Open Terror In Due Time

[Harman Dayis]

Harman awoke in the bed, that was not his bed, under covers that didn't feel like his covers. When he looked around for his dog, Champion was nowhere to be seen. Yet, while everything felt wrong, it still looked like his apartment.

'Knock, knock,' the sound echoed from the door of his room.

"I hope you don't mind I let mysssself in," a voice with a snake like draw announced.

Following behind the creature was the pattering of a four legged creature.

"Champion?" Harman blurted.

The monster that had invaded the apartment that was Harman's, but was not Harman's, laughed.

"No, I'm Namrah," it said playfully.

The thing sat down beside Harman on the bed.

"I meant the dog," the teenager commented.

Should I be afraid? He asked himself. He didn't really feel anything.

"I'd tell you no, but that might actually make you ssscared, once you had realizzzed what I had really just sssaid," Namrah mused.

Harman blinked.

"What?" he asked.

Namrah reached up and touched the teenager's face. His hand was a claw, but it was also a hand, and a paw, and then it felt like feathers.

"What are you?" Harman began. "And what's that?"

The teenager gestured down to the thing that had followed the creature into his room.

"Well, I'm you," Namrah said.

Harman saw the thing clearly for the first time. It wasn't a snake, or a clawed monster, or anything else, but it was him.

Namrah's mouth stretched into a mundane, but emotionless smile that did not spread to its eyes.

"Ssso, what do you think of yourself?" it inquired.

As the creature spoke, it's huge, toothy smile never broke, even as it pronounced syllables and words.

"No, you're not me. It'sss not true," Harman said, with a newfound lisp on his s words.

He put his head in his hands.

"Ssstop it!" he screamed, as he fell from the bed and onto the floor.

Harman loosed a scream of agony and tore at his own skin with his finger nails.

"Ssstop!" he wailed.

He looked up to where Namrah had been, and saw nothing.

Harman's screams slowly began to be mixed with sporadic laughter. One moment he was shrieking and the next he was chucking.

And then he began to smile.

[Harman Dayis]

"Really Namrah, wasn't that a little much?" a voice inquired.

The smiling creature shook his head.

"What was I sssupposed to do? Lie to him?" Namrah inquired through his toothy grin.

"I hear you," Harman said.

The teenager came up behind the monster that had tormented him, and the cloaked figure that stood beside him.

"Well of course you hear yourssself speaking, child," Namrah said with a laugh.

"You're not me," Harman challenged bluntly.

The cloaked man lifted his head in curiosity. Namrah simply smiled.

"I think we've been over thisss before," the creature suggested.

"Who're you?" Harman said to Namrah's companion, and ignored his nightmare.

The cloaked man lifted his hand to his hood and pushed it back.

"We're all the same here," he said.

Under the man's hood, was Harman's face, if it had been perfect and flawless in every way.

"Why are you two here?" Harman asked.

Namrah chuckled. The perfect Harman simply smiled a sad smile.

"To show you what you are, what you've been, and what you're becoming," the perfect Harman answered in an ethereal tone.

"True, but I just like to fuck with you," Namrah said. "You'll be ssseeing more of me after we're done with all thisss official businesss. I plan to haunt your dreamsss for yearsss to come."

Harman looked the monster in the eyes.

"I've never been you, you look like me, that's it," he challenged.

Namrah shrugged.

"Yet here I stand," the creature offered.

The thing never stopped smiling, it never stopped.