Leg Day

Manu returned home from his daily jog, completely drenched in sweat and out of breath. He had pushed himself beyond his limits in order to prepare for a local competition he had decided to attend. He was out of breath and his heart buzzed in his ears as it was pounding away at his ribcage at a violently steady rhythm. Manu was the full toll of the strain on his body; he gulped the remained of the water in his bottle, wiped the sweat away from his forehead and collapsed on the couch.

He thought to himself that he has to get cleaned up and to eat, but his body had other plans. The second his back connected with the leathery surface of the couch, his body became heavy and weak. Exhaustion kicked in. Against Manu's vehement internal protests, his eyelids became heavy as the room around him quickly faded to black.

The young man was fast asleep.

Manu opened his eyes to find it had turned dark, feeling disappointed in himself for drifting off to sleep like that he tried to raise his torso off the couch but found himself glued to the surface.

Unable to budge.

Twisted thoughts began filling his psyche in tandem with an acceleration of his heart beat. Almost instinctively, Manu tried to thrash his body around. With each attempted movement however, he felt as if he's getting linked with the surface of the couch even more, as if his own skin was becoming part of the of the leather.

After a few moments of mindless panicking, Manu remembered something, this had occurred before. It was just a sleep paralysis. He tried to compose himself as best as he could knowing that he was going to fully wake up in a few more moments.

The appearance of a shadowy figure right in front of him thrown any glimmers of hope out of the window. The young man attempted to rationalize his predicament as nothing more than tricks of his semi-conscious mind. The shadow begged to different as it slowly crept towards the paralyzed man; taking an ominous form in the process.

Before the young man could notice, before him stood a one-eyed monstrosity as tall as his ceiling with what appeared to be a sea of twitching tentacles for legs and two sets of arms coming out of the center of its shape; two were humanlike and two were shaped like spikes.

The young man tried to remain confident in his belief that he was safe and sound and that his mind had been messing with him, but a mighty howl from the massive toothy maw at the lower half of the creature shattered any such ideas.

Manu wanted to scream, but could not.

He tried his damnedest to get free from his restrains but his body would not listen.

The beast grabbed at his legs with its humanlike arms and squeezed tightly.

The young man felt as if his legs were being crushed under immense weight.

He could hear his bones cracking under the pressure, the sound made him feel sick.

That's when it finally hit him; he was not going to wake up.

He was fully awake, otherwise the perceived pain would've shot him straight into consciousness.

This wasn't a sleep paralysis, whatever had done this to him was real. Adrenaline kicked in and Manu tried his best to regain control of his body, but without success. He tried screaming and kicking but nothing happened.

The eye of the beast stared at him with a sort of sadistic glee as it raised its spiked limbs and slowly and callously directed them at the its victims' legs.

Manu's eyes widened with terror and he tried to scream at the thing to stop, however, all that he managed to muster out of his mouth were muffled groans.

The beast shoved its sharp appendages into the young man's calves sending waves of searing pain up his nervous system. The sensation was equated to walking on the surface of the sun in Manu's head. It felt almost as if a legion of Executioner wasps kept on repeatedly stinging his legs over and over in the form of a demonic punishment. Once his nervous circuit reached a melting point, the young man finally managed to let out a blood curdling scream in his agony.

Suddenly, a stream of saline tears obstructed his vision, but suddenly the agonizing sensation of his nerves being set ablaze was fading away along with the diabolical apparition in front of him, much to his surprise. As the demon in front of him was fading into nothingness, white lights shot at him, gently caressing his skin and the soft rumbling of machines serenaded his ears.

His confusion escalated even more when he noticed a tube attached to his arm, prompted him to hastily try and pull it out while he cried out barely coherent words about his legs and the alien that was tormenting him to the distraught people clad in blueish suits that he managed to notice rushing towards him.

Visibly disturbed by the emotional state of the young man, one of the people, utterly shocked by the improbability of Manu being in that state of mind, took a deep breath and with a solemn look in his eyes told Manu;

"Mr. Guerrero, your legs were damaged beyond repair by machinegun fire… We've had to amputate them."