nosleep

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Wild-Tea-9242 on 2024-10-10 00:15:39+00:00.

That's what I call him, although he's neither a man nor a pole. I understand there may be a few of you who think it's a silly title for what very well may be a monster or demonic entity, but it makes sense and it doesn't need some epic name anyhow. It's not some magnificent beast of legend, rather, it's an unnerving cryptid that's actually quite benevolent…if you don't notice it, or ‘him.’

I first saw him walking down the street one night. My part of the city is in the slums. I'm a factory worker making pennies trying to save up for college to make something of myself and the rent there was cheap. The streets there are filled with abandoned buildings, graffitied with boarded up windows, and the streets themselves are a Frankenstein mash of cobblestone from the 19th century and modern asphalt, because the city thought it was good for tourists here for the history and also didn't want to pay money to completely fix it.

Even as a man, I felt unsafe walking around at night, and carried a switchblade with me because I couldn't afford a gun. However, my anxiety about being mugged didn't outweigh my desire for a late night convenience store run. My check had come through on my bank account extremely late, and the little store up the street has hot dogs rolling under heat lamps, chips, and energy drinks, all perfect for a midnight movie binge. I couldn't sleep, thinking about how much I hated our economy and despised capitalism, how much more I had to save to go to college, and to cheer myself up I was gonna watch some horror flick classics until I passed out at the crack of dawn.

So, I was on my way towards that little convenience store, pulling my jacket tighter over me as a gust of Autumnal wind blew through, when I noticed it.

One of the many telephone poles which cluttered the area looked different than the rest. I can't fully explain it, it was just… off. Like an extremely difficult game of ‘spot the difference.’

There were a couple of broken and flickering lamp posts on this block, and the tops of the telephone poles were heavily shadowed as they towered above the orbs of yellow glow the posts emanated. Their wires branched out, weaving in between roof tops, connecting to each other like a web.

Of course, I wasn't gonna puzzle and ponder over a utility pole, so I kept walking, reaching the middle of the street where it was. I bustled past it, my hands shoved into my pockets for warmth, and I only made it a few steps before I stopped in my tracks.

I had heard a creak, just barely noticeable under the blanket of nighttime noise, like the sound of cars honking and driving on a busier road some miles away, and distant police sirens. Now, my first thought was, holy shit, is this thing ready to fall on me?

I turned around and looked up at it while continuing to back away. That's when I realized that it wasn't a utility pole at all. It was a living, breathing creature which looked identical to one. The part of the pole which was shadowed heavily had two glowing pinpoints for eyes which stared down at me with a strange sense of intelligence. The “wires”, or whatever they were, which branched out from what may have been his head, quivered and twitched as if they were limbs, something I hadn't noticed before.

Two of those limbs disconnected from the wires they were mimicking and hung down at his sides, making it clear they were black, tendril-like arms. The reason I call it a he is because he moaned in a gravelly voice that sounded masculine, like an ancient man disturbed from his deep slumber.

Then, he leaned his misshapen head forward, lifting a wiry arm towards me, and I finally broke into a run, and I didn't stop until I reached the convenience store, which glowed like a Christmas tree on the otherwise dark curb.

The man behind the counter gave me a weird look as I entered, breathless and terrified. I ignored his gaze and wandered about the store, trying to process what I'd seen. I noticed the man behind the counter was eyeing me warily, probably thinking I was some junkie tweaking out, and he seemed on the verge of telling me to leave. I told myself that I was hallucinating from lack of sleep, and gathered up the items I had come for. I checked out at the register and left with my food in a little white bag swinging next to my thigh.

Jesus Christ, I didn't want to walk down that street again, so I went out of my way to find a different route which would take me longer to get back to my apartment. So yeah, I went the opposite direction and turned down a street I’d never used before, planning to get back to the street my apartment complex was on without passing that same pole again.

I was almost home, and I could almost taste the cheap junk food, and feel the warm comfort of my bed as I snacked and watched TV. I just wanted to stay awake until dawn, I wanted to be in the safety of my apartment, and I was almost there.

But of course, it wouldn't be so simple. I heard a low moan, which sounded like misery and unrest, and I looked up and saw that the utility pole on the curb of the right hand side of the street up ahead was actually the Pole Man again. He stood out more than he did before, there was no brown wood, just a weird black cylindrical body with many arms and hairs as thin as wires. Its head was like a hammer shape, sprouting long hairs, and its eyes glowed yellow like the lamp posts.

His stare was fixed solely on me. He was big, and overwhelmingly tall, and the only thing he wanted to focus on was me, which felt like being a lone insect singled out by that one sadistic kid who liked to rip the legs off bugs. There was no one else on this street, and the windows of the few shoddy looking houses on this block were black, letting me know everyone was fast asleep.

The look we gave each other was like the stare down of a predator and its pretty. I looked at him with total fear and confusion, wondering if I was losing my mind, and he looked at me with something I could only describe as hatred. It didn't have any expression, at least not from what I could see standing where I was, but I could feel it. Like how you feel someone's eyes on you from across a room, feel them burning holes into the back of your head.

This thing, I got the feeling that he didn't want to be noticed, and now that I had noticed him the first time around, he was going to notice me in return. But his attention would be malicious, unlike mine. He stood there in the dim lighting, still looking like a silhouette as if he was covered in darkness, and it felt like he was a sentinel whose only purpose was to ensure I didn't make it past him.

So I turned and ran back, attempting to go the original route and retrace my initial steps from the convenience store. I ran past the store and down a block, turning and feeling hope shine inside me like a beacon as I knew I only had two blocks left to go.

I felt something thin and wiry brush along my back and screamed, propelling myself forward and running even faster than I thought possible. I dropped the bag in my hand and didn't even look behind me. I didn't need to look behind me to know that I was so hellbent on getting back home that I forgot to survey the street for The Pole Man, and had inadvertently ran right under him. His touch burned like an extremely scorching hot light bulb grazing my skin, and then it itched something fierce, like a thousand mosquito bites.

I turned the final corner and saw my apartment complex standing at the end of the street, but he was also there, right across from it, looking for all the world like a thick vertical black line with fine tendrils wriggling and waving in the air. He now swayed gently side to side like a tree. The more I looked at him, the more angry he seemed to get, swaying even more violently and moaning like a disturbed animal.

But I was damned if I was going to stay out in the street all night. I ducked out of sight, behind a building, and made my way to my complex’s back door through the back alleys. I punched in numbers in a keypad and went straight for my front door on the third floor, and the first thing I did was close every curtain inside. My living room and bedroom window faced the street, and I yanked those drapes shut before I even gave myself a chance to look at him again.

Although I couldn't afford to, I took a few sick days, too afraid to step outside even during the daytime. I didn't end up watching any horror movies, I watched light hearted comedies and romances instead as I tried to scrub the image of that monster out of my mind. I have no idea what it was or what it wanted. Well, I suppose it wanted to go unnoticed, if anything, but what it was doing in the urban area of a city I have no clue.

But that was the last encounter I actually had with it, and it left me with an angry red imprint on my back like someone had whipped me with a wire. I moved into a better area in a month, rooming with someone so it wouldn't be too expensive, and once in a blue moon, the few times I must go out at night, I do hear the solemn creaks of a utility pole looming just out of my line of sight. Instead of looking directly towards the sound though, I decide not to give him any sort of unwanted attention.

So if you ever experience something like this, I implore you to do the same, and not look into things too hard when you're alone and it's dark and eerie outside. I just believe some things in this world were simply not meant to be perceived, and The Pole Man is one of them.