The Abyssinian

The Creature:

The Abyssinian takes various forms, but seems to prefer a humanoid shape, albeit one made of obscuring, blurry shadows making it difficult to get a sense of what it truly is. The Abyssinian's eyes are atramentous pools of the void itself held in a bone-white sphere, seeming to draw you in should you stare for too long and it lacks a discernible mouth. When moving it unnervingly does not demonstrate any ambulatory actions like walking or floating, it just seems to exist in one spot at one moment and another the next.

The Tale:

What follows is the account of a human spacer, when asked about why he does not sleep much, if at all.

I used to get bad dreams all the time as a kid, everyone gets them. The boogeyman of our childhood usually leaves us once we learn there's scarier things out there in the void, like black holes, taxes, or seven missed messages from your mother. Me? Mine never left me. Not since I accidentally made eye contact with it once as a toddler. I don't sleep much because of it. Sleep is when it can get you. Tell your kids this: Don't look your monsters in the eye.

Consider this a warning.

I’ve seen this thing in the flesh twice in my lifetime. First time was as an infant, barely old enough to form memories. I saw it as a tree grown not of the ground and sunlight but of flesh and darkness. Its boughs scraped the shadows of the ceiling like fingers crawling across a keyboard, pulling it along as it crossed outside my bedroom door. I must’ve said something, or it realised I could see it because it stopped and entered my room, its nightmarish form filling the doorframe and the tentacle-like roots slithering closer to me. My father is who broke me out of this reality I’d accidentally glimpsed, but not before I saw this horror open a gaping maw in the center of its trunk in which I saw nothing but empty void, darker than a black hole and hungrier too.

I had seen it, and it had seen me. I was never to be safe again.

I saw another in my teens, but this time it was humanoid. Lanky, tall. Taller than my door and all I could make out from the darkness was a round face with two eyes darker than the deepest abyss and a rictus of a smile twisting its features as it stared at me. Watching me. It tried to take my eyes, tried to put out the light by which I lived and consume me in that final darkness. I kept it at bay somehow, never once breaking line of sight with it as I lay huddled in my bed.

It haunts my dreams now, tormenting me in my sleep since it couldn’t easily consume me in the waking world. It whispers at me from the dark corners of the material world, a susurrus of oblivion and shadows from which I will never escape from. It robs me of fitful sleep, weakening me as a hunter would weaken troublesome prey. Eventually I will be unable to fight it off, I will be too weary to mount anything resembling a defense and it will put my lights out, and bring me into the void between Here and There.

I stared into the Abyss, and the Abyssinian stared back.