The Finger of the Invisible Intruder (Short Story) (Paranormal)

The afternoon went by with the same everyday normalcy that numbs the senses. My mother, as always, was rocking quietly in her wooden chair, focused on the flickering sound of the television.

​I was a few meters away at the table, focused on my own business. However, I don’t know why, but that day the air felt heavy, trapped. It was as if the house itself was holding its breath.

​When suddenly, the calm vanished. There was no scream, only a sudden, aggressive, and reckless movement.

​I saw my mother throw a punch backward into the air, stretching her arm to the left with desperate strength, as if she were trying to hit something lurking behind her back. Immediately after, she threw a sharp elbow toward the opposite side, also hitting backward.

​My heart stopped. I sat there paralyzed, watching her silhouette framed by the flickering light of the screen, wondering if she was having some kind of medical crisis.

​But what followed was even more terrifying. She jumped to her feet and, with an agility she had never shown before, spun around and gripped the back of the rocking chair. Her eyes, usually tired, were now wide and bulging, filled with a blinding panic.

​She turned her head from side to side, marking time with a massive sense of urgency. Her face, drenched in a cold sweat that glistened under the fluorescent light, was searching for something... or someone behind the wooden seat.

​"What happened?" I managed to mutter, my voice trembling.

​She didn't look at me. Her breathing was a jagged hiss that filled the silence of the room. Her questions came out like gusts of wind:

​"Is there anyone else in the house? Wasn't there someone standing right there?"

​"No..." I replied, feeling the cold crawl up my spine. "We are alone. There has never been anyone there."

​My mother fell apart, and her shoulders slumped over her own arms. She kept staring distrustfully at the shadows behind the chair. Then, in a whisper that turned my blood to ice, she confessed what her senses had experienced:

​"I felt a finger... a finger with a long, sharp nail, poking into my head."

​In that moment, the room seemed larger, darker, and I felt certain that, even though my eyes couldn't see it, something was watching us from the corner where the light failed to reach.