Dr. NoSleep

Who are you?

Banging at the door, the chain on the lock jerked backward violently as the door bulged in.

The sound of wet claw hands and sniffing proboscis radiating from behind it.

The voice on the phone barely registered this.

Something heavy slammed into the door, and the entire room shook.

He gripped the gun tighter, and the comforting weight gave him courage despite his fear.

He glanced down at it, his sidearm, his friend, and he remembered the journey he had taken to come to this place.

They had chased him long enough, from his family, his work, his life, and all for the sole crime of noticing them, seeing what they really were, their grotesque forms hidden behind the slack-jawed couch potato and the politician in the thousand-dollar suit.

He had done nothing to them but merely observe them, and for that, they had convinced the world that he was the crazy one, the alien, the parasite, the filth beneath their toenails, and the stinking scum in their teeth to be picked off and thrown away, but no more.

No, today he'd finally make his stand.

He'd show them.

He'd show the whole damn world.

He hung up the phone and took a deep breath, aiming the handgun with as much precision as his shaking hands would allow.

The barrel aimed directly at the door, at the things that banged and slammed and kicked against it like sick animals.

But as he placed his finger on the trigger, he paused.

Voices.

He heard human voices, distant and faint, but the unmistakable sounds of English and Spanish accents, muffled to the point of incomprehensibility, but there, nonetheless, it sounded as if, for a split second, these voices of familiar humans came from just behind them.

No, no, they're tricking me!

Confusing him with their mental tricks to make him think they were mere people to disarm him.

They knew he was armed and that he was ready.