Sleep Tight
Disbelief took me. Despair so sharp and so overwhelming that I am unable to convey it with mere words. It was lying in my bed, waiting, a white sheet covering its emaciated body from sight.
The human mind is a wonderful thing. Just as you believe your body has reached a level of exhaustion that it cannot recover from, that your emotions are so frayed that you feel you cannot continue, a thought springs as if miraculous from a weary mind.
Let it rest, for now.
I quietly crept through the dark and picked up my wallet which I had left on a small coffee table in the centre of my living room. Leaving the door unlocked, I left to attend to a new plan and returned an hour later. With a moment's preparation I slipped into the spare room. There I lay in that unsullied bed, waiting. I was sure that this was the end game, that instead of toying with me, it would come for the kill. How it had escaped that watery grave I did not know, but I would be damned if it would escape again. I could only hope that it would sense me from the other room.
I closed my eyes, pretending to be sound asleep. Time lumbered onwards and although I fought it, exhaustion finally took me, sending me into a deep slumber.
I woke with its hands around my neck. It coughed and spluttered on top of me, a rancid black liquid dripping on my face as it oozed from its facial wounds. I struggled, gasping for air and hoping that I had the strength in me to escape its grasp, but it was too strong and my hands could not grip it with any sense of conviction, as it seemed to be dripping wet from its plunge into the lake.
It may not have seemed rational at the time, but as my vision dimmed and the last light of consciousness extinguished within me, I did as so many animals do in their last moments; I played dead.
Lying motionless, holding my breath, it shook me violently by the neck and then released me. I waited for my moment, my last chance to destroy this thing. Its laboured breathing relaxed slightly and seemed to stare at me almost quizzically.
I waited still for a shift of weight which might have let me throw it to the ground