Graveyard Meadows (October 2019)

Graveyard Meadows

His apartment was built four feet under the ground. Graveyard Meadows was what Dan and Dee called their shared one bedroom apartment, a far more fitting name than its actual title of Sunshine Meadows. It was a dank, bug-infested place (at least the ground floor where they lived), with poor management and even poorer commodities. The kitchen sink regularly clogged for no reason, there was a wire sticking out of the stove-top, and a scalding hot drip in the bathtub had turned their bathroom into an environment akin to the Florida Everglades.

Sunset blared through the window into the cramped, dirty living room, the only time their apartment had adequate sunlight. Even that lasted sporadically, as the sun shifted through the trees in shaded and blinding intervals. Dan sat on the old leather couch, scratched and punctured to hell from years of use by Dee's cat, and watched the dust particles float through rays of deep yellow sunlight. A grey cat jumped on his lap and demanded his attention, so he scratched behind her ears.

From a seated position, he had to strain to look out the window, located four feet up at ground level with a sliver of ground covering the base of it. Dee came up with the name Graveyard Meadows, joking that they lived in one of its many shallow coffins. Some days, when the air felt heavy and he had one of his headaches, it felt like the truth. Today was one of those days.

Dan hadn't been sleeping well for weeks. Partially because he slept on the torn-up couch since Dee had the one bedroom, but he'd been living there for almost a year and it hadn't ever been this bad. He would wake up in a daze, or drenched in sweat, or gasping for breath so hard that he thought he was having an asthma attack even though he didn't have asthma. There was always a terrible pressure in his head, like his brain was inflating past his skull. And then there were the nightmares.

They were all the same. He woke up on the couch and colors filled his vision, popping and flashing over his eyes in the darkness. He couldn't move, but he would lift off the couch and float into the hallway, stiff as a corpse. The hallway would bend like he was cresting a hill and then keep bending and bending, never quite reaching the slope, until the walls and ceiling cracked and tore in half with a bone crunching snap and the dark liquid flooded through. It swept him away with a hard ocean wave, back down the hall, now shattered and corrupted with a purple sludge that oozed from every crack in the drywall.

Further and further down the endless, desecrated hallways the wave would take him until he smashed head-first into the wall behind him and crumpled to the floor. The wave soaked into the laminate wood flooring, staining it red. Then the creature appeared. It had no face and no shape. Sometimes, it was a dark grey figure splashing with thunderous steps through the thin waters of the flooded hallway and sometimes it was a snake gliding towards him, mouth unhinged to swallow him whole. Teeth, always the teeth. Mobs of needly fangs, disorganized but infinite, marching towards him. He tried to move, but his neck was snapped, so all he could do was twitch desperately at the base of the wall. It splashed towards him: dark, violent, sharp. All he could do was twitch.

No matter what form, it unhinged its jaws. It was worse in humanoid form. The million barbs ripped and tore into his flesh as it forced him down its throat. The teeth continued as far down as he went, expanding and contracting, forcing him further and further down. The further he went, the tighter the tunnel of teeth became until it was flaying the flesh from his body and then, finally, he stopped. The stomach compressed, sending teeth into his body at every angle, squeezing tighter and tighter and tighter....

And that's when he'd wake up, gasping for breath and sweating profusely, with a dull, throbbing pain in his temple.

Dee always tried to psychoanalyze his dreams. Her current theory was that he felt like the stress of adult life was swallowing him whole and his dreams were mirroring that. It made sense to him, but that didn't make the experience any less terrifying. He found himself staying awake longer, whether it be to binge a new show or read or drink with friends. The nightmares only plagued him when he got a full night's sleep, so that's what he avoided.

But the headaches haunted his waking hours.

Tonight, everyone he knew was busy. It was the end of his pay period, so he was out of gas and had no money for random adventures. Instead, he played video games to keep himself awake, and then scrolled Twitter, then YouTube, then Twitter again, then Instagram, until he was in a fog of text and images. The fog didn't bother him, but it wasn't stimulating either. It was a distraction. Every time he thought about sleep, his fingers tapped on an app and brought him back in the mire. Dee emerged at around 12:30 and flipped the lights off, but he sat in darkness for another hour by the light of his phone until it died.

And then the darkness swallowed him.

Dan woke up and it was all around him. The only reprieve was a sliver of harsh yellow light from the streetlamp. The cat was laying on his feet. He tried to sit up to see her, but couldn't move his head. It was then he realized a numb static had spread throughout his body like when his legs fell asleep, but all over. His body wouldn't respond to him and he started to panic. The weight on his feet stirred, and from across the room, he heard the distinct hissing of a cat.

The form shifted in the darkness and now he could see for certain it wasn't the cat. A long, solid shadow draped unnaturally over the arm of the couch. It had no features in the darkness, but it was shifting quietly on the leather. A sickly grey hand reached up the couch and sank its sharp white claws into the leather cushion. Instinct told him to back away, but his body wouldn't respond. His breath caught in his lungs and his chest tightened. It clenched tighter, ripping deeper into the couch, and dragged the shadow further up his legs. Another clawed hand slammed into the side of the cushion by his numb arm and pulled a naked, monstrous creature into the light.

It had an over-sized head, more mouth than anything else, and it's grey skin was pocked with black holes that funneled down endlessly. It's torso was emaciated, with skin gripped tight around criss-crossing bones that covered his chest like chain-link fencing. The top of its body was human-like, with a head, torso, and arms, but the lower portion was a smooth, elongated body like a snake. The rest of it was hidden behind the couch, but there seemed to be no end to the body as it continued to crawl its way on top of him. When enough of the snakeish body was on the couch, its claws loosened and it slithered up his legs, never lifting its head.

The weight of the creature crushed his chest, so heavy that he was afraid it would break bone. Breathing came harder and adrenaline flooded through his veins with nowhere to go. The creature came face-to-face with him. It's head was unnaturally angular with a fanged mouth that took up half its face and large white eyes with no eyelids. They were staring through him. Sweat dripped down his forehead and into his eyes, blurring his vision, but he couldn't blink to wipe it away.

It reared up and opened its mouth. The teeth. They filled its mouth in rows and columns and random stragglers between. One of the teeth pushed out, sending grey blood trickling out of the creature's mouth and onto Dan's forehead. Further and further it emerged from its gums until the bone gave way to a transparent appendage that looked like a jellyfish tentacle. It wriggled out of the creature's mouth like a curious newborn and wormed through the air. The little tooth-tipped tentacle found his forehead, circled his skin, and then sank in. All at once, the rest of its teeth shot out into tentacles and encircled his head, lodging into his brain and eyes.

The tentacles pulsed, compressing and expanding like they were sucking in air, but instead a faint luminescent liquid was flowing out of his body and into its mouth. The liquid illuminated the creature with an angelic aura and for a second, it was a beautiful spirit, and a strange calm came over him. He accepted what it was doing, embraced it even. Feeling returned to his body with a rush of endorphins and he could move again, but he didn't. The creature's teeth were like acupuncture needles in his head, relieving the pressure and stress that had built up for so long. When it was done, maybe he wouldn't feel anything at all.

As soon as it had come, the monster was gone. The teeth and tentacles were gone and he sat up. The hard pressure in his head was gone, but he couldn't tell if he was relieved or not. He went to the bathroom and threw up, but didn't feel the usual disgust he felt after vomiting. There was something peaceful about that. He didn't feel the pressure to feel anything, nor did he judge himself for it.

He examined his head in the mirror, but found no marks. In fact, his skin looked radiant, like he'd just come back from a day at the spa. He went back to the couch and slept without troubles. When he woke up the next morning, Dee asked him how he felt. Perfect, he told her. But in truth, he felt nothing at all.