Last night I was visited by what normally I would call a terrifying entity. I was down in my basement, doing laundry when I heard a noise over in the corner, to the left of the old coal room where the old coal stove still sits. It frightened me and I froze, staring and listening intently for any other sound. It was a loud pop, like someone blew a tire, but right there in my basement. I heard nothing else, I was starting to think it was something at the car wash, but right next to me up on the sink sat young Steven and he had his eyes locked on that very spot. Still intently staring and moving his head as if trying to see something hidden. That’s when I saw the movement. A dark figure, hunched down in the darkness, slowly moving and growing bigger. Fear rushed through my body like waves. Then I saw the eyes, burning red balls in the darkness as it seemingly came up through the floor. As it rose to full height, it let out a chilling rattling exhale. It was at least 7 feet tall and being in my short basement, it had to bend over and pitch forward to fit. I was too scared to move, but I began to gather myself to flee for my life. Young Steven had already split at first sight, so I figured I should follow.

That very thought seemed to get its attention. Its burning red eyes were now locked directly on me, it’s coming. As it moved out of the darkness of the corner, I could now see more details. Thin black scraggly hair, a very skeletal face with thin skin stretched over it, long limbs with long skinny fingers, adorned in raggedy-looking black clothes. It was pretty much the scariest thing ever. It was breathing heavily like it had just run a mile and every breath was a loud rattling wheeze. It seemed to have a hard time moving, like wasps in the cold. It crouched under the door frame and stood before me. Its skinny arm then rose and laid its bony fingers upon my shoulder. I braced for whatever hell awaited me, but nothing happened. I opened my eyes and it was just looking at me, almost trying to console me, like everything would be okay.

It motioned to me with its other hand as if to say, “Your eyes, to my eyes.” So I stared into its burning red spheres. I felt a connection. It reminded me of the old days of the internet, when my cousin and I would dial up each other’s computers via TelNet and talk back and forth before playing Doom. Maybe it brought up that memory in me to give me comfort. I was no longer as scared and felt myself slowly calming. It then exhaled and turned its head slightly to the left. A rush of joy and the elimination of all fear flooded through me at lightspeed. I then realized, this being means me no harm at all, it’s just trying to communicate. Now that I was calm, it spoke to me. It had a very human-like and calm voice. Very, “Hey, I’m Zach from down the street, I’m a cool dude, wanna have a beer?”

“I am Zil the Breather and I mean you no harm,” said the tall black entity. “I apologize for my intrusion into your world, but I had to drop to rest.”

“Where did you come from?” I shakily asked Zil, still unsure of its intentions.

“Think of it like one of your highways where your vehicles travel at high speeds. From time to time, do you not need to rest? To stop and regenerate or to defecate?” said Zil. “When you decide to stop you have to exit the highway, do you not? Take the next exit? That’s what I did and it happened to drop me here in this place,” continued Zil.

“I don’t mean to be rude, but you look fucking scary, man!” I laughed, trying to seem humorous.

Zil just stood there for a second breathing heavily and finally said:

“This is how I appear, I can not change that. The reason you fear me is simple, your culture and your entertainment have always shown beings like us as evil, mean, or spooky. But why? Just because my eyes have a red glow, does not mean I am of evil, in fact, I work to fight evil in all its forms. It is unfortunate that your species sees my form as such. We mean you no harm.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you feel like that, it’s just my whole life I’ve been shown that…”

“Yes, yes, I understand,” interrupted Zil. “But please try to remember, just because an entity does not resemble one of the good guys from your movies and books, does not make it of evil.”

“Again, I apologize, I will try to do better from now on,” I said.

“I appreciate your understanding,” said Zil as he turned back and walked toward the dark corner.

“I will take my leave now,” said Zil as he began to crouch into the corner once again and vanished into the darkness.

Suddenly, it dawned on me, wait a minute. Did this entity just stop in my basement to throw ghost brown? Is my basement just some kind of interdimensional rest stop?

Did I just get accused of ghost racism and discrimination? I guess just because something looks like a dark skeleton from the pits of hell doesn’t mean it really is. Now I kind of feel like a dick. Sorry, Zil the Breather. But to be honest, for an entity called “The Breather”, you may need to get an inhaler for those lungs of yours. Or whatever they are.

What a weird dream.