This is how it happened. We drove by the hotel, looked at each other, shrugged and pulled into the parking lot. It was past 10 when we realized we were both too tired to continue. With a quick phone call we told the others we'd be late, then checked in. The only rooms they had left were those with only one king-sized bed.

After little argument- driving for sixteen hours did little to ignite the passion for debate- my friend and I decided to share the bed. What the hell, it was big enough for each one of us to stay on one side. We got there and immediately started preparing for sleep. He replaced his shirt with a dull gray oversized XLarge t-shirt, the kind people only wear at bed, and I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth and change into my own sleeping clothes.

As I drifted into sleep I couldn't help but remember those days when these kind of sleep overs were something of a weekend occurance. Eespecially one night, must've been around 8, when my friend and I just discovered the joys of scaring each other shitless with ghost stories. Then I told my friend, in a way friends confessed dangerous secrets to each other, that I was actually a vampire. Giving my worst vampire hissing motion, my friend yelled out "this is what you were all along?", a nonsense spontaneous thing kids that age usually say. The serious ridiculousness of the line made us both burst out laughing.

Though instead of a nice airconditioned room and action figure was a humid motel with tackey paintings that looked sinister at night. The air of the motel was musty. These places usually were like that, but the summer had been unusually hot- one of the reason we were too tired to continue- which made the air even thicker and the crickets decided it was the perfect chance to practice their orchestra.

(this is what you were all along?)

I yelped like a scared dog and bundled up into my corner. I did this before even knowing why. My insticts adjusted to the dark before my eyes did, and when the moonlight did reveal what I was being afraid of...my fears multiplied. There was something at the other end of the bed. And I emphasize "thing".

It was as if someone took 160 pounds of raw hamburger meat and tried to sculpt a human body with it. A body that spilling out everywhere, gooey and melted, with a skull twisted into eternal violence, playing with shadows and darkness, it was a Francis Bacon painting come to life.

(this is what you were all along?)

Then I saw that in between the grotesque statue was oversized gray fabric. That's when I knew. Whatever it WAS, I don't know, but I knew what it had been.

It was someone I called a friend.

How can I describe what went through me? Whenever I heard people talking about their sadness I always thought they were being self-absorbed whiners. Most likely another person would think I was being a self-absorbed whiner. I knew then that it was impossible to understand another person's feelings until tragedy hits you, and life will make sure it does eventually hit. Then when the blow comes, like it did when I saw what I saw, you feel like howling, and every ounce of energy you have is frantically trying to change things. A different hotel, continuing to drive, or even if I took that side of the bed. It's not some sweet melancholy or soft sorrow, but an impossibly intense pain that made me feel like wanting to rip off my own skin just to make everything stop.

Then a strange moment of clarity. I thought that whatever did this was probably still in the room.

I wanted to escape. I thought of getting out of bed, running towads the door and then - still being in disorienting grief- jump out a window somewhere or something. When I got to the door I realized it seemed too easy, flowy and vague.

I was still in bed.

Once more I willed myself in the exact same scenario, and once again I found myself doing these things only in my imagination. The most I managed to do, when I finally felt my real, flesh body, was sit up. Then I froze. The paralysis was numbing, like invisible hands were restraining me. Everything was in slow motion, the only thing that seemed to go faster was my heartbeat. When I would move my head with a lot of effort, my neck would just snap back to it's original position. I was condemned to look at the meaty jello for eternity.

I tried to scream or cry. Anything. Dry heavy air crawled out of my throat and disappeared into the darkness. That was all.

That's when I swore I saw the thing move. It had come to that, I was regarding my friend as a thing. My friend who would always show up late with the exact same excuse, who preferred Sprite over Coca Cola and who would swear that pro wreslting was real - honest to God, my friend's cousin is a wrestler and he says it's all for real! - was a pile of different shades of red with teeth. And those teeth seemed to expand unnaturally, a smile that wasn't so much the widening of teeth as a widening of the entire dimension around it. Meat between sheets, and a sloppy mess of what used to be an arm stretched out close to my side. It's as if his final act as a human being was to try and reach out for me, probably in help. It choked me up to think about it.

So there we were, a complete standstill, a forced painting created by some unthinkable artist manipulating the canvas from unknown places. A naked flayed body with outstretched arm, and a paralyzed spectator. It seemed too perfectly made up to be just a freak coindicence. What if I had been the one in that place? Would his reaction be the same? It would seem odd that I was coming up with what if scenarios in these situations, but it wasn't a matter of being logical. I was calm because I knew my mental state was on a tight rope over a bottomless pit, and any movement would cause me to fall into hysterics.

My mind tried to impose a human face My friend would look at me uncomfortably, grunt "what are you staring at?" then probably kick me out of bed for staring at his sleeping body for so long, and that was that.

But the arm crying out for help said, no, that was not that.

Then I remembered something I heard about. How people would wake up in the middle of the night in cold sweat, feeling a witch or the devil pressing against them and causing intense and painful paralysis. The way to escape, they said, was by yelling out a prayer or a sacred word. I blew out some air and heard a soft squeak. My voice would work with enough effort, as good a sign as any. But at the same time I didn't want to do it. It felt like whatever demonic thing caused this was leaving me alone because I was so still - the bottomless pit turned into the monster waiting at the lake's abyss-, and the second I made myself visible or audible, well, all bets were off. It was the boogeyman clause: if you stay perfectly still and refuse to see anything, even if you're a clearly shaking lump under a blanket, it can't get you. My body seemed to be following the spirit and the letter of that law. If I moved my feet the ancient hand of the thing under my bed would grab them. If I moved my head to stare at the closet long enough, eventually the darkness would create an outline of something tall and mockingly human shaped stalking around the bed. But all the eyeless freaks and insane horrors my bored mind create out of the dark couldn't compare to what I was forced to look at.

I tried to get the courage to yell, break loose and get back to the normal world, where boogeymen and closet monsters only harass grade schoolers and my friend would show up fifteen minutes late complaining about the accident that caused him to take a detour. Yeah, I realized that no matter what would come out and punish me for breaking this boogeyman clause, I didn't want to stay in a world where those I cared about were nothing but screaming piles of rotted meat.

A couple of more roars came out as squeaks. And then, drawning all my fears like a suicidal man staring down a cliff, I yelled out the sacred prayer of my generation.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK.

My limbs flapped around and I fell off the bed. There was no sign of anyone living or human in the room but I had to take what I got. I ran out of the door. When my hands reached the door knob did I hear the wet splatter and a tortured crawling on the floor...