This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/OriontheGuyMan on 2026-05-16 05:32:11+00:00.

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My day off was rather uneventful. I stayed in bed, thinking of the bat, of the old man, of Carrie. I tried to turn into a bat for an embarrassingly long amount of time. I jumped out the window once when no one was looking to try and force the transformation out of me and only succeeded in tasting the concrete sidewalk at the bottom.

I told mom that I’d be out on Saturday. She was sitting on the couch, reading some devotional book. “Hey mom, I’m going out with a friend on Saturday.”

“Where to?” she asked, not looking down from the book.

“A concert,” I replied.

“You’re going out to listen to someone scream into a microphone, aren’t you?” Mom didn’t have any moral issues with my music, which as far as really religious parents go is admittedly rare. Despite that, it was very safe to say that her tastes in tunes were far tamer than mine. She sighed. “Who are you going with? Do I know him?”

“Carrie.”

She put the book down, looked up at me, and smiled. “You didn’t say it was a girl! Carrie? The one you kept talking about in high school?”

“Yeah…” I was starting to regret initiating this conversation.

“Well, I’ll pray it goes well. I’m so proud of you.” Even though it was just the two of us, I felt my cheeks flush with embarrassment. “I’ll pray that the two of you have a good time together!” She smiled and winked, then returned to her book.

I started my shift the next night. Carrie was off. Rachel was by the door, ecstatic. “Hey! I’m night shift now!” she said.

“Already?” I asked, both surprised and relieved.

“I talked to HR and they expedited my transfer.” In between sentences, she whistled. It was one of her milder tics.

“Courtesy Clerk needed to the front for customer assistance,” said the voice over the loudspeaker. I looked down towards checkout. The old man was standing there, staring out at us. I could see the realization forming on his face that Rachel no longer had any reason within her job to help him. His face twisted into a sort of hatred I had been wholly unfamiliar with as he looked at me. I felt my full body shudder as I remembered that night, of what he was and is capable of. Rachel stuck out her tongue at him. At least she was safe, or safer at the very least.

I looked up and saw the bat. It was hanging from the struts on the ceiling. It wasn’t looking at me this time. Instead, its attention seemed to be focused on the old man. The old man must have noticed, because he looked up at it, and I swear that bat shook a little. It flew off somewhere deeper into the store.

I clocked in for my shift. I was working alone in the canned goods aisle, putting soup on the shelf. I broke open a box of chicken noodle soup cans, grabbed one, and as I went to fill the empty space on the shelf, there was the bat, staring at me from between the cans on the shelf. I nearly fell over.

“You need to listen to me, Alex,” it said. I felt my panic build.

“Who are you?”

“A friend.” It twitched its nose. “You can’t be a vampire and live a normal life too. You’re a danger to everyone. You need to leave.”

“I… No, no I’m not leaving. I can handle this.” My fear turned to indignation. This bat, who I was sure was another vampire, knew nothing about me. Who was he to judge what I could and couldn’t handle.

“You’ve fallen for that girl, haven’t you? Carrie? If you love her, truly, you’ll disappear.”

“Stay away from her,” I growled, fury building in me.

“It’s not me you need to worry about. It’s you.” With these words the bat turned into mist and disappeared.

The rest of my shift went smoothly, but I couldn’t get the words of the bat out of my mind. I saw Rachel a few more times. She seemed in much higher spirits than I had seen her in a while. Her tics weren’t as severe either, though I occasionally could hear the distant whistle or swear word from somewhere in the store. It was large comfort to me because it meant that the old man hadn’t snatched her.

I wondered why he didn’t just come and take her? He was strong enough to do it. Perhaps he didn’t want to draw attention to himself. What was the old man afraid of? That was a thought that I very much did not want to entertain.

As I walked back to my car after my shift, I was careful to scan the dark lot for that van. It wasn’t there, thank God. I was less inclined to thank Him when I saw what awaited me at the car. It was the bat, sitting on my side mirror.

We locked eyes as I moved closer. I wasn’t afraid of it anymore, just deeply annoyed. “Why don’t you show me who you really are?” I asked.

“I’m hoping I won’t have to. It’ll be better for both of us, trust me.”

“What do you want?” My patience for the brown little bat was long gone.

“If you won’t leave, talk with pastor Jung at your church. He’ll know what to do.” I looked at this little bat with perplexion deeper than I thought I was still capable of.

“How do you…”

“It doesn’t matter. Please just listen to me.”

“So what? Is the almighty hand of God going to reach down and cure me?” I said half mockingly.

“If only it were that simple. It’s what I should have done all those years ago. Don’t be a coward, like me.” There was something familiar about the look the bat was giving me, something that I couldn’t quite place.

After I drove home, I gave the pastor a call.

“Pastor Jung, God’s blessings, who is this?”

“Hey… it’s Alex.” I hadn’t talked to the pastor in years. I stopped going to church with mom when I was fourteen, much to her protest. The idea that I’d ever go back for any reason was an impossibility, until today. “I’d… I’d like to meet with you sometime soon. Maybe Sunday?”

“Sure,” he replied. Pastor Jung had always been likeable. He was kindhearted and a good listener when I went to church with my family, even as I was losing my faith. It felt good to talk to him again. “I have on opening after the ten-thirty service. We can talk then.”

“Actually… this might sound weird… can we meet while the sun is down?” There was silence on the other end of the line.

“Oh…” he said, followed by more silence. “Meet me tonight at eleven. Come alone.”

“Actually… I was still hoping to meet on Sunday. I have plans today.”

“I’d much rather we meet tonight, but if you insist. Where are you going, out of curiosity?”

“A concert. Not sure where. A friend is taking me.”

“Right. While I hope you have fun.” There was something decidedly different in his voice, like I was meeting a different side of the man I once knew. I brushed it off. The bat said that I needed to talk to him. I had no trust for the bat, but I respected the pastor, even if I couldn’t bring myself to see his God with the same reverence that he did.

I also got a call this morning from management. It was Bill, much to my disgust.

“Hey, do you know where that little friend of yours with the acne went?”

“Nice to talk to you too Bill. Is Greg late today? That’s not so unusual, is it?”

“Well, he didn’t clock out yesterday, and I didn’t see him after he helped that old geezer you guys keep making such a fuss over.” My heart dropped. “He probably just went home and slept in. Kids like him just don’t want to work these days.”

I had no remarks or comebacks to Bill this time. “Yeah… guess so…” I said, my mind so distant that I didn’t even really understand the words that came out of my mouth. Bill said something else I couldn’t make out as I hung up the phone and stared from a distance at the light that seeped through the bedroom window. The concert is tonight. My meeting is with the pastor is tomorrow. Greg is missing.