The basement people

There are people down in the basement, but they're not regular people. For starters, they only show up at night. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Everything started with a bet. My younger brother bet that I couldn't spend the night in our cold gray basement. Not one to back down from a challenge, I accepted the bet and we shook on it. What my brother didn't know was that I had a deep seated fear of the dark. None of that mattered though because I had a plan. I was going to do things progressively. Up until the promised day, I consistently microdosed darkness. First in my room, then in the garage, and then finally in front of the basement. After all, I only had to resist the urge to flee until I fell asleep. I would sit still with the lights out and soon find myself in a meditative state that stopped my overactive imagination in its tracks. That strategy proved to be a success.

The first night I spent in the basement was the first night I met the basement people. I had gone down there at midnight, under my brother's supervision. As stated by our bet's ruleset, he locked me in at midnight and was going to let me out the next morning at 6 AM sharp. Under no condition was he going to let me out any time in between. It was probably not a good idea in hindsight, but we were both making decisions that were driven by ego as opposed to rationality.

The experience was especially frightening at first, but I kept my training in mind. I lay on the bare floor, in the fetal position, and counted down from one hundred. I don't recall at which point I drifted into a merciful sleep. But the next thing I remember was waking up with a jolt. I couldn't exactly pinpoint why, but I felt that something was off. It wasn't until a few minutes later that I realized why: I could faintly hear the sound of breathing.

Inhale.

Hold.

Exhale.

My panic morphed into full blown horror at the realization that I wasn't alone. I stayed perfectly still, counting the seconds until day light started lazily pooling through the cracks of the basement windows. Only then did I dare open my eyes. Relief washed over me when I saw that I was indeed alone after all. Still, I couldn't wait to get out of that cursed place. As if on cue, my brother unlocked the door and I bolted through it, not looking back.

I should have ended it there, I really should. But a couple of weeks following this event, I spent another night in the basement. I had to know for sure that what I'd heard was nothing but a hallucination caused by sleep paralysis. I didn't even want to entertain any alternative explanation.

My second night wasn't too different at first. I counted down imaginary sheep and fell asleep before I made it to 0. Some time after, I again woke up with a start. This time, however, the sound of breathing felt much closer than before. I froze and cursed myself for having willingly put myself in this position. Eventually, exhaustion drove me to fall asleep. I woke up at dawn and made my escape. But before I locked the door behind me, I noticed something strange: footprints on the dusty floor facing the spot where I was sleeping. I knew for sure that they weren't mine. I was wearing shoes, but the footprints were bare.

I swore that I would not make the same mistake thrice, but by then I had reached the point of no return. Something was triggered somewhere. Maybe I flipped a cosmic lightswitch without realizing it, and set off a set of dominoes in the process. But the point is, I lost control of my presence in the basement. I would go to sleep in my own bed, only to awaken on the cold hard floor of the basement. Sometimes I would go through a random door at 10 AM and find myself transported to the pitch black basement. It didn't help that time ceased to make sense when I was in there. I would spend hours on end sprawled on its floor, then once the door got unlocked, I'd learn that it had only been seconds. Little by little, it stopped being a physical location in our house and more of a hollow concrete cube in a place that light can't reach. Or maybe it was never a regular basement in the first place. Maybe it just happened to be built around whichever spatial coordinate these beings occupy.

Up until then, this was the extent of the strangeness of the situation. It was still horrifying but I somehow adjusted. Things took a turn for the worse when I started seeing the basement people. Through the darkness, I could make out humanoid shapes. Perfectly still, but their very existence terrified me nonetheless. I think there were four of them in total, but I could barely tell. This went on for a while, with them being vaguely there every time the basement pulled me in, and me seeing nothing more than silhouettes.

With time, my eyes finally adjusted to the oppressing darkness of the basement. This newly acquired sense of sight gave me enough courage to approach the basement people. In doing so, I realized that they were taller than I had initially suspected. In fact, they were tall to the point where I couldn't see past their midsections. It was legs as far as the eye could see. I was able to see the ceiling just fine, but when I moved my eyes to where their heads were supposed to be, my vision warped. No matter how hard I strained my eyes, I would lose focus as soon as I tried to look up at them. It was a feeling like no other. I can't put it into words, but the closest sensation to it was like trying to look into the sun, or trying to keep eyelids open under the heavy weight of sleep. One time I focused so hard that my nose bled. My brain either couldn't comprehend what it saw, or it blocked it off for self preservation purposes. Either way, I stopped trying to look up at them.

As time went by, I felt less fear and more awe towards them. I felt content just being in their presence, even in utter silence. I wanted to understand them. I needed to find out where they came from and why. Did they have a life outside the confines of this place? How many eons had they lived in this place? Were they capable of emotion? Curiosity got the best of me, pushing me to make my final and most fatal mistake.

You see, my desire to connect with the basement people led me to break the silence.

"Who are you? Where did you come from?"

The ground shook under my feet. The ceiling threatened to collapse as the basement people slowly bent down to my eye level. My vision blurred and my legs wobbled under the immense pressure of what was happening. I was standing out of sheer willpower, emboldened by the thought that I about to make the first contact with what I assumed to be an otherwordly civilization. But when we came face to face, my eyes saw nothing but stars. I felt my brain beginning to vibrate in my skull. The ringing in my ears was too much to bear, but I could make out a few words in the sea of static that almost ruptured my eardrums.

"You'll find out soon"

Then just as it started, it stopped. The people vanished and the basement was lit again. The mechanisms inside my wristwatch resumed ticking. My brain stopped trying to implode. That was the last time I saw the basement people.

This brings us to today. The basement weirdness stopped, but something broke inside me. My proximity to the basement people has affected me on a biological level. I'm growing taller by the day and it's too pronounced to be written off as a growth spurt. My speech patterns are nowhere near those of a regular teenager. I find myself spending a lot of time just standing still in a corner of the basement. My family and friends seem to forget my existence more and more. I feel like I'm slowly fading out of reality.

I think I'm being assimilated. And when the metamorphosis comes to a conclusion, there will be five of us.