You #CreatureFeature [Finalist]

You #CreatureFeature

I am certain that at one point the skin beneath my eyes used to match the light-brown of the rest of my body. But, one morning I found a mild pink instead, and yet another morning I found a dark violet resided beneath my two eyes. A dark purple that I imagine belongs to the infinity of space now makes home of the flesh on either side of my nose. Even now in the dark, staring at the mirror that stands before my bed, I can clearly mark where the brown ends and the purple begins.

I cover the skin below my eyes as I slightly shift my head to the left to check the time. I no longer want to look at myself because, in essence, I am the only one to blame for the plums underneath my eyes. I neglect to sleep even though I know I must wake up early; I neglect to sleep even if it means barely-living off of the fumes of five hours of sleep -- if it's a good night, which it rarely is.

I do not want to sleep because I do not want to end the day; once asleep, I do not want to wake up because I do not want to begin a new day.

Seventeen past two ante meridiem, the reflected red numbers glare back at me. Sleep hovers over me, but I can probably avoid it for another three hours. I sigh, and return my vision to my reflected self.

My hands leave my face, and throw the blanket off of my body when in the mirror I notice something moving underneath the covers, but I know the movement is not my doing. I expect hands to throw themselves around my neck, or suction-cupped tentacles to wrap around my torso, or an alien-spider to jump and cling onto my face.

Death follows each scenario my mind paints.

But I just find my bare chest rising and falling rapidly, and my bare toes curled towards the soles of my feet as I await a scare, but there is none. Only I lay in bed, rather stiffly as the fear lies on me, and a naked mattress rests beneath me.

The lack of sleep is getting to me, I exhale, and freeze again when I go to look at myself in the mirror. Cold shivers crawl up my back, and stay, taking away the usual warmth of my body.

Where my reflection should be, I find my blanket instead... or at least it resembles my blanket, my real blanket leans over the edge of the bed. It's as if I threw it over my head, but if I did, I would not be able to see what the mirror reflects because the blanket is of a thick wool. Yet the blanketed form stands in the mirror, and I can see it as clearly as the darkness of night allows.

The cold that holds me down washes away as the strange figure in the mirror drags to the left and sits beside me. Although I cannot physically see it outside of the mirror, I can feel the icy temperature it holds radiating towards me.

I find enough courage to sit up, but that is all I manage to do. As soon as my back hits the wall, my hands clench the mattress, and I stay there, staring forward, eyeing the figure. Feeling incapable of movement, and of breathing normally — my scared heart fills the otherwise silence with its panicked thumping. And my breath rushes past my teeth harshly as if I had just gotten back from a run around the globe.

The blanket the form wears begins to slide away, and I am certain this is the end. My fear escapes me momentarily as I start to picture what may come with the afterlife, but the same thought drags the terror back into my senses.

The false, reflected blanket slides off of the strange figure and somehow aligns itself with how my real blanket actually is, and behind it leaves... me.

The thing wears my face and dons my body. Except where my pupils are open wide, his eyes are closed, yet his head tilts towards me, giving me the impression that he is looking at me from behind his shut eyelids. My mouth mimics a snake and fights to not become a frown, while his is spread into a smile -- my smile. The smile I wear when I am happy; now he wears it and it oozes that sense of friendliness I usually intend with it, along with a new touch of creepy. And his body, my mirrored body, radiates cold, while mine barely gives off heat as fear freezes me over.