Don’t Fall Asleep with the TV On

I fell asleep with the television on. I worked a 12 hour shift that day and I had a few beers. It was easy enough to sleep without even turning the lights off.

I woke up and it was dark, but the television was still on, only it wasn’t a channel I had ever seen before. The screen was a blur of pictures, barely there for a second before it was gone again. Burnt bodies, bleeding wounds, limbs ripping, bones breaking. The only constant was the sound of a woman screaming, crying, pleading for her life, pleading for mercy, pleading for death.

I turned it off and wondered what happened as I smoked a cigarette with shaking hands. I brushed it off as a side effect of my stressful life. I pretended it never happened as the months went on uneventfully.

***

I fell asleep with the television on again. There was a nagging in my gut as I drifted off, but the feeling of closing my eyes after a hard day was too tempting.

I woke up in the dark, the television screen showing small grainy videos of strange stretched out humanoid figures, milky white eyes tinged with a pinkish red, sharp teeth in rows in mouths too wide, with hunched backs and backwards bending legs. Grotesque shrieking and squelching sounded from the speakers. A deepening pit in my stomach growing every second I listened, goosebumps on my body, the feeling of being watched being burned into my skull every second I looked.

I turned it off and I threw up. I didn’t sleep for three days. I swore it would not happen again, and it didn’t for a long time. But then, of course, it did.

***

I still swear I didn’t fall asleep with the television on. But I woke up and it was on, flashing images of me. Dead. Dying. Tortured. My face, over and over again, distorted by agonising screams, eyes open. In my pupils you can see hell.

I turned it off and I threw it out the window. I revelled in the sound of it shattering. I screamed at my walls as if they had the answers to what was happening to me. They didn’t.

***

I didn’t fall asleep with the television on, because I don’t have one anymore. But I woke up and it was back, and it was on, showing me more images that made me sick to my stomach. But this time I didn’t want to look away, because on the television I watched those same humanoid creatures standing behind me crowding my room, unmoving, unblinking. The one right behind me moving so close that I could feel it’s hot breath on my neck, filling my nostrils with the smell of death, so close I could now feel it’s damp rough skin against mine, and all I could do was scream.

--
Credits

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