Thylacine

 It was the empty crib against the wall on the opposite side of the bed where his eyes went first.  The crib was vacant, his fiance wasn't due with their first son for two more months, but almost by instinct he scanned the four mesh sided and padded sleeping machine that soon his whole world would dream of sugar plums and fairies in.  By definition the reality that was unfolding around him should be considered unusual but even the strangest oddity can be familiar when it representation is as usual as another Wednesday night on a quiet block in the sleepy Texas suburb.
  The room was dark, not in a horror movie kind of way, but in the way that every one's room is at three in the morning.  His fiance lying next to him sleeping so soundly, her grace and kindness even seemed to show on her face as she slept.  His mind was foggy from the his ritual of taking Tylenol PM before bed but his mind was rebounding and gathering speed quickly.   It had been months since he removed his previous medicine from his nightly sleep routine, alcohol.
  At the discovery of their gift he had decided to stop drinking, at least while she was pregnant.  Years he had spent nightly drinking his way into counting sheep, count the possible reasons.  Relaxation, stress, sometimes sadness, celebration, and possibly the unusual usual Wednesday night when the humming would invade his hearing and the paralysis might take it's hold.
  He was in that space between actual thoughts and when your mind seems to be more reactionary and animalistic.  He could feel the weight of his spotted dog lying on the bed next to his left side in the space between his hips and knees.  Was she awake too?  No, he was pretty sure she wasn't because she would have awoken the entire house including the pug under the bed and the Australian sheperd  kenneled in the living room with her barking.  This spotted version of canine hated strangers with a fear she had earned before being rescued from breeders who cared more for the number of pups she could deliver than the sweetness in her eyes.  He knew she should be barking, growling, bearing her teeth as her ancestors would have done in response to danger.
  He, she, or it stood at the left corner and foot of the queen size bed.  He saw it, saw her, saw him, and without a doubt the opposite was true.  It was looking at him.
  Any second his eyes would focus and he would know what he was looking at standing no taller than himself at the foot of their bed at three in the morning, inside his locked house he had secured himself.  The same house in which none of his dogs were aware that a stranger was standing within.  He sat up as those seconds ticked away like hours, he could feel his body push itself back against the bed frame instinctively.  The haze that seemed to swallow his stranger would not lift, like trying to watch figures on a TV channel that would just won't come through.  Without a doubt the figure had a face, a face that had locked eyes with him.  Later the haze and the fog would rule the memory of his stranger and even without the memory of the visitor's eyes he knew they had invaded that intimacy.
  The haze and the stranger moved towards the door slowly, never finding mercy in letting go of his gaze  As the figure moved through the door which remained close, whether it opened or not he was unsure, the dream did not conclude.
  There was no awaking and finding comfort in the discovery that the objects from which nightmares are made was just some dream that had swallowed his sleeping mind.  The moment of clarity or reality did not falter, the stranger had left and he sat there still on his bed.
  Unsure of where the bravery was found he bounded from his bed and rushed to the door moving his way into the living room that was adjacent to their bedroom.  All was as it should be at three am in a normal house in a sleepy Texas suburb.
  What an unusual moment in reality had just occurred.  Too be honest three am oddities were not odd to him, but this was new.  Reality.  Experience.


   "The first thing you do, you come down your stairs as you look in your living room, you see muddy boot prints in your living room on the carpet that weren't there the night before.  Nothing has been taken out of your house, nothing has been disturbed, no one has been harmed and yet every night, despite you locking the front door, closing the windows and turned on the alarm, there are muddy boot prints that keep showing up on your carpet, now, is that a threat?"  Luis Elizondo 2018