Work Text:
He’s still conscious, half asleep, half awake, slowly caressing the imaginary barrier between his dreams and reality, feeling the slow and deliberate arrival of sleep. His breathe is unhurried, a continuous whistle. Melodious and rhythmic. He knew, even in his current state that they were there, surrounding his body over the bed.
The shadows.
They stared at him with no eyes or faces, one of them, the smallest, scratched the bed sheet. He supposed it was trying to climb and maybe something else but it never happened. Scratches became more intense; would it be a good idea to open his eyes?‘No’, and at that point he was more awake than asleep, feeling the shadows and those stares. Should he open his eyes? ‘No, try to sleep’. Yes, that was the correct way to proceed.
He tried again to fall asleep, there wasn’t any movement, which could have said he was thinking, overthinking of the shadows; but maybe they knew, did they really know? ‘I don’t care’. In fact he wasn’t scared, he was curious and that’s all, because after long periods of strange sensations, hunches, and fast blinking with the ridiculous idea of finding a figure, a real creature in the middle of darkness. He resolved that the shadows, those… things wouldn’t hurt him. Not yet, and not soon. He could stand it, he only needed to pretend nothing was happening, nothing strange, nothing abnormal, though.
At one time he felt scared, an uncontrollable fear growing from his chest up to his head made him feel uneasy, and dizzy, when he made eye contact with one of them. It was only a second but enough to force him to stay awake more time, two hours more.
Now, with the imaginary barrier half broken, his dreams started to come one by one while his body relaxed more and more. He only felt the shadows, the deep stares and the continuous scratches. They were three always. Deep in his mind he begged them not to change that number.
They were three, that’s all he could bear.