Uninvited

Chapter One|Haunted

George has had sleep paralysis for as long as he can remember.

At first, he didn't know what it was. In the first ten years of his life, he thought it was normal to see a dark figure in the corner of your eye when you fell asleep. He thought it was normal to have your eyes open and not be able to move. He thought that was just how sleeping worked.

It was eleven years old he found out he literally couldn't have been more wrong. When he was eleven, he asked his friends how close their sleep buddy was, because, ya see, his sleep paralysis demon seemed to take a step closer to him every year. He was just a couple more steps away. This was normal to him.

His little group of friends was confused and worried when he told them about the masked man with the horns. They said he was crazy, that he should tell the teacher about it.

When he did, the next month, he was prescribed medication. Let's just say his 'sleep paralysis demon' didn't like that so much. Or, at least, that's what George thought because the dream he had that night had haunted him for the rest of his life.

He was in a pitch-black place, no light at all except the light coming from those eyes. Those huge, confusing, owlish eyes.

Two inches from his face, a pair of wide, unsettling, unblinking eyes stared into his. No matter where he turned, the eyes would follow. No matter where he looked, there they were.

It chilled him to the bone. Childhood him woke up screaming, his head pounding. There was nothing good about that. There was something different about that nightmare.

Well, it was the first of many.

He's had every single nightmare you could dream of, literally. He meant it when he said that. For ten years he's had nightmares. For ten years he's been exhausted. For ten years he's been diagnosed with insomnia.

He stays up for days at a time, because the exhaustion is better than the horrid things he sees in his sleep.

When he was fifteen, he got his first pair of en chroma glasses. They were a gift from his grandfather, and the man seemed superstitious as he handed them to him. At that time, George didn't understand why.

When he slipped those glasses on, he understood, but he didn't say it out loud. He put on those glasses, and when he saw green in the grass, the trees, his mother's shirt, he had to choke down a scream.

He lifted shaking hands to his face and took them off, hooking them on his shirt collar and thanking his grandfather profusely, even though he couldn't be more terrified.

He had seen green and red before. He'd seen green and red in his nightmares. He'd seen that thing's eyes and his own blood more times than he could count.

Maybe that's why he always woke up with a splitting headache.

For the first time in his life, that night, he didn't dream at all. When he woke up, the lenses of the en chroma glasses had been scratched to shit. He had to throw them out after that.

Whatever this thing was? It was possessive over the colors he could see and couldn't see. Or at least, it definitely seemed that way.

The rare nights he got sleep were the most jarring of them all. On these nights, there would be scratches on his window sill, tears in his mattress. They happened probably twice a year, and he always aced his tests for maybe a week before exhaustion would kick in again.

When he was diagnosed professionally with insomnia, he, of course, got medication. He took it for about a week. In this week, he was jumpy as all hell, didn't trust anyone, barely spoke, and was scared to even breathe. He probably doesn't need to say that he stopped taking it after that.

His mom was angry. She could tell he wasn't getting enough sleep. She could tell something was seriously wrong with him.

Any time she'd lift a hand up he'd flinch away. She always chewed him out for it, saying that she was his damn mother and that she should be the least of his worries.

His mother said a lot of things, but if what she said stung, then what his dad said was like placing white-hot metal on your heart like a brand.

George always tried his absolute hardest not to think about the poisonous things his dad would tell him when the nights were quiet.

His dad never drank, or smoked. He was a working husband. His mother never complained, and always cooked. George was a straight-A student. They were a nuclear family.

But you know how it is. No family is perfect behind closed doors.

Most animals tend to hate George. Dogs would snarl and bark, no matter how docile they usually were. Cats would try to turn him into mincemeat and only would leave once the blood started to stink up the air a bit too much for their liking.

Cat was the only exception he had ever known. George knows Cat is really uncreative for a cat's name, but honestly, the night he met him, George was too tired to give a single shit.

He was walking home on one of his more exhausting days. The day that he knew he would have to give in and sleep because he really fucking needed it.

Cat followed him all the way to the house without being noticed, and when he finally was noticed, George was too delirious and touch starved, aka in need of a cuddle buddy, to realize it probably wasn't smart to let a stray cat into his house.

They slept together all afternoon, and through till the morning. Of course, Cat was kicked and thrown around a couple of times, but he had more patience than any other animal George had ever met.

George frowned as he traced his fingers through Cat's fur. Tonight was another one of those nights. He sighed.

George would do almost anything to sleep peacefully for the rest of his life.