Spiral

Heave

Syler awoke abruptly in the middle of the night again, he was accustomed to this by now. Waking up at 3 am in his own sweat, or just panting, or from his heart almost beating out of his chest. Today was no exception, except when he awoke, he saw shadows all around his bed and he watched the hooded creature walk with it's same intensity. It was pacing the small area of the room by the door and the bathroom. It seemed to be staring at him with its' deep red eyes. Syler tried to turn his head, but he couldn't. Something was stopping him, it was as if he had no control over his body. It was paralyzed. His heart beat faster as the creature walked over to him, through his bed. He was relieved it wasn't real at least, just a hallucination. The creature seemed to try and grab Syler's throat. It did it with such haste, but Syler caught the smallest glimpse of the face under the hood, the creature was human-like underneath the hood. Syler also saw the clothes of the creature were just street clothes, a pair of black skinny jeans and a black hoodie. In the dreams it was very difficult to decipher through the shadows that the trees made along with everything else, and just the night sky as well. Syler finally got a glimpse of under the hood, even just the slightest glimpse of the creature's skin.

Suddenly, the shadows disappeared from the bedside and the creature vanished. Syler could move again, his limbs were free to move again and his mobility slowly returned. His heart began to calm down and the headache he seemed to have developed during the encounter started to diminish. He took a deep breath to calm himself down fully, but he knew that without a cigarette or something, he'd never fully calm down, so Syler got up from his bed. He almost lost his balance as his knees buckled and he had to grab onto the bed frame of his bed to stay upright before he found the strength to stay standing, and once he did he opened his window. Syler then grabbed his lighter and his package of cigarettes and sat on the roof again. He observed the way the way the clouds covered up the moon. It seemed so fast that the clouds came, as the sky was very clear a couple hours prior. Syler checked the time on his phone. 3:01. He always seemed to wake up at three, every night it seemed, or at least every other night. He hated it, but habits were hard to break anyway, and this whole experience, which he believed was sleep paralysis, had shaken him terribly. His hands were shaking slightly, still from the panic of the paralysis. He took a long inhale from the cigarette and let the nicotine calm his shaken system. He exhaled the smoke and watched it drift into the night sky. Syler ran his hand through his hair out of a nervous tick, and he was surprised at the handful of hair that fell out once his hand was back in the vicinity of his vision. Syler realized he was starting to truly damage himself on his downward spiral. Now his body was starting to catch up with his actions, and that pleased him, he was breaking himself inside and out.

Syler's hands stopped trembling after a good 20 minutes of trying to calm himself. He went through three cigarettes in that time, and coughed twice. Once he felt like he was even slightly human again he went back inside and shut his window. He made sure that his cigarettes were out and put them into a bag, making sure the bag was opaque so the evidence of his smoking habit would be hidden away. Syler knew that if his mom would find out she'd really not be the best of people to Syler, as she already threatened him with doctor's appointments and such. He didn't want anymore to go against him. So much was already turned against him, and in his mental state, he probably couldn't handle much more.

Syler started to feel a pain in his stomach, he truly couldn't identify what it was. It felt like hunger, but it was a burning as well, and it made Syler's heart beat faster out of panic. He didn't want food, and thought that eating at 3 am was ridiculous anyway. He hoped the burning would go away before he'd even touch the kitchen. Syler sat on his bed, and he wanted to pop some pain pills, but he knew he'd get hooked too fast, so he denied himself the medication. He curled up into a ball and hoped the pain would pass. Syler wasn't against the pain, he liked it somewhat, but he knew it couldn't last forever. He knew he'd have to give into it at one point. It started to become slightly unbearable, as if there was some flame in his stomach that was burning a hole through it. Syler finally gave up, he knew he had to do something about it, otherwise he feared he'd burn a hole through his stomach, so Syler got up. He walked to the kitchen, ignoring the shadows he swore were hiding in the dark of the house. He kept his vision forward, he forced his legs to move without uncertainty. He tried to be as quiet as he possibly could, making sure to wake no one up. Syler went into the kitchen and he contemplated what he wanted, nothing felt appetizing, yet he wanted to eat everything, so he heated up some leftover pasta, threw some cheese on top and made a couple of slices of bread with peanut butter. He took that back to his room, making sure to keep quiet, so no one would see him eating, as it gave him a sense of anxiety when others watched him, or even saw him.

Syler made it back to his room, and he sat on his bed, placing the food he had just made on his end table. Syler knew that it was disgusting to eat on his bed, but really, he didn't care at this point, nothing really mattered except to rid of the burning in his stomach, that had progressively gotten worse. He began to eat the pasta, and really, he loved it, he didn't really know why he feared food, or anything, all he wanted to do was eat, eat everything he could lay his hands on, but he knew that that would cause more stress. Syler looked at the large bowl of pasta, and really, it intimidated him, he didn't know if he was going to be able to finish it, but in the back of his mind he knew that if he didn't want it in his stomach he could just puke it up again. He didn't know why that thought crossed his mind as much as it did, but he began to stop questioning it. He knew he wasn't in the right of mind anymore. His speech would slur, it'd be slow sometimes. He'd have issues forming coherent sentences a lot, and they were getting harder to form. It took pretty much all of his effort to form anything that did make sense. This was frustrating to Syler, but he knew it was an effect from his spiraling mental state, and it would only get worse from here.

Syler finished the pasta in an ungodly fast time, and his stomach stopped burning, but he couldn't stop there, he knew he couldn't, his brain had seemed to take on this thought of "just eat everything, everything you can get your hands on". So Syler did, he finished the bread with the peanut butter on it, and he went back to the kitchen, grabbed a couple of granola bars, an apple, he made two bowls of cereal with milk, some oatmeal and he reached for a small bar of chocolate. Syler's heart was beating, he didn't know why all of a sudden he was eating everything, like nothing was ever enough, it scared him more than anything else. His stomach hurt from the volume, but he couldn't stop. Syler finished the whole ordeal off with some more bread and more cereal. He ate them slower, but still with haste, just wanting it all to be over with.

The minute that Syler finished this, his stomach felt insanely full and in pain. He swore he could just lean over and puke, so Syler did, he ran to his room, locked his bathroom door, and then he leaned over the toilet seat and pushed on his stomach, contorted his stomach muscles and he puked most of the food up in the toilet. It burnt coming back up, scratching his throat, and the taste wasn't much better, sour and bitter. Syler gagged on the taste, and that made him puke again, this time mostly bile and acid. Syler sat by the toilet, trying to catch his breath again. His heart was still beating at an all time high speed. Syler felt like he was dying in a sense.

He didn't know why he felt the need to force himself to puke, he didn't know why his body felt the need to eat everything. He didn't know anything, and this scared him. He didn't know what was going on with his body or his brain, or anything else. It all scared him. He was deteriorating at a rate that he couldn't keep up with anymore, and no one except Zane sort of knew what was going on. If Lauren saw this, Syler thought she'd think he was insane already, if his mom saw this, he'd be sent away, far away into a nuthouse, as he called it. The images of the hooded figure forcing the intestines out of the lady crossed into Syler's mind again as he began to feel more and more tired.

Syler then felt a calm start to wash over him as his heart began to calm down again. He stood up to wash the sour taste from his mouth. He felt giddy in a sense, as if he was high, he didn't know what from, but he assumed it was from the puking. He didn't know why it would make him feel better, but it did, and Syler knew this would truly destroy him one day. He knew his habits would kill him, and that's why he continued to do them. He didn't want to live with the shadows anymore, or the dreams, but he didn't want an immediate death. He wanted something slow, something painful, so Syler chose the path of self-sabotage, which would, without fail, one day kill him, but not without causing severe pain.