The Doctor's Demons by Maria Abrams

Author:Maria Abrams [Abrams, Maria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CLASH Books

I slept poorly that night, as I did most nights. My thoughts kept returning to Elena.

“I can still feel them.”

Those words were haunting me as I laid awake in my bed.

The sensation of skin crawling is a typical side effect of some drugs. Maybe that’s what she’s feeling. But she said she also felt them five years ago. She wasn’t doing drugs then.

Around two, I gave up on the idea of sleep and decided to get up and watch television. After some deliberation as to what I would watch, I opted for old episodes of I Love Lucy. I found myself watching a lot of classic comedy shows and films at the time. It seemed to be the only genre that was bubbly enough to not be triggered. The sometimes-rampant sexism, I could overlook.

Lucy and Ethel were intertwined in one of their many shenanigans as I tried to get comfortable on the sofa. The combination of black-and-white imagery and light-heartened dialogue was doing the trick to relax me, and I found myself starting to doze off.

I drifted between wakefulness and sleep, occasionally trying to watch a scene or two before the weight of my eyelids grew too heavy to keep open. My whole body relaxed and began to feel cooler from no longer needing to expend as much energy. I floated into the trance-like state our brains go to before dreaming.

“Play with me.” A voice whispered piercingly in my ear.

I could feel the cold breath on my skin as it spoke.

My body bolted upright. I looked around the room. The glow from the television lit up the furniture in whites and grays, but I didn’t see anything unusual.

At first, I attributed the voice to hypnagogia – the state of consciousness between being awake and dreaming where hallucinations and voices feel as though they’re in the real world. But I knew better.

The voice I heard was real. And it was inviting me to follow.

Immediately after getting off the sofa, I turned on as many lights as I could. Facing these apparitions was harder in the dark. They didn’t care if the room was lit or not, and I wasn’t sure if they could even tell, so I made it easier on myself.

There was nothing in the living room, and as I made my way to the kitchen, I heard the sound of footsteps.

Patpatpatpat

The footsteps were running from the hallway into my bedroom. They sounded small, their cadence quick, like a child’s.

It wants me to go to the bedroom.

The hallway was short and led to my one bedroom in the back of the home. As I made my way to the room, I could hear a soft grating sound as though someone were scratching at the floor.

I paused before going through the open bedroom door. Whatever wanted me to play with it was in that room, ready to be seen.

I took one step into the dark space and saw a huddled mass sitting on the ground. It was hunched over into a ball, looking down onto the floor.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.