still plagued with the dark. Syler began to associate the darkness with the shadows, so he began to loathe the darkness as much as anything else that he hated. The air was stale to him, and it made breathing seem to come as a struggle to him, so he opened his window to let in better air, so he could breathe with ease again.

He got dressed in shorts and a shirt. The air had started to warm up enough to allow him to do that, as the May weather began to shape itself and take the effects of the winter away. Syler found himself observing his skin in a mirror, he had scathed and scarred knees, from an accident years ago on his bike, and loathed them usually. They reminded him of the design the hooded creature had on the back of it's jacket. Dreaming about the creature was enough for him really, and he'd rather not deal with it in the conscious world as well. Syler pulled a hoodie over his body, and he made his way into the kitchen. He poured a bowl of cereal as his mom walked in. He had been startled by the noise of her footsteps. He didn't take kindly to loud noises anymore, they startled his being, as loud noises were associated with the shadows in his mind. His mom had taken notice to the sudden flinch that his body had done.