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A Plea for Help

https://www.jamescolton.com/short-stories/a-plea-for-help/

Can anyone help me? For a few weeks now I’ve had some messed up experiences. I can’t think of anything that might have triggered them, but here they are:

The first is always in the morning. I usually wake up a minute before my alarm goes off, 7:29. As soon as the numbers change, instead of reading 7:30, the display shows a row of dashes, –:–. Then, instead of the usual beep-beep-beep, I hear a baby crying. When I switch the alarm off, the time goes back to normal, 7:30, but the crying keeps going until I get out of bed, then it sort of…strangles away.

The second experience can happen at any time of the day, but it’s usually at night. The lights start fading, going out one by one, and every now and then—I don’t know, it’s just so weird, like static, I guess. I’ve tried blinking, rubbing my eyes to clear my vision, but that only seems to accelerate the effect.

After a while a face begins to appear in the distance, flickering in and out for just a fraction of a second. It’s…sort of broken and crushed-looking, and it’s screaming, but there’s no sound. It doesn’t seem to fit into physical space; I can’t pin down if it’s right in front of me or at the far end of the room. Sometimes, if I face the wall, it seems to be on the other side, but still visible somehow. As everything gets darker and the visual noise gets worse, it stays around longer.

After a couple minutes, that weird static begins to take on a reddish hue, and the face slowly closes its screaming mouth and begins to smile. I don’t like the smile; it’s not friendly or comforting or anything like that, and it’s too big. Closing my eyes doesn’t help, like I can see straight through my eyelids; neither does turning my head away. It’s always there, just staring at me and smiling.

After a few more minutes, my vision fades completely to black, and I hear a baby crying—just like with the alarm clock, right down to how it strangles away at the end. Once that’s done, the lights come back on.

Those are my experiences. They happen often enough that I’m scared of stupid little things now. I’m scared of a light turning off or the sun going behind a cloud. I’m scared of waking up each morning. Has this ever happened to anyone else before, or am I going crazy? Please help.