There’s Something In The Coffee…
I’ve been awake for eighteen days. That’s not hyperbole or any form of exaggeration. I’ve genuinely gone all this time without any sleep or rest. Not even a wink. And the craziest part is that I don’t feel like I need it. I don’t know how I’m still alive. These last few days have been some of the craziest of my life, and I feel like it’s about to get much worse. It all began on the eve of one of my exams. The dreaded finals week had come around, and although I had studied for it throughout the month of November and prepared myself to the best of my ability, it was still getting to me. Something about having a considerable portion of grades dependent on one test… just never sat right with me. I had been lying in my bed for the past three hours, tossing and turning, frustrated, unable to allow myself to slip into that glorious world of slumber. It was 4 a.m… and my next final was…. At 8… Eventually, I’d had enough, so I decided to get out of bed and pull an all-nighter to do some extra studying. After all, staying up through the night had always been better than dozing off for two hours and then being rudely awoken, surprisingly enough. So, with that, I sighed, got up from my bed, and started putting on my clothes. I headed out the door into the warm, humid Floridian air. The campus library was open, as was to be expected; they were always available 24/7 during this time. The building was entirely still. The information desk was open, and some poor soul who had taken the student job was staffing it overnight. I looked over, and she didn’t even move her head to notice me, staring blankly at the screen ahead of her. There were other people in here, too, just not a lot. Now and then, you’d see the occasional chair filled by a zombified student, a cup of coffee in one hand, their laptop in the other, and a lovely pie of pizza resting on the table in front of them. Typical. In the center of the main lobby stood a beautifully crafted table with a white cloth draped over it. On top were two big metallic cylinders, coffee dispensers, with a basket containing a bunch of small paper cups to the right. Further to the side a variety of creams, sugars, and sweeteners. The sight didn’t surprise me. This school had a tradition of offering free coffee to all students in the late hours during this time. It was a nice gesture for everyone stressing out about their upcoming exams, I suppose. I’m not a coffee drinker —never was— I despise the taste. Still… it was 4 a.m., and I was about to stay up all night. So, with that in mind, I caved and filled up one of the paper shot cups, making sure to load it with so much cream that, frankly, you probably wouldn’t be able to call it coffee anymore. With that, I made my way up the stairway to the right, which took me to the third floor, the computer lab. I approached one of the tens of empty computers, logged into my account, and pulled up my professor’s PowerPoint presentation. I practically gulped the coffee down in a minute, and it tasted about how you would expect. But the texture, the texture was off… As the hot liquid slid its way down my throat… I felt… something like a rough surface pass by my tongue. It was almost as if little tiny balls had been in the fluid, like cottage cheese, but a tad less noticeable. I didn’t think much of it then, figuring it was probably something I put into the beverage, or something with this particular brand. And a quick look inside the cup revealed nothing unusual, so I quickly forgot about it. I was considering getting another one when, just ten minutes later, the caffeine took effect. It was insanely powerful, more than I expected. My heart was throbbing in my chest, as I was jolted into awakeness, and I felt like I had just slept ten hours. There was an ongoing gag going around the school that they injected the coffee with jet fuel. Well, I guess now I know where that came from. Suffice it to say, I’m glad I didn’t follow through on what I was considering. I think I would’ve succumbed to cardiac arrest almost immediately. I continued studying until about 7 a.m. when the sun began to peak over the horizon. As I exited the building, stepping into the crisp morning air, I still felt perfect. The heart pounding in my chest was the only thing telling me that this period of energy was artificial. I finally understood why people were such avid coffee drinkers, and I thought that maybe I should do this more often. It ended up taking until about 2 p.m. that day for the caffeine to wear off. At last, I could feel my body begin to slow down, and the full effect of the stunt I had just pulled came over me like a rock. It was like somebody had snapped their fingers, and I just… crashed… I decided to return to my bed and attempt to sleep off last night. Not for too long, though; after all, I had more finals in the morning. And thinking of that got my fear going once again. I said I had prepared the best I could, but the one that was coming up… Oh boy… No matter what I tried, I couldn’t figure out half of it. And the thing was worth about 40% of my grade… If I didn’t do well on this final, it would tank my class average. A slight panic set in at the thought of it. I should mention that I have a mild case of anxiety. Not to the extreme where I get regular panic attacks, but just enough to make every testing situation about ten times worse than it is for anyone else. I tossed and turned for about thirty minutes in this pit of dread I was drowning in, when suddenly… something very peculiar happened. My sleepiness disappeared again. It was just… gone… entirely and utterly vanquished. I didn’t know what to make of it at first but blamed it on the adrenaline currently shooting through my veins. I decided to splash some cold water on my face and take a hot shower to calm down. It didn’t help… two hours of laying there passed… nothing… It didn’t make sense to me. It was as if the crash had just… ended… As I wasn’t getting any sleep, I decided to use this time to work some more. Being so worried about what was coming up and all, I did just that until about 11 p.m. that night… And again… I just… still didn’t feel tired… I spent hours tossing and turning, hoping, begging myself to fall asleep, but no dice. I had enough at this point. I pulled out my phone and did a quick Google search on how long caffeine is supposed to last. Most results pointed me in the direction of four to six hours, with the more extreme estimates being up to twelve. This had already gone far longer than any of the websites suggested. I rationalized it away by saying that perhaps I was just sensitive to caffeine and that since this was my first real exposure, it would take a while for the effects to subside. I was going to crash eventually. I just needed to wait it out. But that didn’t happen. It was now 4 a.m., and I was still lying awake in bed, feeling no different. I decided to spend the night studying again, very decidedly not taking any of the coffee this time, slightly annoyed that I would likely regret it in the middle of the next morning’s final. I didn’t. Nothing had changed. And now, I was starting to get concerned. Did I have some adverse reaction or something? What was going on? I called my mom to ask what she had to say. She was equally concerned for my well-being and suggested I take a trip to the university’s health center. The best they could do for me was to recommend I take some medication and see if that fixed it, and she instructed me to call a doctor if it didn’t. I’m sure you can guess the results of that little experiment. Not only did the medication take no effect, but as I lay awake for hours, a chill sweat began to trickle down my skin. It started gradually, but it eventually became intense, such that my sheets quickly became drenched in the stuff. My head as well… was throbbing; a piercing, screaming headache shot its way through my brain, only getting worse, as if I had just been shot. There was a different kind of thumping in my head, though… one much more unexplainable. On top of the raging headache, I felt something else—a tiny, slight, unrhythmic tapping… seeming to occur in different parts of my brain. I paid close attention as it slowly moved from one side of my forehead to the other, then around the back of my skull, before continuing to wrap itself around. I didn’t know what to make of it. And that’s also where I drew the line. Enough was enough. I was calling a doctor tomorrow. Well, I did so the following morning, and the response I got was something like, “Sorry, the best we can do is give you an appointment in two weeks.” Great. All praise the healthcare system, I guess. But, accepting it was the only thing I could do, I said, “Okay,” booked the meeting, and hoped it wouldn’t worsen. The following day was when things started to get a little scary. My mother nearly gasped when she saw me on FaceTime, saying I looked ‘paler than snow’. I had to agree with her because, in the middle of our conversation, I got a sudden wave of extreme nausea, gagging harder than I ever had before. I hastily hung up the call and sprinted to the bathroom, just in time to empty my stomach contents into the toilet bowl. I sat there, retching for the next hour. All the while, the headache and those odd irregular feelings circling themselves around my brain continued. And if that wasn’t bad enough, as I was donating my insides to the indoor plumbing, I swear I saw something move in the corner of my eye. It was brief… but it looked like an… odd, elongated shape slowly moving up the bathroom wall. I didn’t get a good look at it, as it appeared to hurry out of view entirely before I turned around. I searched the entire place, top to bottom, but there was no sign of the damn thing. It was like it had just… vanished… That was the final straw. I assumed the sleep deprivation was getting to me, and I was beginning to hallucinate, even though I still felt as awake as ever. But I didn’t care anymore. Enough was enough; I could not, in any way, wait two weeks for an appointment. And so, without any options left, I picked up the phone and dialed 9-1-1. The paramedics arrived within minutes and I quickly explained the situation to them, and, after seeing how terrible I looked, they immediately put me on a stretcher and whisked me away to the local hospital. The two-hour wait in the emergency room was what I could best describe as miserable. I was stuck sitting on a cheap plastic chair in a sanitary, lit, open room surrounded by patients suffering from god knows what illnesses. The icing on the cake was that my symptoms continued to worsen throughout my entire stay. My vision was beginning to go hazy, and I swear I kept seeing something move in my peripheral vision, like what I found back in my apartment. Finally, after hours of torture, The doctor finally called me and escorted me to my new room. He introduced himself as Dr. Jones and ran me through some basic questions, you know, the typical stuff. “How are you feeling, Kevin?” “Terrible.” “Have you taken any drugs recently?” “Other than Nyquil? No…” “Do you drink any alcohol?” “Very rarely.” It was just your standard, run-of-the-mill doctor’s questioning, but soon, one toward the end caught my attention. “Did you drink any caffeinated beverages recently?” the doctor asked. I stopped for a moment. “…I mean, I did have a shot of coffee… but it was… three… four days ago?” The doctor made a hum of acknowledgment, his expression considerate before shaking it off. “Okay… well, that shouldn’t be causing this, then… I’m going to be honest with you, Kevin: I’m not sure what’s happening… So what we’re going to do now is run you through a few tests to hopefully determine an answer… and if we can’t find anything… then we might have to keep you here overnight to perform a sleep test.” I snorted. Sleep test… right… The preliminary tests went exactly as expected. They took some fluids, checked my blood pressure, and looked at my heart rate—all the standard stuff. Everything turned out negative for any sort of issue. My vitals were perfect… frustratingly so. And so, I was then quickly informed that they would be proceeding with the sleep examination that night. They escorted me to a place that looked more like a hotel room than a hospital. A big window at the far end would let in plenty of natural light during the day. There was another blurred-out window on the right side, and a neat little old-fashioned lamp stood on a nightstand. The bed itself looked rather cozy and had a lovely wooden finish as a headboard. If I weren’t so ill, I would’ve admired it. After hooking me up to various pieces of equipment that I couldn’t even explain the purpose of, Dr. Jones spoke again. “Alright… you’re all set up, Kevin. Now, don’t worry. We’re going to be watching from the adjacent room the entire night, okay? So if you need anything… just ask.” I nodded my head, the only response I could make in my current state, and watched as he handed me a couple of pills. “Oh, and one more thing, here is some Silenor for the night… it’s an insomnia medication; it should be more powerful than the stuff you had before… Hopefully, it might have an effect.” After I swallowed what he had given me, the doctor made his way out of the room and turned off the lights before closing the door. And just like that, I was left with nothing but complete, overbearing silence, broken only by the gentle hum of machinery. As my eyes hadn’t adjusted yet, darkness swallowed everything. I gently eased my head back into the pillow and shut my eyelids, hoping to finally catch some Z’s. The bed was really comfortable; in any other situation, I would’ve fallen asleep within minutes. But now… One hour passed… Two hours passed… I was beginning to get frustrated. It seemed that the tablet the doctor had given me wasn’t helping. So I just lay there, staring at the ceiling for some time and holding my eyes shut. Nothing happened until about midnight, and quite frankly, I wish it had stayed that way. I immediately felt the throbbing in my head return, and the gentle taps that seemed to be circulating around my entire head went into overdrive. It was more evenly spread now, too. Rather than being in specific locations, it was across what seemed to be the entire circumference of my brain all at once. I could almost…hear…it inside me, all the little contacts… like crinkling paper. I sprung up to a sitting position, clutching my face in pain. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness now; what was once pure nothingness had brightened into a shadowy cacophony that ate the corners and walls of the room. The nausea returned, and stars pulsated through my vision, and just then… something caught my eye. It sounded in my ears too…coming from the dark, shadowy corner that lay just to the left of me…running smoothly and slowly up the wall. I looked over to the source of the noise, which was partially illuminated by the glow of the machinery, and what I saw made my heart drop. Tucked away where the left and back wall met each other was what appeared to be a black, slim, elongated tube of some sort… but no, it wasn’t that. I peered closer at it, and I realized it had legs… hundreds and hundreds of little tiny legs squirming and latching onto the surface in unison with the noise. The animal slowly crawled its way upward, paying me no attention. Its long body wriggled in perfect harmony as it made its way towards the ceiling. I stayed frozen in fear for a few seconds before I immediately launched up from my bed and screamed, practically ripping the equipment down from where it was standing, unleashing a loud crash. The doctors stormed into the room and immediately turned on the lights, demanding to know what had happened. I was hysterical. My head was still pounding, it felt like my brain was constrained. “The-there’s something in the corner of the-“ But as I looked to point it out, what I had seen was gone. “Kevin… How long did you say you were awake for…?” Dr. Jones asked with concern. “It’s common with severe sleep deprivation that you may experience hallucinations… ” It made sense, but what I had seen felt so… life-like… Unsurprisingly the doctors informed me that they would have to cancel the sleep test because my ruckus of throwing everything to the floor managed to break the equipment I was strapped to, so… yay me. However, They said that they could retrieve all the data up until now and that they would be able to review it as soon as possible and decided it would be best to move me to a standard hospital room while they awaited my results. They could barely move me five feet before I started gagging, and soon the floor was greeted with a pristine covering formed from my stomach contents, delivered by yours truly. Jokes aside, I finally got a good look at what was coming out of me. It was filled with what looked like… tiny black spheres… I didn’t know what to make of it; quite frankly, I was worrying about other things, but it seemed to stun the doctors for a moment, too. However, they quickly got back to the task and escorted me out into the hallway. I didn’t see what became of my mess afterward. After getting into an admittedly less comfortable hospital bed, I finally had the opportunity to scroll through my phone. It was completely blown up with panicked messages from my mother asking me what was happening and demanding to know why I wasn’t answering. I called her back, and the second she saw the medical bed behind me, she nearly exploded into tears. “What happened?!” she cried out. I explained everything that had been going on since I last called her: the sudden wave of nausea I experienced, calling 9-1-1, and the sleep test. We, or rather, she, came to the conclusion that she would fly down and visit me as soon as possible to hopefully get this whole situation sorted. It was… nice… a silver lining in all this awfulness. At the very least, I was going to be able to see my mother again. Doctor Jones interrupted our conversation, and after I said one last goodbye to my mother, he simply sat down and sighed. He was holding what looked to be a couple of sheets of paper in his hand. “Hey, Kevin…” he started. “So, we’ve been reviewing your sleep test data as promised, and well…” He showed me what looked to be a graph with a long squiggly line complete with small valleys and ever-towering hills. “Your brain waves… they’re highly irregular… look.” He began tracing his finger along the jagged line. “They are much more active than they should be… and they nearly go off the graph here when you had your… episode… It’s highly alarming.” I stared at him in silence, not knowing exactly what to say. “One thing’s for sure; we’re going to have to get a head CT done as soon as possible… I’ll see how soon I can get you in for an appointment…” I could barely utter an ‘okay’ before he left the room, and finally… I completely broke down. This whole thing… It was a massive nightmare. I had no idea why this was happening, and it seemed like even the doctors, the world-class professionals, did not have any semblance of a clue either. I just wanted this all to end; I just wanted to get some sleep, finally. I wanted to stop… seeing that creaturein the corner of my eye. But alas, I should’ve known my prayers would all fall on deaf ears. A few hours later, Doctor Jones returned and escorted me to the head examination room. It was small and white, with what looked to be some sort of control desk behind a wall in the front, and a large machine resembling an MRI taking up most of the space, making a lot of noise, far more than I had expected. I lay down on the little bed, feet facing the device, and put my arms over my head as the assistant wheeled me into the machine. I can’t lie; I had a certain amount of dread come over me. I knew this was all normal procedure and that it was going to be painless, but something about this was daunting. Dr. Jones and the others returned to the control area near the entrance and advised me the scan was about to begin. However, I didn’t even make it for what seemed like five seconds, when there appeared to be distress from the control center, and one of the assistants practically ran out of the room. My heart began to pound in my chest. Dr. Jones approached me immediately, a grim expression on his face. “Listen, Kevin…” He sighed. “Normally, CT scan results take weeks to get back to you, but we’ve seen some things here that I believe might have to be taken care of now.” He ushered me back to the area he had been in during the process and pointed at the computer screen, and I nearly gasped when I saw the image being projected. There was a picture of my head, which was to be expected, but there was something else. Wrapped around my brain was a long, bug-like creature with two big antennas at the front and an uncountable amount of legs; the whole thing bore resemblance to a giant millipede, yet, it was slightly fatter and was long enough to cover the entire circumference of my brain twice. There was something else, though; that… creature… looked precisely like the one I had been seeing in my hallucinations, albeit a bit smaller. My heart lurched in my chest as I stared at the unnerving image. I was feeling sick to my stomach, but not due to the illness this time. “What the hell?!” I exclaimed. “Yeah…” Dr. Jones commented. “I have no idea where this came from; I’ve never seen anything like it before… but we’re going to have to get it out of you pretty fast.” I could only bob my head in agreement, still lost in my thoughts. This… passenger… had been sitting inside me for god knows how long… was that what I felt when I experienced that tapping inside my head…? Was it that… crawling around up there? As if on cue, it started again. I paid closer attention this time, and I could really feel it—all those little legs skittering along my brain. I immediately dissolved into a blind panic, but that only seemed to make it pick up the pace. It almost seemed… excited… or stimulated in some way. My headache returned, and I collapsed to the ground, my fear briefly forgotten. Doctor Jones stood up to help me back to my feet and looked at me with a concerned expression. “Look, Kevin… I’ll try to schedule surgery to get it removed as soon as possible… until then… just try not to think about it too hard… okay?” “Don’t think about it too hard.” That was easier said than done; how was I supposed to go back to my room and pretend something like this hadn’t just made itself a home up there? My terror got worse as I was ushered back to my room. I still felt it the whole time… it had gotten active recently, and my symptoms were starting to flare up again. I was overwhelmed with illness the second I got back and immediately sprinted toward the bathroom. The substance I excreted looked the same as before… filled with those… weird black spheres. I didn’t pay attention to it, though. I was still thinking about that thing. It had been real… maybe my visions hadn’t been—but whatever that was had been living inside me this whole time. I tried, desperately, to calm myself down and tell myself it would be out in a day. That didn’t make it any better. After finishing my rounds, I got up weakly to wash my hands. And that’s when I saw it. Slightly above my eyebrows, in the middle of my forehead, was what appeared to be a massive bulge. It sat there, completely still. As I looked at it further, I realized it wasn’t just that… It was a long, winding… bug-like cylinder that circled itself around my entire head. I could even see the pieces of my hair slightly displaced by the shape, as it sheathed beneath them. I don’t know what came over me. But somehow, all worry and tension immediately disappeared. I found my right hand slowly drifting up towards my scalp as if it had a mind of its own. I’d say I tried to stop it, but that would be a lie. It was almost like… like I was in some sort of trance. My mind had gone completely blank as my arm slowly hovered up further toward the anomaly. Then… I touched it and squeezed it gently. It was soft, almost like some sort of sponge, but I didn’t have much time to register it as it immediately squirmed away, darting out of view and behind my head at a speed that looked similar to a bullet fired from a gun. This is what finally ripped me from my state. I screamed and leaped backward, almost splitting my head on the bathroom tiles. I sat there breathing heavily for a moment, hyperventilating, nearly crying before I worked up the courage to look back into the mirror. It was gone. I did a complete 360 to make sure, but no matter what angle I checked… it wasn’t there anymore. My headache intensified once again, and I ran to my bed, curling up in the fetal position, tears streaming from my eyes. I remained like that for hours. The doctors had come in to check on me and see what was wrong… but after I explained what I had seen, they found nothing. Still, their presence helped calm me down a tiny bit. That night, I simply lay staring at the ceiling. I don’t think I would’ve been able to sleep even if I didn’t have this odd condition. Nothing else happened. But still, it was bad enough. The image of what I saw on the CT scan and what happened to me later in that bathroom was haunting. And no matter how hard I tried, I simply could not get it out of my head. My mom arrived the following morning, and I explained everything to her. She was understandably just about as freaked out as I was, but she relaxed a tad bit when I told her about the doctor’s plans to remove what was now being dubbed a ‘parasite’. My neurosurgeon, with a team of doctors, an assistant, and my anesthesiologist, came in a few minutes later, announcing that it was time to perform the surgery, and told my mom to remain in the waiting room. With one last hug, we said goodbye and split up, to hopefully see each other again once this was over. “Don’t worry. I’m going to take good care of you,” my anesthesiologist reassured me as she prepared the machine. Bright, blinding lights sprang to life as the doctors prepared their tools and laid them out on the table next to me. I knew I wouldn’t be feeling any of this, but still, I have to admit, it did give me a small pit in my stomach to see all of the sharp objects that were about to be used on me. They stuck an I.V. into my arm and hooked me up to all kinds of equipment, including heart rate and blood pressure monitors. I listened as the rhythmic beeping sprang to life and tried to ease myself, staring into the piercing lights above. “Okay, Kevin,” my anesthesiologist smiled. “Once I set this mask on your face, I want you to count down from ten in your head. I promise you will be asleep before you reach zero. You’ll be awake later, after the first part of the surgery has been completed.” With that, she gently placed it over my nose, and, slowly breathing in the chemicals streaming through the tube, trying not to think about how I’d soon wake up with an open skull, I did as she’d requested. 10… 9… 8… 7… 6… 5… 4… 3… 2… 1… 0… I reached the end of my ten-second countdown. I was still awake. I began to worry; nothing around me had changed. I tried to say something, to get up and tell the doctors that I was still there, but the second I tried to move, I realized I couldn’t. I was locked in place, bound to the table, completely paralyzed. I couldn’t even do so much as wiggle my fingers. My heart beat faster in my chest as I looked over at the anesthesiologist who was viewing my heart rate and other vitals, and thankfully, she seemed to realize something was wrong, too. “He’s awake,” she said bluntly, slightly confused as she stared at the screens in front of her. “Don’t start yet; I’m going to increase the dosage.” She turned some nob on the machine connected to my mask, and all of a sudden, I felt an intense surge of the stuff getting pushed through the tube, far more potent than it had been before, forcing itself into my nose. My paralysis was getting stronger, but I was still not falling asleep. I began to panic, as evidenced by the ever-increasing beeping on the monitor beside me. The anesthesiologist started to swear under her breath as she turned the dial up even more, almost bringing it to its max. But nothing was working. I lay there, awake on the table, unable to do or say anything, while the doctors all crowded around me, trying to get me to go under. Suddenly, the lights above me went out, and the room went completely dark. All the medical staff blurred into the sides of my vision, still and unmoving. What was once a soundscape filled with the frantic movement of personnel and nurses and the rapid beeping of machinery was replaced with complete and utter silence. I sat there, breathing heavily, and that thing began to scurry again, rushing as I felt it crawl all around my head. I wanted to throw up. It was incredibly disgusting, and it just wouldn’t stop. There was something else, though. A couple of minutes passed, and something crept through the silence. A soft but noticeable crackling noise came from the far end of the room, something I couldn’t see from here, slowly making its way ever closer. I stared into the distance in terror as the sound unmistakably began wiggling its way up the foot of my bed before changing slightly, now sounding like small, tiny micro taps on plastic. It wasn’t long before two creepy small antennas became barely visible, peering through the darkness, just into view. A couple of seconds later, the head arrived. It was here… the same creature I had seen on the CT scan, although it looked much larger. It continued to work its way up the end of my bed and slithered down the other side. I tried to get up, to run, but the paralysis drug that the anesthesiologist had given me was doing its job; I was still stuck. I was left helpless, only able to watch in horror as it slowly squirmed its way over onto the bed and up onto my foot, giving me the sensation of hundreds of tiny little appendages pushing their way up my body. It was relaxed, seemingly unphased by all my struggles as it got closer and closer, gently wrapping its way around my limbs. I could look at it now; it definitely resembled a massive millipede, but no exoskeleton existed. Instead, what made up the body seemed to be a pale fleshy mass laced with a pattern of black marks strewn across the entire specimen. It reached my stomach and made a straight beeline for my face. I tried as hard as I could to hold my head back and keep it as far away as possible, but it was futile. All the while, the back half of it had just crossed over the far bed frame. My eyes watered as it slowly crawled over my neck and made contact with my chin, its long antennas now taking up a good chunk of my vision. I didn’t seem to be wearing my mask anymore. I don’t know when it disappeared, but it was missing, which gave that thing the opportunity to reach between my lips with its little front legs and slowly pry open my mouth with a strength I wouldn’t believe it had. I tried again in vain to turn my head to do something to counteract it, but nothing worked. The only movements I made were the spastic twitches of my muscles as I shook like a leaf. Once the creature had opened my mouth just enough, I gagged as it slowly began to crawl its way inside; I felt every movement of the tiny bug limbs creeping on my tongue, the fleshy mass slowly rubbing against the top of my mouth. I wanted to throw up so badly, to cough, but for some reason, those reflexes weren’t working; all I could do was gag over and over again as its long, segmented body maneuvered its way in like a snake shedding its skin. The head reached the back of my throat and began to work its way up towards the top of my skull. As I watched more and more of its body disappear behind my lips, I heard the sound, and then saw more and more of these creatures. Smaller ones began to appear at the sides of the bed and weaved their way towards me. Some crawled toward my face; others maneuvered themselves across every square inch of my body. I tried to scream, but nothing came out. I began hyperventilating, looking at the scene in front of me with terror; each time I looked, there were more and more, appearing out of thin air, exploring every little nook and cranny of me. A pounding, throbbing headache ensued, and above all that I felt the original parasite continue to crawl its way around in my brain faster than it ever had before. I squeezed my eyes shut, praying for the nightmare to end. After what felt like forever, the lights above me blared to life, and I launched out of the bed and let out a shriek as I flailed my arms around. I nearly smacked the hand of the anesthesiologist dead on as she immediately grabbed hold of my shoulders, trying to ease me back into the bed. “Easy… easy…” she said. I wanted to yell at her, but then I realized… everything I had just seen, all those bugs… those creatures. They were gone. It was just me and the doctors in an operating room with a highly rapid heartbeat monitor. I took a second to collect my bearings and looked at the mask sitting on the bedside table; they had taken me off the medication. I instantly collapsed into tears and begged for my mother. “We’re going to have to try something else…” one doctor said, “Removing it isn’t going to work if we can’t get him under.” I nearly tackled my mom when I saw her again and explained everything about my horrible experience in that operating room. Dr. Jones came in a couple of minutes later, with a grim expression. “Okay, Kevin…I am sorry about what you just went through. For now, we’ve decided that we’re going to try and give you some anti-parasitic medication and see if that will help your condition. I hate to tell you this, but the medical staff is… a little lost right now because you’ve been infected with a species we’ve never seen before, so we’ll call in some researchers to better understand your condition. My mother immediately stood up in protest. “You are not going to run experiments on my son!” Dr. Jones simply looked at her with professionalism. “They aren’t experiments, ma’am… we’re just going to study the best course of action to hopefully kill or get this parasite out of him. And besides, it’s Kevin’s choice…” They both looked at me, and I sighed. I desperately wanted this as far away from me as humanly possible, and so, with nothing left to lose, I accepted. The next seven days, my condition didn’t get much better. I had been awake for thirteen days at this point. But it was weird because despite how horrible I felt, I still didn’t feel the need to sleep. I still felt just as awake as when this whole thing had begun, and at this point, I had resigned myself to not feeling sleepy ever again until this was over. I requested to spend my nights with my mother because, after my surgery encounter, I didn’t want to be lying in my room alone at night, and the presence of my mother helped put me at ease. She even taught me to laugh about it all a little, and as time went on, mysteriously, the hallucinations became slightly more diluted, something which the researchers quickly picked up on. Oh yeah, at this point, I was also being watched by a team of them 24/7. I was doing constant tests, scans, the whole deal. The anti-parasitics they were trying seemed to have no effect. I guess that was to be expected. The next day, one of the researchers came in and told me he had an idea. My symptoms seemed to calm down when I was at a state of ease and flare up when I was stressed or scared so he proposed giving me a high dose of a medication that’s supposed to regulate my stress hormones. I tried it for two days, and the scientists’ theories were all but confirmed because my hallucinations and all my other symptoms weakened significantly. A subsequent CT scan revealed the thing had grown much smaller than it had been before… it was starving. This is what led to the current theory that the parasite likely feeds off of stress hormones or other things your body produces during these periods. They continued this pattern for the next two days until my symptoms became so mild they almost didn’t exist anymore. I was still stuck awake, but everything else had been diluted to an absolute minimum; the parasite on the CT scan looked like a shriveled husk of what it used to be. Dr. Jones came into the room that day and delivered a message that almost made my stomach drop. He said that, if possible, he would like to try the surgery again, given the thing had gotten so weak that the researchers didn’t think it could overpower the anesthesia as it had before. I halted for a moment; on the one hand, I was eager to be done with this, but on the other… I didn’t want to relive what I had. Dr. Jones assured me that they would be starting with a very low dose, and if they didn’t notice an effect, they would immediately call off the operation. After a long debate between my mom and the doctors, we decided to proceed. Thankfully, the surgery went off without a hitch. When I came to, I finally saw the thing that had caused me all this trouble with my own eyes; it was dead, lying on the bedside table fully stretched out. It looked the same as what I had seen in my hallucinations, albeit a lot smaller. I even got to name the damn thing. ‘Neural Sleep Parasite’ had an excellent ring to it. Before long, they hauled off that monster for further study, and I never saw it again. They explained to me that I had most likely ingested its eggs when drinking that coffee back in the library, and that, combined with the high-stress response, allowed it to sort of take over my brain for a while. But I cut them off. I didn’t want to hear more about this. I was done. I was released from the hospital a few hours later, got into my car, and drove back to my apartment with my mom. I know you will say I probably should have let her drive, but after all this, I was so eager to get back to a normal life. However, I regretted it very soon because the past eighteen days of no sleep hit like a truck in the middle of the journey. Without the parasite continuously stimulating my body, I needed to sleep again, and now my brain was about to demand I pay up the tab. Without realizing it, I began to doze off at the wheel in seconds and drifted into an oncoming lane. A shrill scream from my mom sitting next to me was the only thing that stopped us from slamming into a massive 18-wheeler with a combined speed of 140mph. I ripped the car back to the proper lane, adrenaline surging through my body. I immediately pulled over and let my mom take the wheel, realizing my stupid mistake. It goes without saying she drove me home the rest of the way. Upon arriving at my apartment, I immediately made plans to dive into bed. It was time to catch up on those eighteen days of lost sleep. Or so I thought. Because immediately after I jumped under the covers… my tiredness… vanished… I began to panic but forced myself to think clearly. They said I ingested its eggs with that coffee… what if there was more than one… or what if it had laid more while it was inside me? Come to think of it, those odd black spheres coming out of me all the time were… unsettling; I just never thought to bring it up because there was always something else of critical importance happening… I’m writing this now with a piercing headache, as all of my symptoms are beginning to rush back. I think I just felt something crawl under my skull. Credit: RotationalAnomaly Copyright Statement: Unless explicitly stated, all stories published on Creepypasta.com are the property of (and under copyright to) their respective authors, and may not be narrated or performed under any circumstance.