I want to warn you in advance: what I’m about to tell you next will not make sense. It doesn’t even feel real to me, and I was there to witness it. My memories are a fog; I can tell that they are there but can’t make out anything except the vastness of it all.
After months of feeling watched, I knew that my mind wouldn’t be able to take much more. It felt like I hadn’t slept in years. I knew that if I didn’t stop hiding in my bedroom every night, I would be trapped there forever.
I watched the sun setting outside my window. A thick layer of dust covered the glass but I left it untouched. I didn’t want to give myself the illusion that I wasn’t trapped in here with whatever that thing was.
I waited for the noise that I had first mistaken for a malfunctioning aircon in need of heating repairs. Brisbane in its entirety seemed to hold its breath with me. No cars passed by outside. The city skylight blinked in the distance.
The darkness crept across my living room floor. I hoisted myself onto the couch, delaying the time it would take for the shadows to pass over my body. The temperature dropped. Freezing air cooling my skin, the hair on my entire body stood straight up.
I could feel eyes watching me from behind.
My body began to shake with adrenaline. Something was coming. Every instinct inside me told me to run, but I stayed frozen. I couldn’t keep booking air conditioning repairs around Brisbane forever. There was no more rationalising it.
The noise began and every nerve of my body screeched. It was deafening. Blocking my ears did nothing; it was coming from inside me. It had somehow crawled into my ear whilst I wasn’t looking and was clawing at my insides.
I forced my eyes open. Almost doubling over the couch, I forced myself to turn toward the A/C. Before my eyes, thousands of small spiders began to fall from the air filters. Tumbling over each other in waves and waves of darkness. They bubbled toward me.
I couldn’t scream.