This story begins with a man. A fairly ordinary man named Matthew Patane, formerly Crawford. Though I don't go by that name anymore, but I'm getting ahead of myself. This story starts just four months after I'd turned 24 years old. I rent a modest two bedroom apartment in Florida, I go to church, and I live off a fairly modest sum of monthly disability pay I received after being released from the United States Air Force after two years of service.
Anyone who looks at me, the first thing they're going to think is that I'm tall. At 6'6", I think it's a rather understandable first impression. I wear glasses, have a small pot belly I claim to have gotten from singing for most of my life, plain brown hair, and eyes that I can't decide are green or blue, though the golden brown ring around my iris is fairly constant.
The only truly odd thing about me is my sleeping problem. I've been to a lot of sleep studies, but they can't identify the problem, only the symptoms. For some reason, my body follows a 28 hour sleep/wake cycle. It only changes if I try to force myself to stay awake or sleep, then it goes all out of whack. I've slept a full 16 hours and been awake for only 4, and vice versa, when I try and throw my sleep out of whack, but after that it always returns to 28 hours.
Sleep problems aside though, my life is fairly normal. Or it was, but like all good stories, something came along to change that. It happened on the night of the 16th of February, 2013. I'd just spent a fairly typical day of reading fanfiction, listening to music, and keeping an eye on my email and facebook.
I'd just shut down my computer and settled down to fall asleep, listening to the sounds of the storm that'd rolled in a few hours earlier in the evening, glad that my sleep schedule had finally gotten the more normal aspect of being awake during the day, since that means I'll be able to go to church tomorrow. I'd missed the entire past month of Sunday's church meetings thanks to my stupid sleep disorder, and I looked forward to finally getting to a meeting.
I slowly drifted off, interrupted only by a few particularly loud claps of thunder. Idly I noted that the power had died, but I'd already shut off the computer so I didn't really care at the moment. I'll worry about it in the morning.
A creaking noise behind me made me stiffen slightly. I hate little noises like that in the night. Make me think something's in the room with me. Idly, I rolled over, getting more comfortable and simultaneously facing the noise, only to freeze in fear. Evidently that noise hadn't been idle, and something large and dark and scary is towering over me. Before I even have a chance to think, it hits me over the head and I black out, the last thing I see are the red eyes glowing out of the thing's skull like head.