the shadow from her bookcase

A branch crashes against her window as the wind blows even stronger. The noise echos through her apartment waking up everyone inside. Her cat jumps on her lap, her dog crawls under her blanket and her eyes open, slowly. She sits up and yawns. Her eyes begin to tear up and she sees a light in her peripheral vision. Her head turns slowly, the branch hitting her window much harder than before.

"Jeez this noise is just making my headache worse," she whispers to herself, yawning once more.

She begins to slowly get out of her bed and walks towards the bathroom. Just as she begins to wash her hands she realises that there is no branch outside of her window. There was in fact not a single tree near her apartment complex. Curious about what the noise was, she opens her curtains and finds nothing. Confused, she lays back in her bed, her pets cuddling up to her out of fear. They seemed nervous and would begin to growl angrily at nothing. She began to get used to the growling and fell asleep once again.

A loud crash on the kitchen wakes her up. She runs out of her bedroom, concerned. Getting to the kitchen, she finds nothing. She stood, confused once again. She decides to go back to bed but this time she takes a knife from the kitchen. As she lays back down in her bed, she places the knife under her pillow and falls back asleep.

She feels something on her cheek, it feels hairy and warm. Her eyes open and she sees her dog's tail resting on her face. She smiles as she knows that she is safe. She hugs her dog and drifts back into sleep.

As she is slowly beginning so sleep, she notices a cold pain on her hand. No concern arises as it's probably just her cat biting her hand. Soon after she begins to feel a strong pain in her head. The stress from before had begun to make her headache even more unbearable. The pain had forced her awake.

As her eyes opened the pain became worse. In the darkness of midnight her body became cold. A wind began to blow over her, yet every window was closed. She raised the blanket covering her and noticed her hand had become limp. She sat up and felt a cold breath on her neck. Turning around, she fell to the floor in pain. Her headache had gotten even worse. As she laid on the floor she felt footsteps around her causing the headache to become even worse. Soon her mind lost the ability to focus and she laid, staring at the ceiling. As she laid staring, she noticed a body coming from her bookcase.

This body looked like a spaghetti noodle. It moved like waves during high tide and had a breeze coming from it. The body moved closer to her. As it got closer she began to see it more clearly. The body was a shadow, it was a living shadow. She stared at it, her headache making her unable to move. Her eyes filled with tears as it grabbed the knife from under her pillow and slowly cut of her skin. She felt nothing as it skinned her. She thought she was numb from the headache. The body just kept going. Her eyes began to adjust to the darkness bit by bit. She noticed the body had begun to gain colour. It started to form into someone or something. She struggled to lift her hand towards it but eventually did. The body gave her the knife. The girl stared at it. She looked at the body, now disappearing back into the book case. As it left she heard a slight whisper.

"Do it"

Her body suddenly became strong again. She grabbed the knife in her hand and cut off her tongue. Then her ears, toes and nose. She looked at the knife with a smile and slit her throat.

There was a knock on the door.

"Hey sis, it's me"

A young woman walked into the apartment. She'd noticed a draw wide open in the kitchen.

"Looks like she's been sleep walking again"

She walked further into the apartment. She'd noticed knife marks on the walls leading up to her sister's bedroom. Growing concerned, she rushed to the bedroom. That's when she saw it. Her sister was lying on the floor with mutalated hand. There was a knife inside of her bed. She knew what had happened.

A few hours after she had rushed her sister to the hospital, the woman returned to clean up. She stared at the knife that had pierced straight through her sister's bed. She stared at the blood her sister left behind. She stared at everything in her sister's room.

"Why do you insist on living alone," she muttered to herself, "you know your sleep walking can get dangerous."

The woman pulled the knife out of the bed and walked towards the kitchen. Where a cold breeze had greeted her. And there it was, in her peripheral vision she noticed a shadow coming out of the bookcase. As she turned to look, it dissappeared without a trace.