I remember where I was when I first realized he doesn’t appear for other people.

It was in school when our teacher asked us to draw our dreams. She told us that dreams are the things we see when we’re in bed at night, so my young mind could be forgiven for misinterpreting her vagaries. When I showed her the picture, when I showed my classmates, no one really seemed to recognize it. My teacher said complimented me on my ability to draw shapes and put them together, everyone else just said they’ve never seen anything like that when questioned.

In retrospect, asking people about him was probably what took it to the next level. It was that night where he got more aggressive. Before that night, he was simply a chill I’d occasionally feel, a formless movement out of the corner of my eye. There was only one exception, when I woke up from a sudden blaring of a car alarm across the street, I caught him peering at me from next to the bed. His face was an oval, a mass of wrinkled flesh utterly devoid of detail or any apparent function. The joints that made up his neck were disgusting bits of tissue, visibly pulsing at odd rhythms. He resembled more a broken marionette than any animal, living or dead. With a blink, he was gone, and I had not seen or heard from him again until the picture.

Where he was once almost timid in his nighttime observations of me, he had somehow found his courage. He would stand at the wall opposite my bed, looking at me, attempting to breathe through the barrier of skin that covered whatever orifices he breathes from. It was as if he was telling me, I broke the rules, breaking the rules isn’t allowed. His boldness grew over time, everything from stroking my back to pulling my hair until I cried. He was gone in an instant every time, beating the speed of a light switch and certainly the feet of my parents walking to my bedroom. I broke the rules and this was my punishment. As I got older, I began to discover observable patterns in his behavior. None were particularly useful on their own, but they all seemed to work together to form some sort of picture. For one, I had never seen him emerge from anywhere other than my closet, yet any exploration into what should be a small, closed off area yielded no results. Two, his size would vary, making me think the connective tissue that held him together could expand or collapse as he desired. Perhaps most importantly, three, he only operated between 2AM and 3AM.

Realizing this lead to a new age of experimentation for me over the following decade. He did not seem to care if the lights were on or off, something I discovered at age seven and was subsequently crushed by, as I thought for sure it would be a solution. I chose to keep them off, as his disgusting and horrifying form in the light was more than I could handle with any sort of regularity. When I got old enough to ask for a video camera for my birthday, around the age of fourteen, I set it up with a timer specifically for 2AM to 3AM, allowing me to sleep restfully with the knowledge that I’d have proof of what was happening. Sadly, the camera was crushed during the night and I could no longer be trusted with expensive gifts. When I was ten, in a fit of what can only be described as bravery and stupidity cocktail, I chose to stay up and confront him.
I rested against the headboard, watching the red numbers on my alarm clock as they flipped to different permutations. 1:58, 1:59…then finally, 2AM. My head turned to the wall across from my bed and he already stood there, watching, breathing, mocking me with his very existence. I watched, waiting for him to make his movie. Perhaps ready to react in case he touches me or attacks me. But he stood there, motionless. Eventually, he no longer even made breathing sounds, though it was no actual indication of whether he was still alive. This standoff continued as we both waited, unwilling or unable to yield. Then, 3AM rolled around, I blinked, and he was gone.

Thus began the rest of my life. I was not free from him, far from it, but I had found a defense from the ice cold touch of his fingers against my skin as I slept. Every night, my alarm would go off at 1:58 and I would fall back asleep, after an hour of staring, at 3AM. On the rare occasion, I would rest my eyes briefly only to wake up and find him grotesquely contorted next to my bed, his limbs posed in illogical and horrifying positions, and our staring contest would begin anew. Then, 3AM would roll around, and he would leave again.

I relate all this to you because it has been almost twenty years since that first conversation. I have not had a decent night’s sleep in almost thirty years. He follows me. He isn’t bound to that one bedroom, that one closet, he’s bound to me. He’s my burden, he’s the manifestation of whatever sin I committed before birth, he’s my nightmares made flesh. Maybe he is a tormentor that merely chose me arbitrarily, I don’t know what he is, but I know I will kill myself if this continues any longer. I know that the prayer I offer to God every night has not kept me safe. I know that if I tell this story again, if I tell the world what hell he has wrought for the last three decades, then I will have broken the rules again and whatever limits he has self-imposed will be distant memories. I know he’ll probably kill me.

And, as I press submit on this post, I know I no longer care.