-Edited to fix Formatting-

So I make a habit of browsing /r/nosleep frequently. Usually late at night. I’m not sure why, but for some reason reading horror stories is somewhat comforting to me, and regularly helps me wind down and fall asleep faster. I quite enjoy a lot of the submissions, even if all I do is silently up-vote. I’ve been a fan of horror of almost every medium for years, having a strange fascination with it, even as a child. I think this is due in part to my nature of being a writer, and also a skeptic. I’ve never been a particularly fearful person, even when I maybe should have been. I grew up with people telling me ghost stories and folktales native to the regions I lived in. In Texas, it was stories of the Chupacabra, Jackalopes and the ‘Wuff-man’ (wolf). In the Appalachian mountain range it was stories of the Dwayyo, Mothman, and the Yahoo (Bigfoot’s jaundice afflicted little brother.) In Minnesota, it's just the cold. Something about wanting to sleep when it’s freezing cold, despite knowing that if you do drift off, you’ll die in your respite is scarier than any monster.

I work from 4pm to midnight, so I often stay up far later than most do, usually getting to bed around 4am. Today’s one of my days off, so last night I wasn’t too preoccupied with getting to sleep on schedule. I got home, showered, made some food, and then poured myself a drink before settling into my chair at my desk to play some Battlefield. Both the buddies I play with called it a night after our last -intense- match at a quarter to two. I poured myself another drink, and smoked a cigarette before going inside to warm up. I decided to be somewhat productive and write a little bit instead of playing more games. Writing is a hobby for me, not a profession, but I’d love to one day write full time and not have to work a regular job. Last night, I’d found an interesting writing prompt, and decided to go with that, just as an exercise.

As a voracious reader, and subsequently writer myself, sometimes I steal material from different stories and authors. I never blatantly rip-off or plagiarise material, that would be boring and -frankly- somewhat insulting to the writers who inspire me. What I take are concepts. The ‘What Ifs’ that I think of while I read. This results in familiar feeling, but entirely unique concepts in my writing. At most, I may take heavy inspiration from the static rules of a literary universe, deciding to use specific rules for time travel, or deciding that using magic takes energy from your soul. Vague things like this, that most writers end up stealing from their favorite authors. For me, the most pervasive use of outside material, is this simple concept, “The most merciful thing in the world, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.” A thought which never ceases to bring me to new ideas, and create new and interesting twists in the little worlds I create.

I worked on my story for almost four hours -I generally edit as I write, so actual progress is slow- getting several pages in. I stopped here and there to grab snacks or another drink. I started creating characters, carefully crafting their personalities, quirks and ticks. Out of sheer boredom, I decided to insert myself as a character in this story, deciding that I would be a side character until Act 3, before assuming my role as the real protagonist. Then I formed the world around them, weaving and shaping as I went. Early on I had decided on what trials they (we) would go through in this tale. Not long after had decided on the antagonist, even if I didn’t know motives or goals just quite yet. At this point I was close to finishing. My characters had suffered through a few setbacks, and twice had mysterious encounters which thinned the herd -the details of which they couldn’t quite comprehend- leaving them increasingly paranoid. I had just finished the reveal of the story, describing at some length the monstrous thing that had been stalking them, taunting them from the places they couldn’t see. Being somewhat intoxicated at this point, I didn’t hold back anything as I wrote, very much mind to page. I wasn’t editing at this point, just creating, spinning an intricate web of fiction. Looking back, I think at some point I had stopped thinking of this story as a work of fiction, and simply thought of it as another world. With my mind being the window to this other realm. The longer I wrote, the faster I wrote, I had utterly lost track of time, and poured words out as fast as my fingers could hit the keyboard. I was no longer creating the story. It existed, and I was simply the one cementing it into reality. It was in its entirety, beyond me. And for those long moments, I knew every word I wrote to be true.

My room plunged into darkness. There was total silence. I blinked vigorously, thinking perhaps I had fallen asleep. Nothing. I fumbled around my desk, found my phone and turned the screen on. 5:55 AM. Shit. It was way later than I thought. I took off my headphones (My old laptop sounded like a 747 preparing for take off when I was playing games, hence noise cancelling headphones) and noticed that -aside from my own shallow breathing- my room was utterly silent. I purchased a new PC over the summer, and while its extremely quiet, you can still hear it when it’s running. Additionally, it has a glass face with RGB lighting on one side, which I usually keep set to a dim light-blue to keep my room illuminated, but feeling cozy. My first thought was that there was an electrical surge, and my power strip had flipped itself off to save my computer. My PC and my monitors are all on the same circuit, which would explain them being off. My monitors are older, and have a light-up switch to be turned on and off. If just my computer had shut down, the lights would still be on, even if the screens were black. I got up and checked my surge strip, it’s faint green light still showed it was in the “On & Ready” position. Weird. I cycled the power on it, turned my PC and monitors back on, and went to the bathroom while my computer booted up. I came back, and punched in my password.

In the few seconds it took for my computer to finish the boot sequence, I realized that it never prompted me to load in safe-mode. As I’m sure most of you know, when a computer loses power abruptly, on the next boot-up cycle you’re prompted to decide to start in safe-mode to attempt data recovery, or if you wish to proceed without doing so. No prompt for me. Not being entirely familiar with this particular brand’s boot options, my best guess was that the safe-mode options are on a timer, which expired while I relieved my bladder, sending my PC into normal boot mode. This is where things started to get weird. As I said previously, I’m a skeptic. I don’t believe in ghost stories, or ‘spooky’ coincidences. While I believe that statistically, we are probably not alone in the universe, I simultaneously don’t believe in UFO’s, or an Alien presence on Earth. I lean almost exclusively on scientific evidence, and generally come to logical conclusions to odd happenings, usually without thinking too much about them.

I first noticed how cold my room was. It was -14* outside, so that was nothing abnormal. There was a dead pixel on my monitor. Again, nothing too strange, they did just lose power abruptly, and are close to 7 years old at this point. It happens. I realized there was a new icon on my desktop. A blank sheet of paper, generally assigned to Word or Notepad documents. Ah! This must be the crash report. I double clicked. Nothing. Clicked again, nothing. At this point I realized the document had no name attached, it was just the paper icon. I right clicked it, went to properties to see what program I needed to run it with. Under the General tab:

Type of file: [Blank]

Description: [Blank]

Location: C:\Users\SaltyDog\Desktop

Size: 0.00 KB (0 bytes)

Size on disk: 0.00 KB (0 bytes)

Created: Friday, January 5, 2018, 2:22:22 AM

I thought this was all strange. I remembered that I had been writing in Microsoft word, but hadn’t ever titled my story. (I have a program set up to transfer what I write in M-word to Google Docs every 10 minutes, so I always have a backup. Coincidentally, for instances like this.) At this point I thought that 2:22 AM sounded like the time I had started writing, the document had no name, because I had never designated a name to save it under, and the file was likely blank, because I hadn’t saved it in M-word before my computer crashed. “Oh well.” I opened chrome, clicked my shortcut to g-docs, and stared. Everything was there. Other stories, the start of my taxes, videos. All my things were exactly as I had seen them last. Everything, except my story. I checked the system logs, and as I was starting to expect, there was no record of my story ever having existed. By now I was thoroughly confused. While I was thoroughly frustrated by the apparent loss of my story, truthfully I was more concerned with what my computer was up to, and was worried about needing to potentially reinstall the OS.

A long sigh escaped me as I closed chrome out.There still, was the Properties window that I never closed. My cursor hovered over the X at the top right to close it. I hesitated, something had caught my eye farther down in the window.

Created: Friday, January 5, 2018, 2:22:22 AM

Modified: Friday, January 5, 2018, 5:55:55 AM

Accessed: Friday, January 5, 2018, 7:06:00 AM

Attributes: [X] Read-only [X] Hidden [Advanced…]

Huh? I checked the time, 6:17 am. Now I was getting genuinely confused, and a little more than freaked out. Being pretty savvy about computers, I instinctively know that ‘Hidden’ files are usually system files that you don’t want to delete. Generally ‘Hidden’ is checked to prevent your average user from accidentally deleting their system32 folder or something. Additionally, if your computer does have seeing hidden files & folders enabled, they show up as see-through icons, so you can tell at a glance. And Read-only, means you can’t edit it. This file simply shouldn’t exist. Furthermore, why the hell does it say it was “Accessed” almost an hour from now.

By this point I was exhausted. I grumbled and closed the Properties window. I clicked the icon once, hit Delete on my keyboard. Nothing. Hit delete again. Nothing. Right clicked, panned down the menu to Delete. Nothing. Tried to click & drag to the recycle bin. Nothing. What the fuck? I rolled my eyes, finished off the last of my boozy eggnog, and told my computer to shut down. I turned my monitors off as my PC powered down, and shimmied out of my shirt & sweatpants. I used the light on my phone to find my pajama pants, putting them on after I crawled into bed under my covers. As I turned my phone screen off I took note of the time, 6:31 am.

I’m not sure if I was asleep and starting to dream, or just drifting off to sleep: both states make me equally groggy and somewhat unaware of my surroundings. That’s when I heard it. A roaring, screeching noise, growing louder and higher in pitch. My eyes snapped open, and were instantly hit with bright light. My ceiling light was still off, but my desk was lit up like the fourth of July. My monitors were on, my light up keyboard strobing at max speed, and the RGB lighting in my computer cycling through all the color presets as fast as they could go. The monitors weren’t showing anything, just all-white. After a few seconds of staring in disbelief I realized the where the racket was coming from; the fans in my PC were running at top speed. Shrieking horribly as the blades cut through the air. I popped out of bed to go turn everything off. This whole experience had lasted barely twenty seconds. I took three steps towards my desk. A sharp pain shot up my right leg. I bit my lip and inhaled sharply to stop from yelling. I clutched at my stubbed toe and hopped on towards my desk.

I don’t know why I turned around, but I did. Amidst the rainbow illumination from my computer, something lurked. At first I thought it was my own shadow, the angle was right, and my monitors were still shining like flood lights. I strained my eyes to make out detail among the strobing light, and shrunk back in horror. The shadow I cast was broad, flickering around the edges as the lights pounded. Every inch of darkness seemed to roil and breathe. Every level of occluded shadow was another facet of this thing. The only way I can think to describe it, is best paired with the description of the Fourth Dimension, and the Tesseract.

It seemed to me, that within the shadow I cast, staggered by multiple sources of light as it was, there was something else. Another shadow, but not mine. Where mine was two dimensional, darker at the center, lighter around the edges, but still perfectly flat, something else cast its own shadow, which very much had depth and texture. This shadow was still somewhat translucent like my own, seeming to draw its form from the levels of light in my own shadow, Where my shadow was darkest, it was the thickest, the most real. At the edges where my shadow flickered, it was almost invisible, with barely a sign to indicate there was something solid there. It was one entity, but there were many of it. It folded in on itself repeatedly at the center, innumerable. Only gaining a defining shape near the edges, before it seemingly faded out of existence. This entire time I had stayed utterly silent, not moving, forgetting my throbbing toe. The shadow thing had done the same. I was unsure whether it was able to leave the bounds of my silhouette, or if it was simply mimicking me.

As I stared, I remembered Oppenheimer’s words regarding the nuclear bombs used in 1944. Words I learned in highschool, and have had memorized since “...and to impress him, [Vishnu] takes on his multi-armed form, and says ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ ” As soon as the thought had crossed my mind, Oppenheimer’s sad, tired voice echoing through my skull, and leaving as fast as it had appeared, It moved. All the heads nodded. A slow, intentional single nod. A “yes” nod. The center mass, billowing with limbs and folds innumerable, more-so pulsed or throbbed at the top, than nodded, as all of its multiple facets passed through each other, in a perfectly symmetrical, synchronous motion.

That was it. This caused me to start. I spun around, feeling like a marionette breaking away from its strings, as I had to spend considerable effort to turn back towards my desk. With considerable haste I mashed my finger down on my computer’s power button, and slapped the switches on my monitors to turn them off. The monitors flicked off, one, then the other. I was too scared to turn around now. It had felt as if I was tethered to this thing, with the connections taught. As my computer began to power down, all the so called strings went slack. I knew it had lunged at me. I tensed up, bracing for impact.

Fffffwwooooooo………. Silence, again. My computer was off, the fans spinning down. Again, I was plunged into darkness. I felt, fine. Shaken, yes. But physically fine. I took a deep breath, or tried anyways. It took me a moment to realize I’d been holding my breath since I stubbed my toe. I exhaled slowly, my chest beginning to ache. I rubbed my ribs, noticing my heart beating at a ridiculous speed. I limped back towards my bed, and sat down on the edge, propping my feet up on the edge of the frame, curled halfway into the fetal position. My breathing slowing, I patted my nightstand, looking for my phone, and found it. I thumbed the button to turn the screen on. The time, in big thick letters on my lock screen: 7:06:56 AM… 57… 58… 59… 7:07:00 AM

I didn’t go to sleep until the sun came up shortly before 8am, and I made damn well sure to open my blinds all the way to let light in. Like hell I’m ever leaving my computer plugged in overnight again...Unless, I figure out what it my subconscious seems to have created.