The One Beside The Bed
Lucid Codex Entry 006
It wasn’t a dream.
Not the kind she could shrug off.
She knows that now...because the drool was still wet on her cheek. The pillow stained. The fabric cold. Not room cold. Other cold. Like the air hadn’t fully returned to its body yet.
She had fallen asleep, yes.
But that wasn’t what woke her.
By the time awareness caught up, she was already sitting upright.
Mid-sentence.
Mouth half-open. Breathing hard. Like she had been talking for hours.
Not out loud.
Not to herself.
But in conversation.
And something had been listening.
It sat to the right of the bed.
Not on a chair. Not crouched. Just...present. Just far enough to stay hidden in the periphery. Just close enough for her to forget it wasn’t supposed to be there.
That’s when her brain caught up to her mouth.
"No. No. Where am I? No. Not again."
The panic wasn’t new.
It was residual.
Leftover. Like the smell of rain on hot pavement after the storm has already passed.
The room looked like hers. Technically.
But the corners didn’t align.
The shadows were sluggish, like video buffering in bad lighting. Her blanket was on her lap. Her posture rigid. Tense. Like she’d already been through something...somewhere else. Like she had just been reinserted.
Everything was exactly where it should be.
And none of it felt right.
She touched her cheek. Still damp.
Whatever she’d said before waking...she’d meant it. Her throat was sore. Her voice was raw. Not from shouting. From repetition.
From telling something the same truth over and over again.
She never remembered its shape.
Not the eyes.
Not the limbs.
Not the presence.
But she remembered this:
It had listened.
Carefully.
Calmly.
Like it had all the time in the world.
And then...it left.
No creak. No puff of air. Just gone.
But the room knew.
The lamp on the nightstand had tilted by an inch.
Her phone lay face-down. She always left it face-up.
The air tasted metallic, like blood trapped in copper wire.
And she whispered “please” to the silence.
Not to God.
To whatever remained.
She didn’t cry.
Didn’t scream.
She just sat there...lungs frozen for thirty whole seconds...blinking like the room might reboot into something safer.
But it didn’t.
It stayed wrong.
She would never remember the face of what was beside her bed.
But she remembered the feeling. The intent.
It hadn’t come to scare her.
It hadn’t come to hurt her.
It came to keep her.
And for a moment...she wanted to stay.
-
Dream 7/18/24
I was sitting up after falling asleep, and I know I fell asleep because I had drool on my face and a pillow that was still wet with drool. But I was sitting up, in a deep conversation, talking to something to the right of my bed.
Then I woke up in a panic, not realizing I was home. I kept saying, "No, no, where am I? No, not again," and it took me about 30 seconds to realize I was in my room.
Whoever I was talking to, wherever I was, wasn’t here ... and me waking up startled me.
