STORY 1

They Sleep At The Foot Of Our Beds

I still can’t sleep, it’s after midnight and there is literally someone, I feel but cannot see, lying in my bed with me and breathing heavily in my face.

The hot breath in my face is real and it smells rank like rotten eggs and blood. The blankets I am cowering under are soft and warm and I’m not dreaming. I’m wide awake and I feel sick and the fact I can feel all of my senses means I am fully alert and this is real.

I’ve been physically sick every single day since I lost them both and I swear this thing is slowly draining me of my life force.

I don’t know what this thing is going to do to me and now that I am lying wide awake, sleep deprived and wondering how long it will take for my body to be found, all I can do is reflect on how I got here.

As long as I have been a little girl I have felt stalked by something. A man, and I don’t know what he is but I sometimes wonder if he is not human. Since having cats I have felt a little safer, the man seems to be kept at bay and I can only feel his presence when I am stressed or tired.

When we sleep our guards are down, we are vulnerable to anything and we are exposed to all kinds of dangers but we don’t know it.

Perhaps there may be a white tip spider crawling in our sheets waiting to bite us as we move in our sleep, perhaps we left a heater on and may be at risk of carbon monoxide poisoning? Who is to say that dangers are always those we know when there are also dangers out of this world that science cannot explain?

Sensitive types, pets and those who are close to death may feel these types of energies like us and some entities may like our energy and stalk us until we have nothing left.

I haven’t felt safe since both my cats passed away, there is something currently tormenting me and I don’t know what it is and what it wants. I don’t think it’s even human.

I used to see this figure as a little girl and it used to run at me from the corner of my eyes whenever I was focused on my schoolwork. Whenever I turned my head to look at it it would disappear in a flash but the way it had moved at me was too real.

I couldn’t have been hallucinating and whenever I saw it I felt a sense of dread. I used to sleep so much better when both of my cats were living with me, but they passed away a few weeks ago and not only am I grieving them and missing them immensely but I am feeling vulnerable spiritually.

I feel suggestible to psychic attacks and now that both of my cats are gone I haven’t been feeling safe happy or safe since.

My cats used to watch over me as I slept, my youngest used to always sleep by my feet, which in hindsight I learnt was a protective gesture. She slept at my feet because she was protecting me from something and now I am starting to remember what she was protecting me from.

Though she had been a tiny white and beautiful cat she felt fiercely protective of me. My eldest pure black cat only brought me joy and happiness and she used to see and react to things that I couldn’t see.

They were both beautiful and very intuitive rescue cats, I saved them and they saved me.

Sometimes when we had all been cuddling together they both used to look behind me and start growling and hissing at something that had been directly behind me. Some nights my neighbors motion activated floodlight had been triggered but there was nothing in sight, yet something set off the sensor.

One day I woke to find the front window of my car smashed and I had no recollection of who would do something like that. All I had was my instinct that night that there was someone stalking me and waiting for me outside of my unit and that night my cats had been guarding me

A former partner once claimed that a spirit of a little girl was protecting me against a bad man and that had been too much of a creepy confidence for me to ignore. He’d told me he saw her hovering over me and patting my cheek softly as I peacefully slept. I’ve since moved on and though her spirit never followed me to my new house, the man she was trying to protect me from did.

After losing both cats I feel I can’t breathe and on a good day I stumble through my day but my appreciation for life and creativity is gone and I can’t face my loved ones. I had lost my eldest first and my youngest second, they weren’t close but they still enjoyed each other’s company enough to get on, rub noses, share food and sleep in close proximity.

All I can do now is reflect; I can’t sleep or get comfortable so I am forced to reflect. I feel like a failure and I’m trying to tune out the cruel presence haunting me and I am trying to ignore its heavy breathing in my ear.

The heavy breathing is predatory, almost taunting as if he is daring me to try and fall asleep. I hug my soft pillows to my chest and heave and sob heavily, I know this thing is going to break my mind before it kills me.

I reflect on my family and friends, on my work mates who are the only ones I see now. They heard about my cats passing through my loved ones and had noticed I’d stopped smiling and laughing. Everyone noticed but no one knew how to approach me or knew what to say, they wanted to help but they knew I was broken.

My grief is the price to pay for years of happy memories and a happiness I’d never known without my cats but I can’t justify why this thing is literally breathing down my neck now.

I know I’m not going to be able to sleep tonight and I wonder if I will be remembered as a good person. I haven’t returned calls from family or friends and I know they have been worried about me.

I try to sense the presence of my cats but I can’t feel them and I would give anything to have them cuddled up with me instead of this thing. I’m consumed by anger and grief and he’s all I sense and he doesn’t intend to comfort me.

I reflect on my encounters with this thing over the course of the last few days. He has been hunting me for some time and he is forcing me to accept that I am now his. He is only toying with me and I know he won’t leave me alone until he has claimed me as his own.

Only hours before I had been in the shower and suddenly I got a gust of