IT WATCHED ME SLEEP

CHAPTER ONE: IT WATCHED ME WHEN I WAS SLEEPING. This thing was looking at me at the time. I am talking about the thing that watched me sleep. It was really creepy. It watched me sleep. I did not like that one bit. The fact that it watched me sleep is really scary. My name is Aisha and I live alone in an apartment. It is a place. I do not have a lot of money. I am not a person. I am just Aisha, a girl who likes quiet places. My apartment is on the floor of a tall building. The building is old. The paint on the walls is old too. There are small cracks.. My apartment feels like a safe place.. At least my apartment used to feel like a safe place. Every morning I wake up early. I do these things every day. I wash my face. I brush my teeth. Then I make some tea. I make some bread. I like to sit by the window. I watch people walk to work. I like watching the people because it makes me feel less lonely. The tea and the bread are my things to have in the morning. When I finish my tea and my bread I get ready for work. I leave my house. I always lock my door. I lock it twice. One lock is not enough for my door. So I check it again before I leave my house. I check my door to make sure it is locked. At work I am really quiet. My job is what I focus on. Then I go home. I do not talk to people much. People think I am a person. But the thing is, I really like silence. This is because when it is noisy it makes my mind think about a lot of things. When the sun begins to set I hurry home. I do not like being outside when it's nighttime. I like being at home when it's dark outside. The silence at home is what I like about it. Silence is what helps me to not think much. When I get home I make something to eat. I usually have rice. I have noodles. I eat my food. Then I wash my plate. After that I sat down on my bed. I look at my phone. I watch videos on my phone or I read short stories on my phone. My phone has a lot of videos and short stories. Sometimes I see something on my phone. I smile. Sometimes I feel empty inside when I am sitting on my bed looking at my phone.. I am used to feeling empty and I am used to sitting on my bed looking at my phone. At night I always do the thing. I get ready for bed by closing the windows and locking the door. Then I turn off the lights. My phone goes beside my pillow. When I sleep I face the wall. I do not like sleeping on my back because it makes me feel open and that is not comfortable for me. Sleeping on my back is just not something I like to do. The night it happened I did not notice anything out of the ordinary. I slept like I always do. I was deep asleep and very quiet.. When I woke up in the morning I felt really tired. My eyes felt heavy. My body felt very weak. I thought to myself maybe I went to sleep.. When I looked at my phone I saw what time it was. I had actually gone to sleep early. The night it happened was strange because I slept early and still felt tired. I went to the bathroom. I looked at my face. My face looked pale. There were lines under my eyes. I touched my neck. I felt a small pain, like a bruise, on my neck. I ignored the pain. I told myself that I must have slept in a position that is why my neck hurts. That day at work I felt really sleepy. I kept making mistakes here and there. My head felt full like it was packed with stuff. When I finally returned home I felt relief. Home was my place, you know the place where I can just be myself. I locked the door. Leaned on it for a moment feeling the wood against my back. I breathed out slowly letting all the tension go. I thought to myself home is where I can breathe easy. My home is my safe place. That night I did what I always do. I locked the door. Then I checked the door again to make sure it was really locked. I turned off all the lights in the house. Then I lay down on my bed. I closed my eyes. I was ready to go to sleep. I woke up all a sudden in the middle of the night. I have no idea why this happened. My heart was beating fast. The room was dark. It was very quiet. I listened carefully to see if I could hear anything.. I heard nothing at all. I said to myself that I need to relax and calm down. So I turned to face the wall again and tried to go to sleep. In the morning I woke up feeling really tired. My phone was showing something. It said my phone detected movement during the night. I do not remember getting out of bed or moving around. I stared at my phone screen for a long time trying to figure out what was going on. My room felt really cold all of a sudden. I looked at my bedroom door. It was open a little, a small space. I was really sure I closed my bedroom door. I always close my bedroom door. I got up slowly. Pushed my bedroom door shut. I told myself my bedroom door being open was nothing. That day I just could not stop thinking about it. I felt like someone was watching me. It was like there were eyes on me all the time even when I was by myself. I shook my head. I laughed to myself. I said to myself that I was being really silly thinking that someone was actually watching me, that I was being paranoid about the thing, about people watching me. That evening I checked everything twice. I made sure the locks were locked. I checked the windows to see if they were closed. I also looked in the closet. I even got down on my hands and knees to look under the bed.. I did not find anything. The house was empty and quiet. I felt really stupid, for being so scared. So I went to bed. I tried to sleep. It was night. I had a dream. In this dream my body felt really heavy. I could not move at all. I was trying to breathe and I felt someone breathing near my face. It was slow and really close. This was very scary. I tried to scream as loud as I could but no sound would come out of my mouth. At that moment I really wanted to wake up from the dream. I woke up. I was breathing really fast. My heart was beating quickly. The room was really dark. I was feeling very cold. I looked for my phone. I found it. My phone was there. The time on my phone was very late at night. I did not go back to sleep. I stayed awake until the morning came. This morning I woke up. I saw these marks on my arm. They were red lines that looked like fingers had touched me. When I saw the marks on my arm my hands started to shake badly. I sat down on the bed. I held my head in my hands. I was trying to remember what happened that night. But the thing is, I remembered nothing about the night. The marks on my arm were really scary. I could not remember how I got the marks on my arm. I bought a light. It is a small one. I put the light near my bed so the small light is right there when I need it. I keep the light on at night because that is when I need the small light the most. I thought the small light would make me feel safe at night when it is dark and the small light is on. That night I slept with the light on. The room was still pretty scary. I tried to calm down. I slept facing the wall so I did not have to look at anything. I kept telling myself that nothing bad would happen to me. I really tried to relax. It was hard. I just wanted the night to be over so I could wake up to a day and the bad feelings would go away. The night was really long and I was waiting for the morning waiting for the sun to come up and waiting for the light to fill the room so I could feel safe again. I could finally stop thinking about all the things that could go wrong. I could just feel okay because the morning is always a better time and the night is always the time when the bad things seem to happen and I just wanted the morning to come so I could sleep with the light off. I could sleep without being scared and I could just sleep, because sleep is what I needed and sleep is what I wanted and sleep is what would make me feel better and the night would be over and the morning would be here and everything would be okay and I would be safe and I would be sound and I would be asleep and the bad things would not be able to hurt me because I would be asleep and I would be dreaming and my dreams would be nice and my dreams would be happy and my dreams would be fun and I would wake up feeling happy and I would wake up feeling safe and I would wake up feeling sound. I woke up before morning again. It was really dark because the light was off. I did not turn the light off. I am sure I did not turn the light off. My mouth felt very dry. I was too scared to move. So I just listened carefully to see if I could hear anything. I heard the sound of breathing. It was soft and slow. It was not mine. I was really scared. I wanted to scream but my body just would not move. My eyes were wide open. I did not even turn my head to see what was there. The thing I felt was really near me. It was very close. I could feel the heat. It was like someone was standing beside my bed. The heat felt like it was coming from a body I do not know. It was just really weird. I felt the heat, from the body that was standing beside the bed. I closed my eyes tight. Then I said a prayer. I just waited for something to happen with the prayer. I waited for a time for the prayer to be answered. When the morning came I woke up on the floor. My bed was empty. I could not find my phone anywhere. The closet door was wide open. That was the day I knew that my life was going to change. The day I knew is a day that's still very clear in my mind. I remember the day I knew, like it was yesterday. The day I knew was a day that changed everything for me. I was never alone. And something had been watching me sleep.