The Red-Spotted Maw

In the damp coastal town of Grayhaven, where the fog rolled in like a second tide and the gulls cried with human desperation, I began to wake each night at precisely 3:07 AM. The digital clock on my nightstand glowed like a single red eye, and I would lie there, my heart thudding against my ribs, drenched in a cold sweat. I never felt rested. My limbs were heavy as shipwreck anchors, and the thought of food made my stomach turn. My father, Raymond, a kindly fisherman with calloused hands and a worried brow, would knock softly on my door each morning, asking if I wanted breakfast. I would grunt from under my blanket, the words sour on my tongue. He noticed the changes: I had stopped attending the harbor clean-up with him, I shunned my old friends, and I played music through my headphones that sounded like the grinding of broken machinery—a far cry from the folk ballads my mother used to hum.

I didn’t realize I was changing. My anger was a low, constant hum, like a generator beneath the floorboards. When my father was out mending nets, I would sneak sips of his cheap whiskey and press the serrated edge of a clam knife against my forearm, watching the red bloom like a dark flower. The pain was the only thing that made the humming stop. I walked the foggy streets with a scowl etched onto my face, my gaze fixed on the ground. I avoided everyone—the postman, the fishmonger, the old women who sat on their porches shelling peas. They were all obstacles, all deserving of my contempt, though I couldn’t say why.

One evening, after I had locked myself in my room for three days, my father couldn’t take it anymore. He dragged me by the arm to the small clinic on the edge of town, where a tired doctor named Elara met us. She was patient, her hands gentle as she examined me. She asked about my sleep, my appetite, my moods. I stared at her with a hatred that made my jaw ache—a hatred so vast it felt like a physical thing, a black tide rising within me. She saw the scars on my arms, the fresh ones and the old ones, and her face softened with pity. ‘Have you been feeling okay?’ she asked. I didn’t answer. I just watched the veins in her neck, the way she swallowed nervously. Finally, I spoke, my voice a rasp as sharp as broken glass: ‘You’ve never saved anyone. Even if you tried to save me, you couldn’t. You’re all just parasites, feeding on my misery.’ The room went quiet. My father’s face crumbled, and Elara’s hand trembled as she wrote something in her chart.

That night, I couldn’t sleep at all. I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, which was covered in water stains that looked like leering faces. At exactly 3:07 AM, I heard a sound I had never heard before: a wet, slithering noise from under my bed. I froze, my breath caught in my throat. The noise grew louder, like a thousand eels writhing on the floorboards. Then the floor beneath my bed began to bulge, the wood splintering with a sickening crack. A dark, viscous liquid seeped up through the cracks, pooling and then rising, forming a shape that was almost human but not quite. It had no face, just a hollow where a face should be, but there was a mouth—a wide, red-rimmed mouth filled with teeth that were too long and too many. It spoke without sound, the words vibrating directly in my skull: ‘You summoned me. You fed me your anger, your pain, your loneliness. Now I am hungry for more.’

I tried to scream, but no sound came out. The creature crawled out from under the bed, its body leaving a trail of slime that glowed faintly. It reached out with a hand that was all bone and sinew, and it touched my forehead. Instantly, I felt a surge of warmth, and for the first time in months, I felt calm. The humming in my head stopped. The anger drained away, leaving me hollow and empty. And in that emptiness, I understood: the creature had been feeding on my darkest emotions, growing stronger with every drop of blood I spilled, every curse I whispered. But now that I was calm, it needed a new source of nourishment. Its mouth opened wider, impossibly wide, and I saw a red-spotted maw that went down into an endless darkness. ‘Your father is a good man,’ it ‘said’. ‘He will come looking for you soon. I will feast on his love and his grief.’

I opened my mouth to warn him, but only a silent sob escaped. The creature slithered out of my room, through the open window, and into the fog. I heard my father’s footsteps on the stairs, his voice calling my name. I tried to move, to run, to shout, but my body was still paralyzed, my mind a swirl of horror and regret. The last thing I saw was the red-spotted maw descending on my father’s figure in the hallway, and then the world went dark.

I woke up three weeks later in a mental institution in the city. They told me my father had died of a heart attack that night. I knew better. And every night, at 3:07 AM, I feel the creature’s presence again, waiting. It whispers to me, telling me that I am its vessel, and that it will return when I have enough anger to nourish it once more. I am terrified of what I will become. I am terrified of the red-spotted maw.