Age: 7
I wake up in bed. Moonlight spills across my blanket. Everything is quiet. Still. Normal.
Then I hear the door creak open.
And I know what's about to happen.
He walks in.
E.T.
But not the one from the movie. This one is wrong. His skin is gray and rubbery, stretched over bones that don't fit right. His neck is too long. His mouth doesn't belong on anything human.
And he never speaks.
He just starts at my feet.
He pulls back the blanket and puts his mouth on my toes. And then he begins to eat.
I feel everything. His teeth grind down through skin. Tendons snap. He chews my toes like gristle. Then my feet. My ankles. My shins.
I scream. I beg. I cry.
But I can't move.
My body won't listen. I'm paralyzed. Every night, I try to kick, to run, to even roll away. But I never can.
He keeps going. Slowly. Methodically. Like he's savoring it.
Through muscle. Through bone. All the way to my hips.
It takes hours.
And I stay awake. Every minute of it.
The next night, I try not to sleep. I try everything, pinching, blinking, hiding. But eventually, sleep takes me.
And I wake up in the same bed. Same moonlight. Same quiet.
Same door creak.
He comes in again.
And it starts all over.
This time, I beg louder.
"Please stop! Please don't! Please don't eat me again!"
But he doesn't care. He pulls off the blanket, grabs my legs, and rips into me.
I feel my knees splinter. My femurs crack. He eats me like I'm a thing, not a girl.
I scream until my voice is gone.
And still, he keeps going.
I tell my mom.
I tell her everything.
I sob in the kitchen, shaking, desperate. I say he comes at night. That he eats me alive. That I feel it. That I can't stop it. That I hurt so bad and I don't want to sleep anymore.
She smiles.
She brushes my hair back and says gently,"He is our friend."
She smiled like she knew something I didn't. Like she'd met him, too. Like this was all normal.
Night after night after night.
He comes.
Sometimes I cry the second I hear the door.Sometimes I try to stay still, pretend I'm already dead, like maybe he'll skip me.
He never does.
He eats me anyway.
And every time, I feel more.
The heat of his breath. The wet suction of his mouth. The cracking of my own bones in his jaw.
One night he licks my leg before biting.Another time he snaps my ankle in half before he starts.Once he chews all the way up to my stomach, and I can feel my organs sliding apart.
But I never die.
I just wake up again. Whole. Shaking. Waiting for the next time.
Finally, one night, I decide to fight.
I don't want to be eaten again.
So I hide behind the door. My little fists are clenched. My knees are shaking. But I'm ready.
He opens the door and I scream.
As loud as I can.
And he runs.
He runs away.
I did it. I won.
I race down the hallway to tell my mom.
I burst into her room. I'm smiling. I'm breathless. I'm proud.
But she's already awake.
He's already there.
On top of her. Eating her.
Blood pools around her. He chews her legs like meat on a bone.
And she just… turns to me.
Smiling. Blood oozing out the side of her mouth. Calm.
Her voice is hollow when she says:
"He is our friend."
Then her body jerks. Convulses.
She dies staring ahead with blank eyes.
And that's when I finally wake up.
Really wake up.
In my real bed.
In the dark.
The moonlight's the same.
My feet are cold.
And I swear…I hear the door creaking open.
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I had that dream for months.
Night after night, I'd fall asleep knowing what was waiting for me. Knowing he would come. Knowing I'd feel every bite.
And still, I couldn't stop it.
I told people. I begged for help. I cried myself sick. But no one understood. Not really.
Because here's the truth: t wasn't a monster. It wasn't E.T. Not really.
It was my brain.
That was how my brain chose to explain what was happening to me.
Growing pains.
The ones that kept me up at night. The ones that made my legs ache deep into the bone. That kind of pain no one takes seriously because "it's just part of growing up. "But I didn't have the words for that kind of pain. So my brain gave me a monster.
It made the pain make sense.
Of course it hurt, I was being eaten alive. Of course I cried. I was being devoured piece by piece. Of course I couldn't move, because the pain was paralyzing.
E.T. wasn't my fear. He was my metaphor.
And my mom's strange, serene response?
"He is our friend."
That was the adult explanation filtered through a child's mind. That was my mom trying to tell me it was normal. That it would pass. That the pain was helping me grow.
But it didn't feel like growth.
It felt like being chewed on in the dark.
So my body made it a story. A horror. A warning.
And every time I woke up whole again, that was its way of saying:
"You're okay. You survived."