[Context: This actually happened to me. I'm schizoaffective and was homeless in Portland during an extended psychotic break where I thought I was being trained by the CIA for a mission. I thought I wasn't allowed to sleep, and that let me to come face to face with true manifestations of horror after staying up for four days. This is actually chapter twenty-three of a larger project, but I wanted to share because I think I did a good job telling some of the scariest moments of my life. I hope you enjoy!]

I don't quite remember the next day, as I had gone three nights without sleep at this point. I was hallucinating like crazy. At one point, I stared at a sign outside a store when my faith was running out, and the words morphed to say "Trust God." My cup was refilled in that moment, and for the next hour, I thought about and tested if the CIA was beaming thoughts into my head.

Then it was night. I was not doing well. I remember nodding out for fractions of a second as I walked across the Hawthorne Bridge. I actually had to hold onto the steel railing at one point to avoid falling into the street where cars were rolling with a racket as they crossed over the metal grates that constituted the road. But, with pure grit, I made it to the branching path that allowed pedestrians to descend to the stretch of park on the eastbank of the river.

I was really out of it. I couldn't keep a thought straight. Running entirely on fumes, I shambled up the path on autopilot. If God didn't give me the command to sleep, I was going to lose it or collapse into a coma, if not both.

At some point, I got the notion that I was being followed. I turned around and there was a man who stopped with me, but carried on when he saw I wasn't going to let him stalk me. He drifted into the shadows ahead of me. But, that notion and fear of being followed persisted, and that's when I saw them.

Shadow people. Just black voids in the shape of a human body, maybe two hundred meters away. There were three of them, possibly more. However, they were just standing there. I blinked. They moved. My mind summoned the likeness of the Weeping Angels of Doctor Who fame. I stared as long as I could while backing up. I couldn't help it. I blinked again, and they all teleported several meters closer to me.

It's hard to convey the terror I felt in that moment. My mind addled by sleeplessness, thoughts barely drifting into the realm of coherence, I regressed to pure animal instinct. Calling what I experienced a fight or flight response is an understatement that could win an award. This was the pinnacle of catastrophic doom, the likes of which could only be born in Hell. But, here it was, this cruel scenario of imminent agony after crawling out of some demonic pit in search of a soul to haunt with its rabid despair, and it had picked me to wrap its fetid hands around.

I had walked backwards maybe fifty meters when I tripped and instinctively looked behind me. I realized my mistake instantly. As I whipped my exhausted head forwards, I saw that the shadow people were substantially closer. If they were real people, I could see the whites of their eyes. These were the furthest thing from real people though. They were just figments, but how can figments cause this much dread?

My heart racing, I couldn't help myself. The trials of the last few days combined with the shock this sudden trepidation must have had on my system sent my blood pressure dropping. I remember my vision fading into patterns like if you pushed on your eyes, and then I felt myself fall backwards. I hit my head, I know that, but I didn't feel it. I was out.

For how long, I don't know. I just remember sitting up and suddenly remembering the danger I was in. I whipped my head around in every direction while getting back on my feet, readying myself to run, or if I had to, fight. But there was nothing. I was alone for the first time in what felt like forever.

I carried on, saying fuck it, I was going to find that spot from the first day and let sleep take me over. Only the night had one more surprise for me.

It happened underneath a bridge. Which one, I don't know, but it was dark where the yellow halogen lights couldn't reach. I was still alarmed, keeping my eyes peeled for more shadow people, but it crept up on me in the darkness.

What crept up on me? Only if the words existed could I tell you. The best description I can muster must call it an eldritch abomination of epic proportions that not even H. P. Lovecraft could conjure up and put on paper. It was the size of a Volkswagen, at least I think it was. It didn't have a definable shape, as it had tendrils and appendages sticking out at all angles, with no rhyme or reason to where they manifested from on the grotesque, puke-colored body that lurked beneath the outer edge of this creature's bizarre form. I saw no eyes, but I knew that it knew I was there, because it was gliding ever closer to me.

The shadow people were ants compared to this beast. All hope was gone. I was going to die, if not worse. I collapsed to my knees and prayed to God, offering to do anything, anything at all to escape this fate. My life flashed before my eyes and I thought of every mistake and transgression and sin that I had ever done or made. In that moment, I was the epitome of sorrow. I wept.

But then, just as the abomination reached me, it went off to the side of me and kept gliding. A man was behind it, seemingly pushing the hellspawn along. He stared at me, confused, but ultimately ignoring me. Then he reached the edge of the bridge's shadow, and I saw that the anathema of horror I had just come face to face with was actually that man's shopping cart, which was packed to the brim with a random assortment of things he had collected.

I sat there a minute or two, just feeling how I felt. I was relieved, but the gripping fangs of fear lingered for some time. I would then get up, finish my walk to the secluded spot I found behind the bushes, and try to sleep. It wasn't happening. I was too spooked, but around noon of the next day, my body gave up, and I slept like a boulder in a parking lot until it was dark out. I was allowed to sleep on a regular schedule from that point on, except when the CIA sent me on specialized missions, which were pretty frequent, but having survived a face to face encounter with the most unfathomable denizen of Hell, they were a cakewalk, comparatively.