He stared at the screen, unable to move. What the hell was going on. He brought his hand to his head, inadvertently touching the wound on his scalp. The slight pain shocked him out of his paralysis. He slowly, without thinking, sat in his chair, mechanically, like someone lost in thought. He absolutely was lost in his really screwed up thoughts. He was trying to reason what he was seeing. Could this thing have been making those weird noises when he was sleeping, and between that and the whatever-it-was that bit him, could those all have made their way into his dreams? That's the only thing that made any sense. What else could it be?
He felt like he was grasping at straws a bit, but what else was he going to do? Believe that dream was something that really happened? That was something out of a movie. That was not reality. Could not be reality. The words still showed on the screen. This was too much for him to take right now. He was exhausted. He needed sleep. He decided that this was a combination of two things. There was a problem with the tablet, which is why it was sitting in the recycled area, and someone had managed to get some sort of malware on the thing, which is what was causing all of these problems. It seemed logical, and much easier to accept than the dream he had was somehow real and that the tablet was magically sending messages that just happened to align with his dream.
He tried to power the tablet off. The words still scrawled across the screen. It wouldn't power off no matter how long he held the button down. He guessed he was back to his previous thought, that he needed to just cover the thing up until the batteries ran out of charge. He walked over to the sofa, lifted a cushion, but the tablet against the back of the sofa, and covered it back up with the cushion. There, that'll do it. I won't hear anything even at full volume if this thing starts making noise. Still, he walked over to a his entertainment center and removed a blanket from the drawer. He tucked that on top of the cushion. He wasn't taking any chances at this point. He needed to sleep and he didn't want any interruptions tonight. He was so tired he felt nauseated. He probably needed food, but there was no way he could eat anything right now.
Now he was so agitated that, despite his exhaustion, he wasn't going to be able to sleep right away. He picked up his book and took it back to the bedroom. He was still a bit skittish about his bedroom, but now that the sofa was imprisoning that tablet, the bed was his only option. He crawled into bed, turned on the fan and started reading. He read almost a full page before he nodded off, book in hand.
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He woke up to the air whooshing sound again. No...god...no. Please! He tried to get out of bed and was surprised he was able to do it. He wasn't paralyzed and he didn't think he was dreaming. He grabbed his glasses off the nightstand and walked towards the door. The sound getting louder as he peeked out the door frame. His eyes opened wide, his breath caught in his chest as he looked.
In the center of the room, the cursed coffee table that was the bane of his shin's existence, was upside down on the sofa. In the center of the rug, where the coffee table normally sits, was a tiny glowing circle. It was a pestilential green, with a single point of bright light circling slowly around the edge of the circle, like a glowing insect crawling across the edge of a coin. It pulsed as it was circling, and watching it made him feel ill. The ring was about the size of dime, pitch black in the center. The entire room glowed with the venomous light, the circle like a tiny, toxic halo lying in the center of his rug. The sucking air sound came from the center of the circle. He crept forward, slowly, trying to figure out what this was, what was happening.
Nope! Nope-Nope-Nope! This was all too much. He was not equipped to deal with this kind of nonsense. His life was already a mess. He didn't need this Ghostbusters supernatural BS on top of everything else that was happening. He ran to his desk to get his phone. He started to dial 911, but he paused. What was he going to tell them? What was my emergency? This green Smurf-sized hell-hole just appeared it the middle of my living room. Also, just as a side note, the furniture seems to be moving on its own. Can you send an officer right away? They might come to check on him, but more likely they were just going to ignore the ranting call of an obvious lunatic. He needed to leave. He didn't know where he would go, and honestly he didn't care. He had to get the hell out of here and he would figure things out later.
He carried his phone into the bedroom, threw on the first set of closes that he could find. Anything to get him out the door as fast as possible. He threw on a pair of sneakers, not bothering with socks, and headed to the front door. He grabbed his wallet and keys, and now, now he wasn't even bothering with the big deep breath before opening the door. He had to get the hell out of here right, freaking, now! He unlocked the deadbolt and pulled the door open. The apartment building on the other side of the door was no longer there. There was a pitch-black void just beyond the threshold of his apartment door.