It was dark as night in Malcolm’s bedroom when he woke, startled by a half-heard sound. It was a sound that hung in Malcolm’s head, existing partly in the dream and partly in the real world without committing to either. He looked at the window. Not a hint of morning light peeked from around the edges of the shade. It was too early to get up, way too early, which could only mean that he was being visited. The blue digits of his alarm clock strobed brightly, pulsated, as his eyes tried to adjust. Transitions from dream to waking were a gray area of experience, leaving a confusion of what was true and what wasn’t. He tried to remember what had roused him from sleep and his nightmares, but that took more energy than he had. The thought faded as fast as his memory of his dreams.
It was the uncertainty of perception that confused Malcolm, the sensation of being hopelessly surrounded by darkness and of being in a room which pervaded with the sudden and jarring silence that comes only to someone who has woken from a nightmare just before death, but is not yet ready to open his eyes and find out if he really was just dreaming. In his dream, whatever it was he had been fighting was pouncing on him, but he usually slept through the scene of his own death.

His first coherent thought of the day was tinged with paranoia. What caused him to wake? He’d heard a sound, it had just come back to him, or maybe the telepathic perception of movement in the room, but now that he was more awake, he was sure it was definitely something external to the dream itself. His eyes were still heavy, groggy, desiring to remain closed, forcing him back under to delta wave, rapid eye movement and more nightmares.

#

The next time he woke up, he was tangled in the covers, could feel the sheet wrapped around his leg, and snaking up his chest into his clenched hand. He was acting out his dreams again, another fitful surrender to the subconscious. He thought it was just moments since he’d last found wakefulness, but couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t move.

He forced his eyes open. The sun must have been just rising above the horizon, a small amount of blue light slipped in around the shade. Even this dim light was shockingly painful, unexpected, lambent.

He wondered if he was waking in a dream within a dream, and scanned the room for clues. He couldn’t tell. Had he left his shirt draped like that over his dresser, or was that a shrouded figure?

He forced his eyes open. This time the sun must have been just rising above the horizon, a small amount of blue light slipped in around the shade. Even this dim light was painful, unexpected, lambent.

He took in what information he could without moving. There was no need to alert anything that shouldn’t be in the room if he could avoid it. It was unnatural for him to wake up like this, he knew something wasn’t right. He couldn’t move no matter how hard he tried. He pushed hard, his heart started beating faster under the strain of his exertions, and hearing the rapid dull thud in his head, he got nervous, which made it beat even faster.

Then a half-heard sound came from across the room, like the sound of his cat, its claws looking for a blood fix. It couldn’t have been the cat. The cat never left the front room, and had died years ago. Malcolm blinked and grunted. Had he woken up before today? Or were those in dreams?

The sound came again, just at the edge of perception. It had woken him before, too. It was real. His confusion told him to be wary, but something kept him from knowing quite why.

Early morning noises always made him suspicious. Human intruders don’t come into apartments like Malcolm’s. It had to be something far worse. The urge to sleep was much greater than if he’d woken up early and was still drowsy, it was unnatural, and impossible to resist. It silently eased any fear he had, comforted him, lulled him into forgetting why he was suddenly awake. His joints were stiff, his motor responses resisted his desire to turn, to find a position that wouldn’t knot his muscles by the time the alarm goes off, every thought fell to sleep.

The sensation worked against him, he tried to push his arm off his chest but it exhausted every effort of his whole body, and he couldn’t even be sure if it had moved at all. The notion that this was just a hypnagogic delusion occurred to him, but he dismissed the thought even before it completed itself.

He just wanted to sleep, an artificial instinct told him all was safe. Just go to sleep. Just go to sleep. Over and over, they lulled him, gained strength of effect in the incantation. Just go back to sleep.

He knew then that something was wrong, he fought to stay awake, despite the overwhelming desire to return to the false safety of night, trying to hear what had woken him. The room remained silent, pushed him back over the edge to fall back to sleep.

He was just out of a sleep cycle enough to be relieved that he didn’t slip back into his dream.

Then he heard more sounds, and a half-felt tug came at the blankets near his feet, then a movement on his chest, the sensation of something with no weight pouncing. He awoke again, this time suddenly fully aware, and eye to eye with a Mara. Malcolm could only barely make out its form in the low light. The glow of its eyes faintly illuminated Malcolm’s face. The illumination was like a candle, traveling only those few inches before being lost in the darkness.

Malcolm shuddered in surprise, his body convulsed, every muscle fired once in unison trying to break free of the Mara’s hold, and the Mara uttered a singularly unimpressive squeak of surprise. Prey never moved that much when under its control. The prey never moved at all. The little creature closed in anyway, feeling confidence in its powers.

Another warning sign it ignored: Malcolm continued to stare directly into its eyes.

The Mara went on with its feeding, sensing that the prey had already moved into the first stage of fear: awareness. It wrapped its tiny hand around Malcolm’s throat, ready to feed.

Malcolm was alert now, and saw through the deception, saw it for what it was. Malcolm’s perception was this: a small, translucent green creature, knee high at best, large bright yellow insect-like eyes, a large round head supported on a tiny body, strangling him softly with delicate hands more befitting something out of a cartoon than a predator. What the Mara thought Malcolm saw was this: desiccated flesh stretched taught over a huge frame, claws long enough to go all the way through, tattered black skin stretched over bone wings, spiky gray hair covering its body. Or maybe just eyes, large and glowing red, a body unreliably outlined by dark perched above the prey. Or maybe two figures in the room, lights outside the window, the abduction psychodrama.

The Mara realized then that something wasn’t happening that it was expecting, the energy rush of feeding wasn’t coming. The thought that something was wrong broke through its primal thought process a very brief moment before it was too late. Malcolm knitted his brow, and reached up. Now it was the Mara panicking, now it was the Mara being strangled. Now it was the Mara that was screaming and tumbling through the air, striking the wall, falling to the ground, and now it was Malcolm feeling only drowsy and angered, and knowing he wouldn’t get back to sleep.

The Mara ran through its instinctual devices, wondering what it had done wrong, but then it saw its prey rise and look directly at it. It wasn’t the time for learning processes. It was the time for survival. It looked for a way out of the situation, but no ideas were forthcoming. The thought occurred to it to flee, but as this thought flashed through consciousness like an uncertain leap into fog, it found Malcolm standing overhead, impassible. The cornered Mara geared up the fiercest responses it could muster.

Malcolm recoiled his leg and kicked the Mara, his foot striking with a satisfying thud that felt as if this creature had a measurable mass. This always troubled Malcolm, how they had no weight but still could be felt and handled, were just as deadly as anything anyone else could see. The physics of the phenomena was something Malcolm had only just begun to study.

The Mara doubled over and moaned. The first kick hadn’t satisfied Malcolm’s frustration, and so he kicked again, and again for good measure. He hesitated a moment as the creature, still only half-seen by morning light, tried to recover.

As he recoiled his leg for another strike, Malcolm decided he could not take out enough frustration on the little Mara to salve himself, and so he picked it up again by the throat and carried it, kicking and protesting like a petulant child, its little hands prying at Malcolm’s grip. Malcolm walked it determinedly down the hall, turning left into the kitchen, his eyes landing on the coffee maker on his counter.

The little glass pot waited to fulfill its purpose in life, and it gave Malcolm a new thought on this early morning, a thought of his curse, a thought of his ability, his own personal stigmata, and how it just cost him another morning’s sleep. And a thought of coffee. How much of a relief it would be to wake up to a simple cup of coffee without something like this happening. It didn’t seem like it would be too much to ask.

Malcolm paused here, holding the Mara, flipped the switch on the coffee maker. The light came on reassuringly. He waited for a promising gurgle, and then continued to his back door.

As Malcolm opened the door, the Mara screamed loudly, a sharp and piercing cry that cut especially deeply in the auditory nerve this early in the morning. It was like a demonic dog whistle, and Malcolm was the only one who could hear it. This made him want to kill it even more. He dropped it to the stoop, as nonchalantly as if he were putting out a cat. The Mara began to writhe, rolling on its back, kicking and turning, but it was too late. Its figure began to dissipate and disintegrate in the sunlight as it got to its feet. It ran for the open door, but it had already mostly disappeared, only its legs were running, then only its calves and feet, then only its left foot stepped on the threshold of his apartment before also disappearing into a vapor. Malcolm stepped away, back inside, to his cereal, coffee and newspaper.

The cereal he chose from a systematic filing order in his pantry was the same cereal he’d been eating every Tuesday since he was seven: Cap’n Crunch. He removed the milk from the refrigerator and a bowl from the cupboard. He opened the jug of milk and poured, but only a small trickle came out.

So now Malcolm was awake, and had almost consumed a light breakfast. He sat down to record it in his journal.

June 24th, 2003: Woke up early this morning. I had no choice. A Mara was trying to strangle me. Mara feed on fear and helplessness, then leave you bewildered and seemingly untouched, leaving you to wonder if it all really happened.
Awareness. You must be aware of something to fear it. Prey is never afraid of the hunter hidden perfectly behind the dark undergrowth. Fear is part of the hunt, and the prey must see the hunter, hear the hunter, smell the hunter to fear it.
When you feed on fear, apprehension is the appetizer.
This is how a Mara feeds: First the Mara lets you know its there by making a slight sound, drawing attention, letting you imagine the worst; a hostage mind running through its worst case scenarios is its playground. It is nocturnal and has learned you are more susceptible to horrific imaginings if it strikes at night. You create your own image, confront the menagerie of your nightmares, making the prey complicit in its own predation.
Most prey visualizes a much larger creature, its own natural predator, or visualize simulacra over other things in the room, giving common objects a form that is anything but small and impish or familiar. Usually it appears huge, frightful, or numerous.
You’re paralyzed before it touches you. Your heart starts pumping faster, supplying blood to muscles that cannot move. Some victims might fall prey to a heart attack right here, ruining the meal for the Mara. The Mara needs a captive and alert prey. Only then will the Mara reveal itself.
In the end they’re only a nuisance, a weak species, almost never fatal. I don’t even need to cast a spell to kill them, which was good, because I had no pen and paper handy. Since they are so prone to nocturnal hunting, they have an intolerance to sunlight. If they were more common, or deadly, I’d keep a sun lamp on my night stand. As it was, my weapon was just below the horizon.
I killed it, of course.
I don’t really mind Mara attacks, not like the bigger demons, but it’s a damn ugly thing to wake up to. I also ran out of milk.