The Businessman At The End Of My Bed (A Creepy Horror Short Story) TOS 1.2
The unclasping of the latch woke him. At the bottom of the bed, past his feet. And to his right. The scratching of metal against the fine grains of wood. A coin spinning and dancing in the shadows of the dark bedroom. It lost momentum and dropped to its side. The sound of it crashing against the bedside table was thunder in the night.
It wasn’t the first time Stephen Barker had trouble sleeping. Something that people spend a third of their life doing. Even with all that practice, he couldn’t get it right. He had the night terrors in his youth, waking to find himself in soiled Thunderbird PJ’s tearfully howling to his parents.
“It’s okay,” they told him. “You were just dreaming.”
And then the sleep paralysis later on in life. Waking in the middle of the night, panicked, hallucinations of people in his bedroom, paralysed and unable to move.
“More dreams,” his dad had told him, “just silly dreams.”
Still, that night it didn’t seem like a dream. It never did, but that time, more so than usual. Stephen laid in his bed, pinned down by his own fear and tied up by the dull panic that prickled the back of his neck.
He tried not to cry.
He tried to remain calm.
He reminded himself that sleep paralysis was a common occurrence. Many people have it. Just hormones in your body, designed to help you relax, numbing your movements. And your mind, half-awake, half-asleep hallucinating horrible imagery in the shadows. Most people saw an old hag, a woman, a demon, but that wasn’t what Stephen saw. No, Stephen saw something quite different. Stephen saw a businessman.
A three-piece suit with thick-rimmed glasses hiding his eyes, and alabaster cheekbones lit by the moonlight pouring in through the gap in the curtains. The slight damp of the man’s hair gave light to the tight parting running down the side of his head. And down by the man’s side he clutched his briefcase. And that smell. The musky cologne. The leather gloves. The spinning of the coin to Stephen’s right. The businessman wasn’t alone this time. There was a second person to his right. A presence in the dark that Stephen couldn’t turn his head to see.
He tried to scream but nothing came out. He tried to lift his left hand, just enough to touch his sleeping wife, just enough to wake her.
He tried to force his body to move, but he was trapped and the weight on his chest, holding him down, grew heavier. His breathing became forced. He tried his fingers. Just to wiggle them would be a start, but they lay motionless and dead.
The presence to his right, picked up another coin, spun it. It danced in Stephen’s ear before slamming against the bedside table. The presence ran the coin across the table, scratching the surface until it dropped off the end and into his hand.
Wake up, Stephen thought. Just fucking wake up.
And the briefcase, now open on the foot of the bed. Unable to look elsewhere, Stephen was forced to watch as the businessman readjusted his glasses, picked up some paperwork from the briefcase and leafed through it.
Stephen tried to speak again. This time he managed a whimper. It was enough to stop the presence spinning coins. He felt it lean down over him. The smell of its musk stung the back of his throat. Its breath tickled his ear.
“Heeaaallh,” Stephen managed. More of a wheeze than a word but enough to make the businessman take note. His beady eyes now poked through his glasses.
“Hello,” the businessman said. The quiet concentrated voice of a strict professional. “I’m very sorry to disturb you.”
“Heaaep.” Stephen felt the presence move away from him, back to his side, looking down at him.
“Please, Mr Barker, we’d sincerely appreciate it if you were to keep things professional here, we wouldn’t want things to get … unprofessional.” The businessman checked his watch before nodding to the presence on his right.
“You see, Mr Barker, we do hate to barge into your home at this hour, but this is the only time we can operate in this manner. To operate between the worlds you see.”
Stephen felt a twitch in his finger. Nothing big, just enough. He might be waking up. A little more and he might be able to nudge his wife.
“Please, Mr Barker. If you do that one more time, I will have to ask my associate here to get … unprofessional.”
Sweat dripped down his brow and tickled his eyes. The businessman took a step forward revealing a little more of his hidden details. A prominent nose that jutted out of his face. The hair perfectly gelled and parted.
“I have to tell you, we take no pleasure in doing what we need to do on this night. I for one, am a man of peace, but, as our business grows, we need to find new avenues of distribution, and as me and my associates who deal in the, shall we say, unsavoury side of life, have saturated our current location, we’re now looking to make headways into this side of the wall. Into your room shall we say, but we can’t go about … business …” He stopped, looked to the unseen figure to Stephen’s right. “Yes, carry on, carry on.”
The presence to his right began to move. The sound of the man tightening his gloves, popping his knuckles. His gloved hand landed on Stephen’s mouth, prying it open. The caustic smell of the man’s gloves made Stephen gag.
“We can’t go about business if people are asking about us, who we are, where we’re from, so we’ve developed a way to proceed without raising any suspicions. We believe good business is all about slow, steady growth. Unfortunately for you, this … well.” He nodded again and the presence to his right shoved something into Stephen’s open mouth. It was dry and rough against his tongue — a flannel. Slotted into his mouth and filling out the gaps and crevices. The leather hand fingering the fabric further and further into his mouth.
Stephen whined and cried and did his best to move, to cough, to do anything. If only his wife could wake him. The fingers pushed further.
Through the shadows of the arms above his head, he saw the businessman, checking his watch again, before looking back to him. His eyes now piercing him through those clear lenses. He smiled now. A job well done.
“You will play a very large part in our expansion, Mr Barker. A very large part indeed.”
“Mhhmmn,” Stephen cried, as the flannel found its way past his tonsils, into his the meat of his throat. His body writhed and convulsed, but the presence pushed the flannel further still. It shoved the thing down with the impatient force of a man trying to get his job done as quickly as possible. He pushed further and Stephen felt the windpipe and his throat scratching and expanding and tearing. The presence finally let him alone and walked over to the businessman.
Unable to do much but cry and suffocate, Stephen thought of his parents.
His lungs strained and his heart pounded. As lights filled his vision he saw the presence, finally in view, standing in the moonlight, with an all-too-familiar face.
“Slow, steady growth,” the Other-Stephen said as he looked over to him, tightening his gloves. “Slow and steady growth.”
Tears poured from Stephen’s bloodshot eyes and he thought of his parents again.
Silly dreams, they had said, just silly dreams.
