Approaching the Void

To be quite honest, I don't know what is happening to me.  The last two days have left me questioning my memory, and quite frankly, my own sanity.  I don't fully believe what I am experiencing is real, but the more I question it, the more I can feel my grasp on reality slipping.

I am currently sequestered in my bathroom, wrapped up in blankets in my bathtub.  This is the only place I really feel safe, and I feel I am on the verge of passing out.

At least I will be comfortable in my nest of blankets and pillows.

This is all going to come off as the ramblings of a madman, but I need to write this down, in hopes that someone can read this as help me figure out what the hell is happening to me.  But I will start at the beginning of all of this, when a star fell to Earth.

Two days ago, I was walking home from work.  I work as a warehouse manager for a facility that's four blocks away from my house.  About half way home, I cut through a park.  It is the quickest way to cut the distance and I do this every day.

Well, at least I did.

As I was crossing through the park I started to hear a droning, whistling noise.  I stopped and looked around, but there wasn't anyone or anything near by.  I shrugged this off and continued walking.  The whistling got louder and lower in pitch.  I was getting quite uncomfortable and started walking quicker towards the approaching street.  I clasped my hands to my ears in hopes of quieting the noise.  The volume got to a near deafening state, well past the point that covering my ears was helping.  I stopped moving, feeling unable to do so.

That's when the ground shook beneath me, and I found myself airborne.

I only went into the air a foot or so, but I ended up on my stomach, wincing and cursing as I hit the ground.  I quickly stood up, looking around to see if there was any evidence of what just happened.  To my surprise, the cars on the street ahead were still driving, as if the ground didn't just violently shake.  I looked behind me at the parallel street to my back.  Things seemed normal there as well.

That's when I saw the smoke.

Less than ten feet behind me, there was a smoking crater in the ground.  The crater must have been less than two feet in diameter, but it was smoking like a campfire that just had water thrown on it.  To my surprise, there wasn't any fire in the wrecked ground.  But there was a faint purple glow coming from the smoke.

I approached the crater, curiosity over taking my common sense.  What I found was unlike anything I saw.  It was a shard of some kind of obsidian.  I say some kind, because regular obsidian doesn't have bright green veins running through it.  The longer I looked at it, I noticed that the glow was coming from within it.

Against my better judgment, I reached out to pick it up.  I closed my hand around it, to pick it up out of the ground, but when I lifted, the shard stayed in the ground.  I let out a surprised noise as I felt a pain in my hand and I stepped back.  The thing was so sharp that it sliced my palm and fingers open as I attempted to lift it up.  The cut was slight enough, almost like a paper cut.  The second I looked at my hand, blood started seeping out.

I left immediately and continued my way home, walking faster than normal, as if that would make this weird event go away.  When I got home, I disinfected my hand, bandaged it up, and continued on with my night as I normally would.

The night was normal enough, but as I was laying in bed that night, I couldn't help but feel like something was wrong, even though everything seemed normal.

I ended up falling asleep, but I did not dream.  This is very unlike me.  

The next morning was fairly routine.  Woke up, got ready, went to work.  On my way to work, I went my usual route.  Not only because it is quicker, but because I wanted to check out the 'crash site' again.  I brought a thick pair of gloves, a pair of tongs and a plastic container.  I didn't want to get cut again, but I sure as hell wanted the shard.

To my disappointment, the shard was gone.  

Well actually, everything was gone.  Upon my first inspection, the entire field was filled with bright, green grass.  I couldn't believe it, the mere idea that it was all in my head gave me a headache.  I looked at my hand and I saw the slight mark left from the previous evening.

There is no way I imagined it.  I couldn't accept that.

I paced around, looking for where it fell.  I felt insane, looking for a crater that wasn't there.  I came close to giving up, the sense of failure seeming into my core as I started to walk away.

But that is when I saw it.

I saw that patch of grass.  The patch that looked slightly different than the others.  The blades were pointed in a different direction from the others.  The green was a slightly different tint than the others.  I walked up to it and I found the edge of the newly placed sod.  Underneath was a messy patch of dirt that was lightly packed into the crater.

There it was, the validation that would restore my sanity.

The shard was gone, but I walked away with the satisfaction that I didn't imagine the veiny shard that fell from the sky.  I decided to leave it at that.  I continued my walk to work, wondering what happened, but not concerning myself with it too much.  Some kids probably picked it up, and the old man on the corner probably filled in the crater.  However I rationalized it to myself, it was enough for me.

Work went well that day.  Everything was normal until an hour before the end.  I noticed a bit of an ache in my hand.  It wasn't anything major, but it was noticeable.  Now, I work with my hands all day, so it isn't unusual for them to ache after a full day's work.  Also, I had a cut on my hand that I got less than 24 hours ago.  So naturally, I didn't pay attention to it.  The longer I worked, the more my hand ached, and eventually it started to itch.  The itching sensation grew to cover most of my hand, but by this time I was almost done my shift.  I walked to my locker and took off my equipment and what I saw was the biggest surprise I had ever had up until that point.

My hand had purple splotches all over it.

It looked like a rash all over the surface of my hand, a patch here, a patch there.  It was bumpy and raw, with a couple large boils.  The boils looked to be filled with some sort of dark substance.  But the most unusual part was that the raw, exposed skin was a violet/indigo colour.  It was unlike anything he had ever seen, and it hurt like hell.

I left work and headed straight home, keeping my hand in my pocket the entire time.  It itched in there, but it burned slightly when exposed to the fresh air.  Felt a little like a sunburn, with the surface area stinging lightly.  So I kept it covered until I got home.  I covered it with a topical cream that eased the pain and hopefully promote healing.

As it was covered and pretty immobile, I googled 'purple rash' and surprise, surprise, nothing came up.  I slept uneasy that night, worried that I would hit my hand and cause me even more pain.  I did, and it hurt like hell.

I thought this was the worst thing that could have happened to me, but I was wrong.  It wasn't that night. 

It happened when I was sleeping in bed the next night.  My eyes shot open and I found myself staring at the ceiling, watching the blades on my ceiling fan spin, creating a strobe of shadows.  I turned my head to the side and saw the clock read 4:14 AM.  I tried to turn over, but I couldn't.  It felt like my limbs and torso were tied down to the bed, yet, I could move my head still.

The words 'sleep paralysis' came to my mind.

I had heard of this happening to people, friends, and strangers online.  Your mind wakes up, but your body is still locked in sleeping.  Seems to be fairly common, although when I've heard of it, people can't move at all.  Yet I could move my head still.

I suppose it affects everyone differently.

But this wasn't sleep paralysis.

I heard a rustling in the corner of the room, so I tried to see what made the noise.  Originally, I thought that the draft from the fan moved something in the corner, but that wouldn't explain the faint purple glow I saw.  The glow only lasted for a few moments, then it was gone.  I knew that sleep paralysis could cause hallucinations, but still, I started feeling a tad paranoid.  I turned my head from side to side, trying to see if there was anything else I could see.  Any other purple.  But it was at this point that I noticed something that put chills down my spine and a sweat on my head.

The room was completely silent.

I couldn't hear the breeze outside, the hum of the fan turning, the ambient creaks that houses make in the cool nights.  Hell, I couldn't hear my head swishing against the pillowcase when I turned my head.  I could feel my heartbeat getting faster and faster as the panic squeezed itself into my chest.  My head and hair grew damp as I tried to thrash my body awake.  No matter how hard I tried, the only things I could control were my neck, eyes, and breathing.

I couldn't even hear my damn breathing.

It was amidst this panic that I felt something on my feet.  I stopped moving my head and stared at my feet, a sense of dread setting in.  All I saw was a dark, blob-like shape on my feet.  It felt heavy for its size, and I could feel shifting, crawling sensations on my feet.  The longer I stared at that thing, the more it shifted, subtly changing its shape.

Surely, this was another figment of my paralyzed state.

That's what I thought, until it lunged at me.  It shot up my horizontal body.  The farther up it went, the more the crawling sensations grew, leaving them in its wake.  It wasn't until it reached my chest that I saw what this was.

Or, more accurately, what part of it was.

It wasn't a blob, it was a mass of unfurling tentacles.  It was dark, so I don't know much more than that.  But when it reached my head, that's when it entered me.

At first, it was only my ears.  The tentacles were soft, and not slimy.  The wiggled their way into my ears, and into my skull.

I felt them envelope my brain.

I felt them squeeze.

The headache it produced was tremendous.  If I could have screamed out in pain, I would have.  With my ears plugged, I could finally hear something, my heartbeat.  It was beating so fast it could have been mistaken for a drum-line, or an automatic rifle.  As I sat there in agony, I felt two more tendrils enter my nostrils, plugging my airways, snaking themselves down my trachea.  I tried to stay calm and not panic away my dwindling supply of air.

It was in vain, as they worked their way to my lungs, and slowly worked their way through them, choking out any little bit of air inside.

That is when my body finally reacted.  My mouth tore itself open in an attempt to gasp for air.

That's when the final tentacle made its way inside of me.

It shot into my mouth and down my esophagus.  My body fought this and tried to gag and force it out.  Suffice it to say that this didn't work.  The tentacle worked its way inside of my body, and encircled by heart.

I couldn't breath, couldn't think, and now it felt like thin, worm-like fingers were grasping my heart and squeezing slowly.  Black spots started to encroach my vision, quickly filling it completely.

I was sure I died.  Maybe I did, if only for a moment.

I was no longer in my room.  Hell, I don't think I was on Earth any more.  Where ever I was, I never want to go back.  I have tried my best to remember details about this place, even draw it out, but my attempts have been in vain.  When I try to recall this place in too much detail, I get a splitting headache and my nose starts to bleed, like a person living in my sinuses fully opens a faucet.

What I can remember is this:

There were towering, helixed structures that pierced the sky.

The sky was made up of large, unblinking eyes, and wide, gaping mouths.

The air smelled of fear and tasted of agony.

There were hordes of faceless, formless beings marching in endless lines.

Lastly, there was a being of incredible height, who's head sat in the clouds..  It was a mass of claws, tentacles and ectopic organs that I didn't recognize.

Everything about this place was wrong, like my mind couldn't handle what it was seeing.  As if I was approaching insanity just by looking upon it.

But I woke up from this nightmare of nightmares.

When I awoke the next morning, I felt great.  For the first time in a while, I felt completely rested.  I hopped out of bed and stretched with great sigh.  I picked up my phone to check for any missed messages and emails, but I saw something that made me drop my phone.  Not only did I have numerous missed calls from my work and from friends, but I had over 3 dozen unanswered texts.

This was because I woke up 2 days after I went to sleep.

All of this happened as I was dropping my phone, and by the time it hit the floor, the sleep paralysis and the night terror came back to me.  The peace that I awoke to soon turned into a far off memory.  I fell to the floor in an attempt to pick up my phone.  As I reached for it, I saw that my hand was no longer purple as it was before I went to sleep.

I regained my composure and stood up, going to the bathroom.  I needed to see if there was anything wrong with me.  I walked to the bathroom, but I had to force myself to go into it.  When I did though, I just saw myself.  I ran my hands over my face and body, and everything felt normal.

Maybe it was all just a terrible, terrible dream?

But it wasn't.  I know that now.

I tried then to remember the dream for the first time.  I got the information I listed above, and I also got my first splitting headache.  What happened while I got the headache though, is what really disturbed me.

As I was getting that headache, I saw something moving under my skin.  It looked like multiple wormy tendrils, squirming around.  They were moving through my neck and around my temples.  The pain was intense, and it made me stop trying to remember what happened.  As soon as I did that, the pain stopped and the tendrils retreated into my torso.

I am very scared for my safety and I have no idea what to do next.  I feel like I am losing my mind and my grip on reality.

Maybe I am?

Cody S