Tale of the Shamhna

A minimum of six to eight hours of sleep keeps you focused on the smartboard and not napping on your desk. But what happens if you get less? Let’s say your AP classes held a meeting and decided to screw you over so badly that you only got three and a half hours of sleep Sunday night. Would you be yawning the whole day or unable to get out of bed? The reality is, no one knows. Nobody can tell you what would happen because not a single person has lived to describe the horrors.

You see, everyone tells you about the naughty and nice list. Each Christmas, you make it on one or the other and get a present to match. If you were a perfect little angel with added volunteer work, there’s the new hoodie you’ve been wanting! If you called the manager over because a cashier smiled too aggressively, there’s your well-deserved coal. If you decide to be a raging Karen, that’s sadly on you. But nobody tells you about the mysterious Shamhna, who keeps track of the sleep each person gets and then rewards you based on your schedule. Except, there isn’t much room for error. You were a raging Karen one year; let’s fix that next Christmas. Yeah, the Shamhna doesn’t do that. Do you get enough sleep? Excellent for you. Oh, but you don’t? You disappear. The Shamhna targets you, finds you, and… whatever it does next has only been speculated upon. None of its victims were ever found in a healthy-enough condition to tell their story. In hindsight, coal would be the better option.

Legend has it that the week of Halloween, the Shamhna, a monster only its missing victims have seen, tracks down everyone who averages less than six hours of sleep a night.

Some say it sucks your soul, leaving behind a shell of a human being that, while alive, cannot talk or move. It can only watch the outside world, trapped in its own skin. Such bodies were reportedly found outside Stuyvesant High School, which has the highest student disappearance rate in North America, likely because many of its students cannot meet the high sleep demands of the Shamhna. An Arizonan family allegedly bought these bodies from their nearby decorations store, Witch Upon a Star, brushing off concerns like “Why does it weigh so much?” and “It looks strangely real, no?” When the police identified the “decorations” as missing people from New York, the entire world was sent into panic. Decoration stores were forced to close due to a lack of business. Customers simply didn’t want to take the chance of purchasing their neighbor’s great-nephew and putting him in their yard. Managers of such stores were put on trial, and Walmart and Target were both fighting class-action lawsuits filed by the relatives of the trapped-body victims and purchasers of the victims, who had believed they were decorations.

“It’s absolutely horrific,” said Sheela Nikam, who purchased the body of known victim Anna Jones. “I can’t even imagine what the parents are going through, and I can’t believe the negligence these companies took in selling their bodies.”

Owners of major supply chains, however, are fighting back: “We never gave a seal of approval on these products,” said Jeremiah Stone, assistant manager of a Target branch in Arizona. “Employees simply clocked in for a shift one morning and found the Halloween aisle stocked with these mysterious bodies. Everyone assumed they were decorations that the store had gotten a shipment of and left them alone. Only later did we find out they weren’t decorations at all.”

Others say the Shamhna possesses its victims and manipulates them into luring in other unlucky, sleep-deprived students and members of the workforce. You have to hand it to the guy (being? thing?), no one enjoys working, and neither does it. If you can call terrorizing already stressed humans working, that is. Florida and California have reported students being called to their friend’s apartment at 2:00 a.m., all for the same reason: “I have your homework for tomorrow! You should really come get it.” Parents of missing children, both of the caller and the called, all told local news stations that an alarm clock set to 12:00 a.m. was present in their child’s otherwise empty bedroom. Said clocks were all of the same brand: SH/N.

“I called my son Charlie down for breakfast this morning and got no answer,” said California resident Virginia Hayes. “I thought he was still asleep and marched right up to his room to wake him up, but found his bed empty, his room oddly tidy, and an alarm clock I had never seen before right on top of his bed.”

“I even tried googling the company name,” continued Hayes. “And found a single website by the name SH/N, which listed nothing but a phone number. When I tried calling it, all I heard was a low whistle. Then the call cut abruptly.”

Now, young children usually discover that Santa is Mommy and Daddy and not actually a man with an unusual attraction to milk and cookies. Still, no accounts of the Shamhna’s identity have come forward. Speculations, on the contrary, have been multiple and pervasive. Some say the Loch Ness Monster was upset at the little attention it got and began identifying as the Shamhna. Others say that the furry community has organized the kidnappings systemically to increase crowd turnout at furrycons. According to that theory, yes, victims would be forced to watch furrycon performances.

“I was at the furrycon this year and turned to the person sitting next to me,” said furrycon-goer Alex Wang. “I found my neighbor stone cold and unresponsive, with fear all over their face. It was deeply unsettling, but I played it off only to watch the news the next day and find out these people were victims. I mean, it’s no shock that furrycons don’t get much of an audience; the whole mystery could just be the companies trying to get publicity.”

Other people think the government orchestrated the entire situation, and now we have USFG office holders pointing the blame at countries that have yet to experience the terror of the Shamhna. It’s gotten so out of hand that bullying rates have skyrocketed because kids are assuming that one odd classmate is behind hundreds of missing children. People even—oh my god, it’s 1:00 a.m. I myself should head to sleep before yours truly also becomes a victim. My sleep schedule this year is not looking good; in fact, it’s looking more like a pattern than a schedule. Sleeping until 3:00 p.m. might be the Shamhna’s best indicator that I should join the ranks of the lives it’s already claimed. To all our fearful readers: sleep tight and don’t let the Shamhna bite!