Creature of Habit Rachel Grey The first time your body stopped responding, your parents were getting divorced. Your eyes had opened, and there was a creature on your chest. At first, you fought against the bonds that held you. On that first night, you saw its long arms hung far past its small, shrivelled body. You could see the beady yellow eyes reflected in the darkness. You strained to breathe against an invisible string that had sewn your lips together. Breathing became short inhales and rapid exhales from your nose. Then there was a moment, a shift. A toe moved, a limb released, and the creature dissolved.
This continued throughout your teen years. Stolen nights of sleep, waking to a demon hunched over your chest. Your first night in Mum’s new house, the first night in your dad’s new house, once your parents finalised the end of their marriage. Getting a job, facing exams, first time having sex— while they breathed softly, you suffocated under the weight on your chest. Trigger after trigger brought your sleep demon back to your bed, always the same. But then, three years of blissful silence. You thought you were over it.
***
Once again, you lay cemented on your back. Shapes flickering in the shadows don’t give you an indication of the time. A sliver of orange from your neighbour’s house illuminates the room through the bottom of the blind, pulled down carelessly in a sleepless rush. Fresh cotton sheets are tangled between your legs from the humidity of the night rising. Your lower leg haphazardly thrown from its cover in search of cooler air. Your lover slumbers beside you, their soft breath echoing your shallow gasps. The heavy weight is ever-present, pushing you into the mattress, but the figure is missing from your chest. Tonight, it is your left hand the creature is perched on. You can’t speak, you can’t force movement into your muscles. Even breathing doesn’t feel right. ‘Do you deserve this?’ its disembodied voice calls to you from your left hand. Low and shrill, it grates on you like when metal scratches on metal, sending involuntary shudders through your body. All you can do is move your gaze towards its yellow eyes that are peering at you from your left hand. Through the barely lit room, you are faced with its shrunken head, while its withered and wrinkled fingers pull on yours. ‘Won’t you leave?’ it croons.
The sheets tug away from your body as your lover rolls on their side, widening the space between you. The creature looks at them and uses its arms to lift itself up towards your face, climbing from your hand up onto your chest. Its foul breath, a smell of mouldy wet socks, washes over you. Decayed, flaking grey flesh and cracked lips fill your field of vision. Its fingertips run down your arm, to your wrist, to your hand. You close your eyes and remember every moment the creature vanished, as its fingers push against the gold ring on your finger, digging the diamond into your pinkie like a fresh piercing. When you open your eyes, the creature is there, still perched on your chest. ‘Are you worried you won’t find anything better?’
The bed shifts as your lover sits up. The creature stills over you, hovering. But your lover doesn’t look at you. They rise from the bed and walk out of the room, followed by the sound of rushing water from the tap turning on in the kitchen. You remember last night, the muffled flirtatious laughs not directed to you in midnight secret calls. You hear your lover’s phone ring, one quick sharp sound before it’s gone.
‘Stop.’ The sound breaking from your lips is no louder than the spinning blades of the fan in your room. The demon scurries from your chest, its nails dragging down your arm as it goes. You wiggle a toe, and a finger twitches. The bonds begin to break, and the weight starts to lessen as the creature drops itself away from the bed. By the time you sit up, reaching for your left hand to rip the ring off, all that’s left is you.
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