I'd been drinking a bit too much that night and awoke in a muddled stupor, dragging myself to the kitchen and downing a tall glass of water to mediate my upcoming hangover. After gagging the water back, I wiped my mouth and switched the faucet on again to refill the glass. As the water rushed into the glass, I glanced out of the window hanging above the kitchen sink and saw the thing staring at me from the black of night. I caught its glowing yellow cat-like eyes and my glass ran over while I was holding it. I was frozen, unable to scream.

At some point I managed to shut off the faucet while maintaining that stare and sat the glass in the sink, forgetting its existence. The eyes moved through the darkness out on the black edges of my backyard. I can't say how I know it, but that thing knew I was keeping it in my eyesight and so it came closer. It stalked through my yard until the motion sensor light attached to the corner of the outside of my home clicked on and exposed its veiny blue flesh. The face was misshapen and folded in upon itself so that there seemed to be no mouth there, but that wasn't it at all. Its mouth was flaccid, and its lips were pursed tightly. It simply had no teeth. It mushed its blue lips back and forth, no doubt rubbing its gums together in feverous anticipation. Anticipation of what, I can not say.

After pressing its perplexingly flat hands against the window above the sink, mere inches from my face, it cantered into the night on all fours. The thing’s arched spine showed its individual vertebrate in great detail as it went beneath the pale moon.

I shuddered and wrapped myself into a burrito on my bed, attempting to persuade myself the night’s events were due to the fact that I was tired and coming off of a hard bender; I almost convinced myself as I came to a feverish burning drunk-slumber that it was nothing more than a half-cocked delusion.

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I awoke with my two front teeth missing. Had I injured myself at some point in my previous bleary stupor? As I peered into my open mouth in the bathroom mirror, I recalled the monster from the previous night. The gums where my teeth had been were tender but without blood. I was aghast, mortified, confused.

My tongue found the space all day long and continuously prodded it without any conscious effort.

That night, I sat in the kitchen and waited for the thing to come back.

Sometime between midnight and one, I saw those glowing yellow eyes. This time, they moved manically like an excited dog. It took no time for the thing to come straight up to its station and press its hand against the kitchen window. I glanced at the back door leading from the kitchen and made sure it was locked. The eyes watched me, but my attention was drawn from them to its mouth. The damned thing was smiling! It had two fresh teeth at the front of its mouth like a bunny rabbit.

"You sonofabitch." I whispered at the glass between us. It did not burst through the window as one might expect it to. I harbor no fantasies that it is too weak to break the glass. It simply waits until I sleep.

I drank coffee and tried staying up all night. Just as the sun illuminated my home, I drifted off to sleep, so sure that I'd conquered the time it could infiltrate the premises of my home.

I came to sometime in the evening and was immediately struck by an overwhelmingly strange taste in my mouth. As I worked my jaw, I came to the realization that my gums were coated in benzocaine. I had not a single tooth left in my mouth. I'm not proud to admit that I cried for a short while, clinging to my pillow, and pacing through my home like a sad, toothless troglodyte.

I waited for the thing to come again.

It did, this time moving to the window with a full devilish grin. My skin crawled. I was pissed. I was shaking; be it from anger or terror, I don't know. As it pressed its uncannily flat hands against the glass of the window and clawed at it, I noticed something. The thing had no fingernails.

I cannot sleep.