text: It was 3:00 AM when I woke up. I can't remember the last time I slept completely through the night. I get up to pee or drink a glass water every night. These past few nights however, I keep waking up at 3:00 AM on the dot. I stared at the blue LED numbers as goosebumps began to form on my skin. I turned over, pulling the covers a bit closer, and drifted right back to sleep. I woke up again in my room and slowly sat up in bed, a feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach. As I looked at the blue LEDs, I swallowed and felt myself start to sweat. It was the dead of winter but for some reason I was so hot, and somehow it was still 3:00 AM. I knew something wasn't right, something was off, and that's when my eyes adjusted to the darkness of my bedroom and I saw it. I tried to scream, to move, run, turn away, but I was paralyzed save for my eyes. The creature standing in front of my bedroom door had skin so pale it seemed bleached. My eyes paused on it's long, dirty fingernails. Was that blood underneath its fingernails? flesh? dirt? Or perhaps all three. Each one was sharpened and pointed, perhaps to make killing its victims easier. My terrified eyes started to move slowly up its body drinking in more of the horror when all of a sudden it leapt at me. I screamed out and sat up in bed. I looked at the clock. 8:13 AM and sunlight greeted me. After a few minutes of deep breaths the dream started to fade and I began to get ready for work. By the time I got out of the shower it was barely a faded memory with each part of the day fading it a bit more. By the time I got home from work and cooked dinner I didn't even remember the dream. Even better I fell asleep watching reruns of my favorite lighthearted comedy, Always Sunny. My sleep would be nothing but peaceful tonight. I was exhausted and as I drifted off to sleep, I even had the gumption to think I may sleep through the night. I woke up upside down in my bed with my feet resting on my pillows and my head at the foot of my bed. I slowly turned my neck to right, the wall my alarm clock was on, and felt my body get hot. 3:00 AM, fuck. I looked back up at the ceiling and saw it, laying on the ceiling staring back at me. Again I was paralyzed as I stared on in horror. This time, my eyes first paused on the top of its head. Bits of scalp, bald spots, and tiny tufts of hair and blood decorated it. I felt the urge to vomit as I drank in the rest of its face and saw where its eyes should have been. Instead of its eyes I saw hollowed out sockets. Dried blood ran down the creatures pale cheeks all the way to its chest. Instead of vomiting I screamed and flipped out of my bed, desperately trying to reach the door. I was too late however, and as I felt its sharp fingernails dig into me I woke up to sunlight and an alarm clock that read 8:13 AM. As I laid there adjusting to real life, I realized that I felt like how roadkill looks like. First of all I felt simply exhausted. My shoulders and back ached despite not exercising in months. My muscles felt cramped and as I stretched out I realized something else. It was the dead of winter, but for some reason I was quite hot. I got up to brush my teeth and as I spit and rinsed out the toothpaste my eyes fell on the thermometer I keep in the bathroom cabinet. I was still quite hot and so I took my temperature. 103 degrees?? I called out of work immediately and went to go sit down on the couch. This morning the memory of my dream hadn't quite faded so fast and I was a bit reluctant to go back to bed. Instead of my usual coffee I made some green tea and turned on some Netflix to distract myself both from the nightmare and my fever. The strange thing was that although I was burning up, I hadn't coughed, sneezed, or even sniffled once. Mid day came and I realized I was starving, so I ordered some soup from a local favorite deli and went to go pick it up. As I stepped outside into the cold winter air I felt...blinded? The sun was harsh and unforgiving and so as I raised a hand to protect myself from its glare I realized that I felt even hotter out here. I went back inside and changed my soup order to a delivery, that broccoli cheddar would just have to come to me. I played some video games as I waited and when the soup finally did arrive it seemed to sooth my aching muscles and bones. Instead of heading back to the couch, I made my way to my bed and let the exhaustion wash over my body until I drifted off to sleep. No. Fuck no. I woke up in my room and the sun was gone. There was no way I slept that long and as my eyes drifted to that stupid alarm clock and I saw 3:00 AM light up the screen I felt a chill. My chill turned to goosebumps as I realized that I wasn't feeling hot anymore. I felt cool as a cucumber in kind of a good way. The lack of sun was comforting and cool as if I had just jumped into a pool on a hot summer day. As my stomach practically fell through the floor my gaze went immediately to my bedroom door. Nothing. Then up at the ceiling, also nothing. I sat up in bed, looking straight ahead, and saw it staring back at me at the foot of my bed. I saw its pale, white skin. I saw the patches of scalp and bloody hair hanging off its head. I saw its long pointed fingernails. I saw its hideous gouged out eye sockets and the dried blood around them. And then I saw something I hadn't noticed before. Or something I hadn't noticed a lack of. The hideous creature had no ears. I backed up to the edge of the wall behind me as it crept forward, opened its mouth, and screamed the most hideous scream I've ever heard. This time, when I woke up the harsh sunlight greeted me but the clock read 3:00 PM. As I gazed around the room I checked that horrible creatures usual spots and found nothing. I looked in the closet, under the bed, everywhere a monster would like to hide and found nothing. I sat at the edge of the bed and checked my phone in disbelief. I hadn't slept through an entire day and then some, I had only slept a few hours and I still felt so damned hot. I went around my house and drew all the curtains closed, maybe that would help? I sat on the couch desperately trying to distract myself with video games, comedy tv, anything but still that damned monster lingered in the back of my mind. So I called out of work for the next day, I still felt like shit and had a feeling I wouldn't get much sleep tonight either. As I went about my nightly routine I saw its pale skin as I washed my face. When I ate dinner I saw its grotesque fingernails. When I looked in the bathroom mirror and brushed my teeth I saw its horrible empty eye sockets. I stared at the clock that night terrified of sleep until at least 5:00 AM and when I woke up it was 3:00 AM and I felt so wonderfully cold. Each night continued similarly. I would be haunted all day with a terrible fever and terrible memories. The blinds drawn shut, trying to stay awake and distract myself. I slept for about an hour or two each night for weeks until I decided enough was enough. I had to fight back and get some real rest. I stopped bothering to call out of work, stopped bothering to eat when I woke up, I didn't even take medicine to combat my fever. The stress got to me after awhile and I noticed bits of hair falling out, sometimes even a bit bloody. Funny enough, when I woke up in my nightmares I felt no hunger, no fever. My scalp didn't hurt and I didn't feel exhausted. I could move a tiny bit more each nightmare and so I started fighting back against the monster. I filed my nails down to sharp pointy ones, all the better to sink into its pale skin. The mere sight of that monster stopped scaring me and I would lunge at him ready to attack and so he screamed at me for hours and hours in my nightmares. The screams were so horrible and so screeching that they alone paralyzed me. I had to beat the bastard, so I cut off my ears the next day. I would rather be deaf the rest of my life than deal with this monster every single night. When I woke up at 3:00 AM that night I lunged at the monster, he opened his mouth to scream yet I heard nothing come out. As I sunk my razor sharp nails into his pale skin something happened. He stopped resisting and I stopped fighting and we took each other in. He didn't move his hollowed out eye sockets but I felt him take in my pale white skin, the bloody bits of hair and scalp hanging from my head, the sharp, grotesque fingernails, and the scars where my ears should have been. Although he couldn't see I knew that he knew because his face seemed to look at mine and he smiled. He smiled the most hideous, grotesque, smile I'd ever seen. His teeth were stained yellow and his smile was unnaturally wide. I woke up knowing immediately what I had to do. I went to the bathroom and studied myself one last time. Pale white skin, bloody bits of hair and scalp hanging from my head, scars where my ears should have been. I looked down at my fingernails and then back at my reflection. I didn't want to look at myself anymore than that damned monster and so I raised those sharp fingernails to my eyes and gouged them out. I thought I would feel pain, I thought I would cry out, but I felt nothing. **Nothing but warm blood trickling down my face and the urge to smile, unnaturally wide.