I’ve debated writing this down for years.
I don’t think it’s evidence of anything, and I’m not trying to convince anyone these things exist. I need to write it down, and share it, because they keep returning.
Not every night, and not on any schedule I can recognize. They appear when they appear, and they’ve looked the same for as long as I can remember. In dreams, and my waking imagination. The details never seem to drift. The places change, but only slightly. My certainty changes. They don’t.
Whether they’re dreams, recurring imagery, a trick of memory, or something my exhausted brain insists on reconstructing, I honestly don’t know.
This is simply the most accurate description I can give.
They come when my will to continue, to keep moving, to hope for a better life, is drained. I don’t know if they’re responsible, or if they are there to remind me of something... something long forgotten, maybe. Hostility, curiosity, benevolence... when muted indifference and a baseline of hopelessness become a natural operating state, these things, the intentions of those who approach from impossible angles, become difficult to discern. When the exhaustion behind perception is palpable, resignation becomes a form of defiance.
They look at me... with large eyes that denote intelligence and roam with a purpose I suspect they couldn’t explain to us even if they wanted to. Large, dark pupils subtly changing shape inside a milky substrate.
Their heads are elongated, with a large oval brain pan extending well behind the neck, and a long, angled face stretched forward, forming nasal cavities like tunnels, ending in a mass of protruding, probing white tendrils. If you stretched a horse’s head back into an inflated egg shape, and gave it a sea anemone for a mouth... It sounds ridiculous, I know. But that’s as close as I can come to describing them in a way you might recognize.
The neck is thick, pulsing with corded muscle and what I assume is a vascular network, ending in something like a truncated, flattened body, as though gravity has been pulling on them for far longer than it should have. Their rear legs are large and muscular, extending upward before angling sharply back toward the floor, ending in three-toed feet tipped with long, curved claws that grip the soft ground... or the floor... of wherever we are when I see them.
Their arms are thin, but wiry. Not powerful like the legs, but dexterous... capable. Delicate in the way surgical instruments are delicate.
The skin is mottled pale and yellow.
Or maybe it isn’t.
It changes when I try to follow it, as though the pattern belongs more to movement than to color. The longer I look, the less certain I become that it has an outline at all.
They approach me... and observe.
I think.
I want to say they’re looking at me. But looking implies eyes meant for seeing. Whatever those pupils are doing, it feels less like observation and more like measurement.
The sound there is soft and wet. Like placing a microphone inside a box of writhing sea worms. Everything feels coated in a thick mucus. Damp, organic, and functional. As though we are inside something grown rather than built.
A vessel that digests as it travels.
The walls never seem entirely still. They pulse, almost imperceptibly, like distant breathing. Sometimes I think I can hear fluids moving beyond them. Sometimes I think the room itself is listening.
I don’t know what they want.
I don’t know if they are real.
I don’t know if I keep dreaming them, imagining them, or remembering them. I don’t know if they’ve simply become the shape my mind gives to whatever waits for me when I’m empty.
I only know they are consistent.
They never arrive differently.
And they never forget me.
I ran my description through an image generator, because, I can’t draw worth a damn, and, why not.
What came out is… pretty close.
© 2025 Joel L. All rights reserved.
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Thanks for reading. - Joel L.
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