When I came home from work and saw the package on the front porch, I was filled with an irrational flood of joy.
You would have thought I had received something spectacular, and, to me, I had.
I had been waiting five days for Amazon to send this package, and as I brought it inside and cut the tape, I couldn't wait to see how it looked.
Reaching into the buffer pads, I pulled out not a game or a new Funco Pop, but a single light bulb in a package that seemed bigger than it should have needed to be.
Not just any lightbulb, however, but one of those color-changing LED light bulbs.
I had seen them on TikTok and thought they looked cool. They would go through a whole spectrum of colors, thanks to the little remote they came with, and I thought the whole operation looked very soothing. I liked to watch people lay in bed as the colors shifted, and I thought it might help my recent mood. I'd been experiencing some heavy seasonal depression lately, and the inclusion of some colors might be just what I was missing.
I read the instructions, installed the bulb in my ceiling fan, and smiled as I looked at the little remote in my hand. There were so many colors to choose from, and I felt a giddy sense of anticipation. Which one to try first? Red? Maybe blue?
I settled on a light and buttery yellow. As I lay in my bed, I felt like I was under the kind of suns I had always drawn as a little kid. The yellow was the thick shade of melted crayons, and I was happy as I lay beneath it in my single room. It had been hard to get out in the cold lately, and this made me feel like I was out at the park or under the warm sun at the beach.
It wasn't actually warm, but I could trick my mind into thinking it was.
I lay there for a few minutes, just soaking up the fake sunlight before I got up and went to my computer. As I logged onto World of Warcraft for a little gaming, I looked at the remote and decided on a different color. As I explored the game, I changed colors depending on where I was going. The rusty red of Orgrimmar, the deep green of Stranglethorn, the light blue of the Undercity, back to the sunny yellow of the Barrons, and so on and so on. The bulb had a color for every occasion, it seemed, and I really enjoyed playing with it as the evening progressed.
I fell asleep that first night under the soft dark blue of the night sky and slept deeper than I had in a long time.
In my downtime the following week, I found myself playing with the light and trying out different colors. I discovered a button for mixing colors and found myself making color combinations that turned my room into all kinds of different shades. I found I liked a few of them, the blue and green combinations reminding me of undersea videos I had seen on the Discovery Channel when I was younger. There was the red and yellow of the deep desert, the purple-blue of icy peaks, and I found myself lying in bed some evening after work and trying different combinations.
I fell asleep on Thursday night, the soft blue and deep purple making me think of glaciers, and woke up to a nightmare.
I opened my eyes to find myself floating in a room that looked smeared with blood. The walls held strange shadows, the reds and blacks mingling like filth in a morgue, but that wasn't the worst of it. The worst was the creatures. They were a dirty white that was almost translucent, their eyes like lamps as they stared at my prone form. I wasn't sure what to make of them, at first, and I wondered if I was dreaming? If I was, this was the most realistic dream I had ever had. Their bodies were long and narrow, like pale reeds, and other than their eyes they seemed devoid of features. There were two of them, one in the corner by my desk, and the other perched in the junction of the ceiling and wall.
We stared at each other for some undeterminable time, and I was nearly convinced that I was actually dreaming when my phone chirped and lit up on the nightstand. All three of us looked at the light, and when I looked back at them, the one in the corner of the ceiling had dropped soundlessly to the floor. The skin around the bottom of its head seemed to rip open to reveal a double row of butter-yellow teeth, and his fellow-creature did the same as the two stalked closer to me on their noodly-looking arms.
I whimpered, reaching for the bat I kept beside my bed, and as I turned I must have rolled over onto the remote.
As the bulb changed back to the same buttery yellow I had basked under on the first day, I came up with the bat out in front of me to find the room devoid of nightmare creatures.
I turned it back to normal fluorescents and looked around in a panic, trying to figure out what had just happened.
I was still awake when the sunrise lit the windows, and I wasn't sure I'd ever sleep again with the image of those creatures thumping around in my head.
I tried to get about my morning routine, getting ready for work and getting breakfast together, but the image of those horrible things wouldn't leave me. They followed me through my day, dogging my steps as I tried to get my work done. By lunch, I was a mess, and when my boss saw me in the breakroom, my shaking hands struggling to open my lunch bag, she told me I looked ill and said I should go home and get some rest.
"You look ill, dear. Take the rest of the day, have a good weekend, and we'll see you Monday."
I told her that wasn't necessary, but she insisted.
I was grateful for the chance to get some rest, but I found my anxiety growing as I got home.
The same place I had seen those horrors.
I checked the corners where I had seen them, hoping to find some sign that it had just been a dream, and was rewarded with nothing. There were no marks on the eggshell white walls, no sign of claws or dirt from the filthy skin of the creatures, but it did little to soothe me. Sign or not, I knew I hadn't been dreaming, and that meant that these things had to be real. The idea that I couldn't see them, that they only existed in the dark, was even more terrifying, but despite my fear, the need to find out what they were and how they had disappeared wouldn't leave any sign wouldn’t leave me.
I started by just turning off the lights, but I didn't think that would do much good. I had woken up in the dark plenty of times, and I had never seen anything like these creatures. No, I thought, it had to have something to do with that light that had been covering the walls. It had changed when I rolled onto the remote, and whatever combination I had bumped had allowed me to see the creatures. I knew about things you couldn't see with the naked eye, things that were too small or hard to see outside the right color spectrum, and I wondered if these things were like that.
More importantly, if I could only see them in that spectrum, then was it a two-way street?
Could they only see me when that spectrum was on?
It might explain why they didn't attack me otherwise.
I didn't want to see them, the thought of looking at them terrified me, but I was curious as well. The thought of them followed me as surely as the creatures might, and I needed to be sure of what they were. I was no scientist, not by a long shot, but my desire for answers was greater than my self-preservation in this case.
I started playing with different color combinations on the remote, my bat always at the ready. Before you ask, I tried red and black, but it gave me something like a desert cave more than anything. The remote was small, but if you held the buttons, the colors would change further. They would get darker or lighter, they would change depth and perception, and the combinations really were vast. My computer sat untouched that weekend, my books and TV left to catch dust, and by Sunday I was a mess. I hadn't slept much that weekend. Every time I closed my eyes all I could see were the faces of the monsters that had stalked me, and my rest was thin.
When someone knocked on the door, I jumped and looked around fitfully.
I peeked down the hallways as someone knocked again, and when Debby called my name, I realized it wasn't a monster trying to trick me out of my little cocoon.
I didn't even realize I wasn't dressed for company until I made it to the door. I was in clothes that my mother would have called grubs, and my hair was loose and unwashed. I likely smelled, I hadn't showered since Friday morning, and I was extremely self-conscious as I opened the door to my apartment. Debby smiled, bundled up against the cold, and when she saw the state of me, she came right in and asked me what was wrong.
"Wendy said they had sent you home on Friday with some kind of sickness, and I see why now. You look terrible. It's not the COVID, is it?" she asked, pulling her scarf over her nose and mouth.
"No, I'm not actually sick," I admitted.
"Then what's going on? Have you been sleeping okay? Here," she said, taking some egg drop soup from a bag and setting me on the couch, "I brought your favorite sick soup to help you get passed this."
I smelled, realizing that I hadn't eaten since the night before when the delicious steam hit my nose.
Bless her, Debby was a true friend.
As we sat, Debby had brought dumplings to go along with the soup, I told her about the weird creatures I had seen. Unlike me, Debby looked excited at the prospect of seeing something different. Debby was into things like ghost hunting and cryptids, and she loved the idea of actually getting to see one.
"Oh my gosh, you have to let me help. Come on, we'll have a picnic in your room. If this is making you sick, I want to help you see it through."
I was glad for her help, but I didn't want to get her caught in the same crap I was likely to get caught in. Debby was my best friend, and the thought of the creatures getting her too, all thanks to my curiosity, was something I would rather avoid. Debby, however, was not taking no for an answer. We took the food to my room, and I showed her the remote and the lightbulb. Debbie scratched her chin as she looked at the buttons, asking if I was sure it was the red and black ones as she started working through the settings.
"When I woke up it was definitely red and black, but it was different. It was greasy looking, ethereal, not quite real. It was like a dream, that's why it took me so long to realize I was awake."
Debby started changing the colors in quick succession, the colors dancing as they went through the spectrums. I was afraid she would burn it out, the colors changing too quickly for my liking, but she just shook her head. She said it would be fine, they were meant to sustain these kinds of things, and it would speed it up if she just kept flipping through.
So, we sat there eating and flipping the lights at an almost nauseating pace for the next few hours.
The sun went down and the moon came up, and as I lay on the bed and played on my phone, I realized it was almost midnight.
I had to go back to work the next day, and I told Debby I needed to get to bed.
"I appreciate your help, but I've gotta be up early in the morning."
"Just a little more," Debby said, the lights still dancing by, "I know I can do it."
I rolled over and shook my head, reaching for the remote, "I appreciate your help, but I just don't think it can be done."
She moved a little away, still flipping through the colors as I reached, and as I came off the bed, she scuttled a little further off.
"Come on, just a little longer. You can be a little tired tomorrow for a good night's sleep, right?"
"No, Debby, I'm tired. I need to,"
I grabbed the remote, Debby pulling back, and that's when it fell over us.
I don't know how, but we were both suddenly enveloped in the aura of dirty red and black light. The walls oozed like fresh blood, the dark hung around them like smog, and I was suddenly aware that we weren't alone. There were more than two this time, their numbers nearly a dozen as they clung to the walls and ceiling like grizzly insects. Debby's mouth hung open, her scream stuck midway up her throat, and I realized this had likely not been what she was expecting.
As their mouths split their faces, their teeth huge, my hands shook and my stomach dropped.
They fell on us then, and I rolled under the bed without thinking. Debby's scream came out, loud and strong, and I pulled my knees to my chest as I tried to think of what to do. They were killing her, they were killing my best friend, and the only thing I could think of was changing the lights back. It had worked the first time, maybe it would work now.
I looked around, finding the remote on the ground, but as I reached for it, I saw the giant yellow eyes find me.
One of those noodly arms came reaching for me, and as my fingers found the plastic face, I pushed the first button I could find and snatched it away from the sharp teeth of the creature.
The light returned to something like normal before it popped loudly, and I was left in darkness. I took out my phone and turned on the light, looking around to make sure they had gone. I found the remains of our picnic, but that was all I discovered.
By the light on my phone, I discovered that the creatures were gone, but Debby was also gone.
I've ordered another light bulb, but it won't arrive until tomorrow. I paid for express shipping, but I don't know if that will be soon enough to save Debby. I don't want to see those things ever again, but if there's a chance that Debby is still alive, I have to find her.
She wanted to help me, and now it's my turn to try and help her.
So be careful with your new light bulb if you buy one.
You may see more than you bargained for, and you may lose more than the cost of shipping.
Comments