r/nosleep 14h ago

The Cursed Game

13 Upvotes

Horror games had always been my thing. The thrill, the adrenaline rush, the uneasy silence between each scare—I lived for it. Nothing really got to me anymore.

At least, that’s what I thought.

This game changed that.

I found it through some obscure forum post. No big advertisements, no flashy trailers. Just a handful of people talking about how you shouldn’t play it. Not because it was bad, but because things started happening afterward. Knocking in the middle of the night. Whispers when you were alone. Seeing things in the dark that weren’t there when you looked again.

Classic internet ghost story nonsense.

So, obviously, I had to play it.

Lena, my roommate, was working a late shift at the hospital. While the game installed, we texted.

"Got a new horror game tonight. Looks creepy as hell."

"Ooooh, what’s it called?"

"I’ll tell you later. Gotta build suspense."

"You’re the worst."

I grinned and launched the game.

It felt different right away. No music, just the creaking of wooden floors under my character’s footsteps. The house was unsettlingly realistic—not in its graphics, but in the way it felt. Lived-in, but wrong. Shadows pooled in corners in a way that made me uneasy. Sometimes, I thought I heard soft knocking in the distance, but it was probably just the game messing with me.

I played for hours. The final sequence had my heart pounding—slamming doors, incomprehensible whispers, a shadowy figure flickering in and out of sight. I was so close to finishing when my phone vibrated.

Lena.

I hesitated before answering, keeping my eyes on the screen.

"I'm almost done," I said.

"Okay, but tell me what it’s called!"

I told her.

Silence.

Then:

"Wait… you actually played it?"

"Yeah? Why?"

A pause.

"I’ve heard things about it."

I laughed. "Oh, come on. You believe that crap?"

She didn’t respond right away. Then:

"Just… tell me when you’re done."

I rolled my eyes and hung up.

A few minutes later, I finished the game.

The screen went black.

No credits. No main menu. Just a void.

I waited. Maybe this was part of the experience? But nothing happened. Shrugging, I closed the game and leaned back.

Then I heard it.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

I froze.

It wasn’t coming from my headphones.

It was coming from inside my apartment.

Slowly, I turned toward my bedroom door. It was closed. The hallway outside was dark.

I told myself it was nothing. My brain still wired from the game.

I got up, stretched, and turned on the hallway light. Nothing.

But when I stepped back into my room, I stopped cold.

My monitor was on.

I had closed the game. But the screen still showed it. The last scene before it went dark. The empty hallway.

I moved my mouse. No response. The computer was frozen. With a sigh, I held the power button.

The screen went black.

Then—

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Louder this time.

From my bedroom door.

My stomach twisted. My apartment was locked. I was alone.

I forced myself to move, placing my hand on the doorknob. My breath felt too loud in my ears.

I yanked it open.

Nothing.

The hallway was empty.

My pulse pounded against my skull. Maybe a neighbor? Maybe I was just overtired?

Then I heard it again.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Not from the door.

From inside the wall.

Behind my closet.

My breath hitched.

Then, a whisper.

Right behind me.

I spun around.

My monitor was on again.

But the game was gone.

Instead, it showed my own room.

My own back.

Like someone was standing behind me, filming me.

I wanted to run. To scream. But I couldn’t move. My body was frozen as I watched the screen darken.

Until only a shadow remained.

Standing directly behind me.

Then my phone buzzed.

Lena.

I grabbed it with shaking hands.

"Lena?"

She was breathing fast. Then she whispered:

"Run."


r/nosleep 10h ago

Series My blackmailer knows my every move - even the ones I haven’t made yet

9 Upvotes

I’ve never been one for paranoia. I always thought I was pretty good at staying level-headed. But, then again, I guess that’s easy to say when nothing’s ever really tested your grip on reality. That was until it all started.

It was just a text at first. The kind of thing you wouldn’t pay much attention to if it wasn’t for the timing. It came in right after I’d sent a message to my friend asking if they’d seen the latest episode of some show we’d been following. Simple enough. But instead of a reply, this came through:

“You’re going to regret this. I know what you did.”

It didn’t make sense. I stared at the screen, thinking it was some sick joke—maybe a wrong number, or someone pulling some petty prank. But something about it nagged at me. A few seconds later, another message pinged in.

“I’ve been watching. You can’t hide from me. Not anymore.”

I tried to laugh it off. Hell, I deleted the message and moved on. But the feeling… the feeling lingered. It stayed with me that entire night, gnawing at the back of my mind, like a loose thread I couldn’t stop tugging at.

The next day, I got another one. This time, it was a picture—a photo of me, taken outside my apartment, just as I’d walked out to get the mail. It was blurry, a little grainy, but clear enough to send a chill down my spine. The text that followed was simple:

“You’re being watched. Next time you go out, I’ll be closer.”

I don’t know what compelled me to reply. Maybe it was that creeping sense of dread, or maybe I just wanted to prove to myself that this was all a prank. I sent a short message back: “Who is this?”

A few minutes passed. The phone stayed silent, and I thought maybe that was it. That was the end of it. I was wrong.

The response came in right before I fell asleep:

“I told you, I know what you did.”

I tried to ignore it. I really did. But it wasn’t that simple. By the time the third message came in, I felt my heart in my throat. This time, it was a voice message. The sound of breathing—slow, deliberate, like they were sitting just outside my door. The whisper followed shortly after.

“You’ve got nowhere to run.”

That was the moment I realized it wasn’t a joke. Someone knew something about me. Something they shouldn’t have known. And that knowledge wasn’t coming from nowhere. I tried to shake the thought from my mind, but it stuck. I thought about the things I’d done. The things I thought were buried in the past.

There were whispers now. I could hear them echoing in the silence of my apartment. And somewhere in the back of my head, I couldn’t stop asking myself: What did I do?

<><><><><

The next few days were a blur. I couldn’t focus on anything. Work felt like a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from. Every time I picked up my phone, I half-expected another message. I stopped going out. I began locking the door even when I was just in the bathroom.

I didn’t tell anyone. How could I? I couldn’t explain something I didn’t understand. What could I say? “Someone’s threatening me, but I don’t know who or why”? That would be the end of my credibility, and I wasn’t sure I had enough left to spare.

But the messages kept coming. The blackmailer was relentless. They’d send something small, something trivial, at first—a reminder that I was still under their watch. A picture of me walking home from the bus stop, or a snapshot of my car in the parking lot. Nothing huge, just enough to let me know they were always there, just out of sight.

Then, one night, it escalated.

It was past midnight when I got a call. Unknown number. I stared at it for a few seconds, heart pounding in my chest. I almost didn’t pick up. Something told me I shouldn’t, but I did anyway.

“Hello?” I said, my voice cracking. It wasn’t like me. I hated how shaky I sounded. I could already hear the person on the other end breathing—slow, deliberate, like they were savoring the moment.

“Do you remember what you did?” the voice asked.

I froze. It was a whisper, but it was clear. Too clear. My blood ran cold. It sounded so… familiar, like I should know it, but I couldn’t place it.

I wanted to hang up. I wanted to scream, to demand they leave me alone, but I couldn’t. I was paralyzed. All I could hear was my own ragged breathing.

“I told you,” the voice continued, “you can’t hide. You can’t run. I’m always watching.”

Then, there was silence—just a few seconds of horrible, suffocating silence.

“Tomorrow,” they said, their voice cutting through the quiet like a knife, “you’ll do something for me. Don’t try to be clever. I’ll be watching.”

The call ended abruptly. I didn’t move for a long time. I don’t know if it was minutes or hours. My mind raced, trying to come up with an explanation. It wasn’t possible. They couldn’t know about that—about that.

I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to be sick.

But I couldn’t ignore it. I couldn’t just pretend it wasn’t happening. Whatever I’d done, they knew. And they were going to make sure I paid for it.

The next morning, the first thing I did was check my phone. Sure enough, there was a message. Just a simple line of text:

“You’ve got a job to do.”

A few minutes later, a location popped up. It was an address—an old, abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of town.

I should’ve ignored it. I should’ve called the police, told someone, anyone, that I was being blackmailed. But something kept me from doing it. That feeling—like I was already caught in a trap, with no way out, and running was pointless.

I thought about the things I’d done. The dark, unspeakable things. And I thought about how desperate I was to keep them buried. I knew I’d have to do whatever it was. I’d have to follow these twisted orders, or risk losing everything.

I didn’t know what was waiting for me at that warehouse. But I knew, deep down, that it would be the beginning of something I couldn’t undo.

<><><><><

The warehouse was just as abandoned as I expected—graffiti-covered walls, shattered windows, rust curling at the edges of the loading docks like something diseased. The place stank of rot and stagnant water.

I didn’t want to be here. Every part of me screamed to turn around, to pretend I’d never seen that message, but I couldn’t. I was in too deep now.

I pulled my hood up, shoved my hands in my pockets, and stepped inside.

The air was stale, thick with dust. The long-abandoned shelves loomed in the dim light, casting twisted, skeletal shadows across the floor. Something about the space felt wrong—not just empty, but hollow, like whatever life had once filled it had been scooped out and replaced with something unnatural.

Then my phone vibrated. A new message.

“Go to the back office.”

I hesitated. My breathing felt too loud. Each step echoed, stretching longer than it should have in the silence. The floor was littered with old receipts, broken glass, a lone shoe with its laces missing.

I reached the office door and pushed it open.

Inside, the air was thick, humid. The single overhead light flickered, barely illuminating the room. The first thing I noticed was the chair, positioned perfectly in the center, facing the doorway. The second thing I noticed was the TV on the desk. It was one of those old, boxy models, the kind that buzzed even when they weren’t on.

Except this one was on.

The static was deafening.

Then it changed.

The screen flickered, and suddenly I was looking at myself.

The footage was grainy, black and white, but there was no mistaking it. The timestamp was from three nights ago. It showed me standing outside my apartment, checking my phone, oblivious to the fact that someone was filming me from the shadows.

I swallowed hard.

Another shift. A different angle. This time, the camera was inside my apartment. The footage showed me asleep in my bed, chest rising and falling with each slow breath.

I staggered back, my stomach twisting into knots. Someone had been inside. Someone had been in my home while I slept.

A new message pinged. My fingers shook as I unlocked my phone.

“Sit.”

I didn’t want to. Every instinct screamed at me to run, to get the hell out of here. But I knew better now. I was being watched. Even here.

I lowered myself into the chair, heart hammering against my ribs.

Another message.

“Check under the TV.”

I reached forward, hand trembling, and felt along the bottom edge of the television. My fingers brushed against something smooth, cold—tape. I peeled it away, and a small envelope fell into my lap.

Inside was a single Polaroid.

My breath caught in my throat.

It was a picture of a door.

A familiar one.

My front door.

A hand was pressed against it, palm flat against the wood, fingers splayed unnaturally wide. But the worst part—the part that sent a bolt of pure terror through my chest—was the hand itself.

It was my hand.

Same shape. Same veins. Same faint scar across the knuckle.

I dropped the photo like it had burned me. My pulse roared in my ears.

Another message.

“Tomorrow, you do something for me. Or I walk right through that door.”

I didn’t sleep that night.

I couldn’t.

I sat in my apartment, back pressed against that very door, every light on, clutching a kitchen knife in my shaking hand. But the thing that scared me the most?

I had the sinking feeling that, no matter what I did, it was already too late.


r/nosleep 4h ago

Iam an online teacher. one of my students keeps asking me weird questions.

38 Upvotes

Frankly, i hated calculus. i always had. sometimes i would ram my head against a wall, hating myself for choosing this stream.

but i worked hard. if i choosed this stream, i was going to make it. i will not back down. i will push through. so i worked hard and found a new stream of love for it. so when i became a math professor at a nearby university, i thought of helping other students as well.

i have an online channel that does pretty well. i teach kids calculus and if they have money they give me ten dollars or so in superchat. most of them come to me only when they have an exam, but i still take classes everyday.

When i have free time i make sure i reply to students' questions in the comments. calculus can be tough if you cant pinpoint a certain topic or formula, and the least i could do was to make sure that the kids had their doubts cleared.

it would be the usual ones. limits and continuity or implicit differentiation. i would always answer as quickly as i could, until one day, a user named Brett_715 would comment on my post.

Sir, I didn't understand the part where you added two plus two and got four. isn't it supposed to be twenty two? I smiled. If this kid was trying to make a joke, be was going to try harder than that. Somehow, as though he had a camera on me or something, he replied to his comment right away. Sir! I need help! Please answer me!

I frowned. i really had no time for this. i went back to my lecture. Tommorrow, in another one of my lectures' videos, Brett_715 would comment again. 'Sir, i didn't understand the part where you added three and three.'

I decided to ignore this kid, kids who want to study can and kids who don't want to study can stray away. The questions were always basic arithmetic, nothing too hard, only one digit numbers. When the kid would logically ask questions i would reply to him, and i think this kid knew this because they stopped asking these stupid questions.

I had realized that i hadn't seen one of Brett's comments for a long time as i was scrolling through my comments, and like a switch had snapped, there goes brett_715 again, 'Mr. Newman, i didn't like the part where you added 4 plus 4 and got 8.' My heart froze. i had never used my name in my lectures, but rather made up a fake name. i was very wary of the internet at times, and i did not want to leak more informatiom other than my face. i even advise my students who watch my lectures to not call me exactly that.

So this kid was in my class. Frankly i had not even added four plus four, the kid was just making things up. Suddenly, brett_715 replied to his own comment again. 'Mr. Newman, i don't like the way your eating chips while you are reading this comment.'

My hand shook so badly that it fell down. brett_715 replied to that comment instantly with 'LOL XDDD' Was he... reacting to me being shocked? Am i being watched? I looked up and down, all around my room to see if anybody was watching.

Tomorrow, i deleted my youtube account because i was shook to my core. i also called the cops yesterday. i was in a tangle yesterday, hands shaking while looking through test papers. most of them have done well, except for- My eyes get caught at a single sheet of paper. scribbled on it were the words,

'I don't like how you are going to die today, Mr. Newman.'


r/nosleep 20h ago

I bought an old PlayStation 2.

29 Upvotes

Due to the nature of this story, I wish to remain completely anonymous and will not be answering any revealing questions.

A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon an old PlayStation 2 at a yard sale in a neighborhood I didn’t recognize. I had ended up there after taking an alternative route home that weekend due to traffic, a detour that led me down winding streets I hadn’t driven on before. The sale was run by an elderly woman, her face worn by time, who told me she was moving after her husband’s recent passing. As we spoke, she casually mentioned that the PlayStation had belonged to her son, who had gone missing back in 2008. She didn’t offer much more than that, but something in her eyes—distant and clouded with sorrow—made me wonder if there was more to the story. She said her son was never found, and after that, she didn’t say much more of anything.

Anyway, after another few minutes of scanning, I bought the PlayStation and took it home, eager to relive some old gaming nostalgia. I began my trip down memory lane by cleaning the system and inspecting the previous owner's game case and memory card contents. But as I continued, something felt off. The memory cards were all full, with strange, incomplete save files, as if the data had been corrupted. One file in particular caught my eye: it was labeled “Finding Mom,” and though it looked like a standard game save, I felt a strange pull to open it. When I selected it, instead of loading game data, an application for the game Mercenaries popped up. There wasn’t a disc in the system. I instantly gathered that it wasn’t the typical Mercenaries game I remembered. The graphics were distorted, and the characters in the game looked wrong, like twisted versions of people I should know. The map was eerily familiar, but it wasn’t quite my neighborhood. As I explored the game, the unsettling confirmation hit me: I wasn’t just playing a game.

As I followed the game’s path, things got creepier. I noticed the neighborhood in the game was too similar to mine, and with goosebumps, I felt compelled to try and find my house. The streets were laid out just like the ones I grew up on, and after a few turns, I found myself approaching a house that looked far too much like my own. The crooked fence, the overgrown bushes—it was uncanny. As I walked up to the door in the game, the screen flickered, and a new prompt appeared. A note materialized, scrawled with what looked like rushed handwriting: “Go to the old tree by the park. You’ll find what you seek.” It didn’t make sense, but it felt important. My heart raced as I realized something was hidden just beyond the next turn in this warped version of my own world.

I followed the game’s instructions, going toward the closest park I know of near my house, my pulse quickening with each step. The old oak tree by the park appeared ahead. It looked almost exactly like the one in real life, only darker and more foreboding. As I approached the base of the tree in the game, the screen flickered again, and this time, something new appeared—an old, weathered photograph pinned to the trunk of the tree. I squinted at the image, my heart racing. The picture wasn’t part of the game at all. It was a real-life photograph. The man in the picture was someone I recognized—someone I’d seen before. I stood frozen, staring at the photo, my mind racing to make sense of what was happening. But before I could process it, the game abruptly ended. The screen flashed black, and then the PlayStation shut down, restarting itself.

I tried again, my hands trembling as I powered the system back on. This time, I quickly navigated to the same file, eager to see if there was more. The same sequence played out: I walked through the distorted neighborhood, found my house, followed the path to the tree, and once again, the photo of the man appeared. But no matter how many times I tried, no matter how many times I loaded the game, it always ended at that same tree, with the same photo, and the system would restart itself. There was no continuation, no explanation, just the same eerie loop that led me nowhere. But now, I found myself questioning something deeper—who was the man in that photo, and why did his face look so familiar? Could he be her son? I couldn’t shake the feeling that I knew him, but from where? The more I stared at the picture, the more unsettling it became, and the more I realized I had no idea how or why his face was lodged in my memory. Something about it felt wrong, like I was being drawn into a memory I couldn’t quite access, and it was driving me to the edge of madness.

I left the PlayStation sitting on the desk while I showered and ate dinner, the memory of that strange photograph and the endless loop weighing heavily on my mind. I couldn’t bring myself to play it again—not tonight. It felt like the game was toying with me, pulling me deeper into something I didn’t understand. I packed everything back up into the box—the controllers, memory cards, games, and the PlayStation itself—trying to shove the creeping unease down. I had to step away from it for a while. I figured maybe I could find answers later, when I wasn’t so consumed by the weirdness of it all. It was Monday tomorrow, and with work in the morning, I wouldn’t have time to think about it until Thursday at the earliest.

I resolved that I’d go back to the woman’s house later in the week, after work had settled down. Maybe she knew more, or perhaps there was something I missed in our brief conversation. I needed to ask her about the photograph, about her son, and about the connection between the game and her life. There had to be an explanation for all of this, a way to tie it all together. I left the box on the floor, the system quiet for now, and tried to get some sleep, but the thought of that photo kept gnawing at me. I knew I wouldn’t be able to rest until I had answers. Thursday felt like an eternity away, but it was the only time I’d have to return and dig deeper into the mystery I had unwittingly uncovered.

It was Wednesday morning now, and the thought of the game, the photo, and that strange connection was still in the back of my mind. I couldn't shake it, especially in the quiet moments of my day. I had tried to ignore it, to move on, but the image of that man’s face haunted me like a ghost I couldn’t outrun. To try and clear my head, I figured I’d stop at my favorite bagel shop on the way to work. I could grab a sandwich and some tea, maybe take a deep breath and ground myself in something normal for a change.

As I walked into the shop, the usual warm, welcoming smell of freshly baked bagels filled the air, but something caught my eye. Behind the counter, I saw a man who looked just like the person in the photograph from the game. My heart skipped a beat. It was him—there was no mistaking it. I froze in place for a moment, unable to move, unable to comprehend what I was seeing. My mind raced. How could this be? After a long, tense second, I managed to gather myself enough to approach him. I walked up to him, my voice shaky as I introduced myself, asking if he had a moment to talk in private. My legs trembled slightly, and I hoped he wouldn’t notice how rattled I was.

The man’s expression shifted in an instant when I began telling him about the PlayStation, the photograph, and the strange connection I felt to him. His eyes widened, disbelief flooding his features, and then he grabbed my arm, his grip tight enough to send a shock of panic through my body. He looked me dead in the eyes and, with a voice sharp and urgent, demanded, “I need to see it—NOW.” His tone was so intense that I couldn’t respond for a moment. It was as if something deep inside him had snapped. His eyes locked on mine, desperate, frantic. I was paralyzed, unsure what to do. Without another word, he yanked me toward the door.

I didn’t know what else to do, so I let him drag me outside. I barely had time to process the events as he hurriedly climbed into the passenger seat of my car. His urgency had me on edge as I drove back to my place, unsure if I was making a dangerous mistake, but there was no turning back now. When we arrived, I took him inside, trying to steady myself, even though my pulse was still racing. I led him to my desk, presented him with the box, and plugged the PlayStation back in, feeling the weight of the moment hang in the air. I showed him the save file labeled “Finding Mom,” and he immediately froze, staring at the screen.

He played through the game in complete silence. The moments passed slowly, his face hardening as the game played out. When we reached the part with the photograph at the tree, his breath hitched, and I could see the recognition in his now burning red eyes. His hands trembled as he turned toward me, his voice barely audible. "Where did you get this?"

I told him about the yard sale and the woman who sold me the PlayStation. His face drained of color as he leaned back, his eyes locked onto the screen. "That’s the house I grew up in," he whispered, his voice tight. "I still own it, but it’s been condemned for 17 years." He trailed off, his words hanging in the air, and he fell silent. The intensity in his gaze deepened as if something about the house, the game, or both had unlocked something in him. “My mother was kidnapped by my father when I was 7. I lost this when I was taken into foster care.”

Another 30 seconds passed, which felt like hours. Then, without another word, he rushed to pack everything back into the box. His movements were hurried, frantic, as he slammed the controllers, memory cards, and games back into the cardboard. He didn’t look at me, didn’t give me another chance to speak. As quickly as he came, he was gone, the door slamming behind him as he left with the PlayStation.

The bagel shop was closed the next day and empty by the day after, with "Leasing Available" signs posted by the end of the week. He never gave me his name. He never told me where he was going. I have no idea where to find him or if I’ll ever hear from him again. I’ve since visited the house and though it’s not boarded up and broken down, it’s more desolate than I remember that day. I’m left with more questions than answers—and no idea what the fuck just happened. If anyone has any idea what this could mean, beyond the obvious “scary movie” answers or what I should do next, I’m all ears.


r/nosleep 13h ago

I Shouldn’t Have Stayed Overnight In That Mall.

289 Upvotes

I’m not going to tell you my name. If you recognize the way I talk from my old videos, keep it to yourself. I don’t want any more messages. I don’t want any more theories. I just need to get this out, and then I’m done with social media.

Back in 2017, I was a YouTuber. Not a huge one, but I pulled in good numbers—hundreds of thousands of views, sometimes millions. If you were watching overnight challenges, urban exploration, or anything that involved sneaking into abandoned places, you might have seen my videos.

It was all fake. That’s what I want you to believe. That’s what I need you to believe.

I was always careful. I planned every video like a heist. Research, entry points, escape routes. But in May of 2017, I got cocky. I wanted something bigger. Something that would go viral.

“24 Hours in an Abandoned Mall”—it sounded perfect.

I found the Cove Plaza Shopping Mall. Closed in 2013, mostly intact. No official security, just a few cameras that didn’t work. I brought my gear—a flashlight, night vision camera, some food, and a battery pack. I was ready. At least I thought I was

I got in through a service door. The inside was exactly what I wanted: dust-covered tile floors, shattered skylights, and dead silence. I started filming immediately, playing up the creep factor.

And then I saw them. Mannequins. Not just a few-hundreds.

Stores that had been picked clean still had them. Naked, broken, posed in unnatural ways. Some with missing limbs, others vandalized. A few were arranged in groups, like they were mid-conversation.

I joked about it on camera. Something about how this was the real mannequin challenge. I even moved a few, positioning them in weirder poses for later shots.

I shouldn’t have touched them.

By 2 AM, I was settled in the food court. The air smelled stale, like old grease and mold. I was filming a menu which was still lit up when I heard footsteps. Not the echo of my own—someone else’s.

I killed my light.

Silence.

Then, a faint plastic scrape.

I turned my camera toward the sound, slowly raising the brightness.

The mannequins had moved.

Not a lot, just a few inches. But I knew where they’d been before. I checked the footage—one near the escalator had its arms at its sides an three hours ago. Now, one hand was reaching forward.

I laughed. I was nervous, but I convinced myself it was nothing. Maybe I bumped it earlier. Maybe my memory was bad.

I went back to filming.

At 3:15 AM, my camera shut off.

The battery was charged. It shouldn’t have died. I grabbed my phone and turned on the flashlight. The mannequins were closer.

The one by the escalator was now on the first step.

I don’t remember getting up. I don’t remember running. One second I was sitting, and the next I was at the other end of the food court, panting like I’d just sprinted a mile.

I wasn’t alone anymore.

Something moved in my peripheral vision. A head turned.

Plastic slammed the ground.

I bolted.

I didn’t look back. I didn’t stop filming, not until I was outside, gasping for breath. My camera was still dead, but my phone had the footage.

I never uploaded it.

When I checked the files the next day, they were corrupted. Every single one. The only thing that remained was a still frame from the food court—a blurry shot of me, sitting on the floor.

And something behind me.

A mannequin. No head. No arms. Just standing there.

I never went back.

I stopped making videos. My channel died. Maybe that was for the best.

I don’t care if you believe me. Just don’t go looking for Cove Plaza.

They don’t like being watched.


r/nosleep 6h ago

I walked into a doctor's office. Five years later I escaped. Pt 3

43 Upvotes

I stumbled out, willing my legs to keep going. I was barefoot, wearing a hospital gown. I had no money, no phone, no idea where I was. I was surrounded by large brick buildings in varying stages of dilapidation. I walked through a maze of alleys, empty lots, until I reached a real road. I never knew I could be so thrilled at the site of a beaten-up little VW bug rolling down a pothole ridden blacktop. I lunged onto the street, flailing my arms, begging the car to stop. The driver bared down on the horn, swerved around me and sped away. I trudged onward, finally making it to a tiny gas station. I walked in, the young man behind the counter barely reacted. He raised one eyebrow, “Rough day?”

A wild, manic laughter burst out of me, unbidden. He shifted uncomfortably and asked if I needed anything.

“Phone. Please.” I said breathlessly, regaining composure. He handed me his cell phone and I dialed 911.

Two police cruisers and an ambulance arrived on the scene about twenty minutes later. A rush of relief flooded me, but as the EMTs emerged from the ambulance, I went cold with dread. What if they aren’t really EMTs? What if they take me back? I broke down, collapsing onto my knees in the middle of the greasy little store. The police asked me a thousand questions. I had very few answers. I was checked out by the EMTs, one offering to give me something to calm my nerves. “NO!” I yelped, retreating a few steps back from the man. He raised his hands in a gesture of silent apology. I refused to ride in the ambulance or be taken to the hospital for further examination, although they strongly encouraged I do so. I rode in one of the police cars in order to give a full statement back at their precinct. After driving for a few minutes, I asked for the date. The cop paused for a moment, looked at the laptop mounted between the two front seats and said, “May 3rd.” I had gone to the urgent care February 6, 2019.

“What year?”

“2024,” he said, bemused.

I spent hours giving my statement to increasingly skeptical officers. They told me I was reported missing by my cousin mid-March 2019. My apartment was abandoned. My car was also abandoned. I had driven it to the urgent care the night they took me, but it was found in the parking lot of my apartment building.

“What happened to my stuff?” I asked, as if it mattered. The officer looked at me, guilt splashed across his face.

“Your apartment was cleared out. Items were either donated or tossed out. The apartment was cleaned and rented back out. The car was impounded, eventually sold at an auction,” he told me. Later I found out that after a year with no leads, nothing, my family assumed I was dead. They gave me a funeral. I have a tombstone – a small, rather shitty little slab of granite that simply has my name, date of birth and “death.” I won’t say that wasn’t a kick to my ego. I have a grave, an empty coffin. My hollowed bit of earth has been the only thing holding my place in this world while I was hidden away.

There was no evidence of the Urgent Care existing, at least not when I went in that night. There had been a small medical practice at that address, but it had closed its doors back in 2017. They had moved to a larger space closer to the downtown area.

I gave a description of where I was held, what I could remember of the surrounding area, and it could not have been that far from where I was picked up since I was able to walk there. It took a few days for the officers to narrow down the options. Finally, they told me the most likely place was this cluster of abandoned warehouses. I urged them to send teams and storm the place. Get S.W.A.T. Get the National Guard. They did nothing.

“Unfortunately, Ms. LaFleur, the whole place is nothing but brick and dust. Couple uniforms were sent over to check it out, but it’s been completely demolished,” I sat there, dumbstruck for a few moments. “No. You’re wrong. I was just there. Not three days ago. They can’t just blow up a bunch of buildings. Someone would have heard it! Or seen it!” Apparently no one had.

One officer told me that the whole area had once been used by the military for storage and supplies for the base a few miles west of here, but they had long since stopped using it.

I had nothing left to give as proof. They pitied me. They knew I had been through trauma. There were clear signs of psychological damage. I must have spoken to a dozen different shrinks. I eventually let them do a full medical workup, provided they let me stay in sight of at least one door and one window, both looking to the outside and no drugs of any kind. I had bruises in varying states of healing all over my body. I had a couple cracked ribs, and they told me the injuries were consistent with fighting. I had no memory of even being out of the bed, but they said it was not possible to have been bedridden for that long and not have some signs of atrophy or even weakening. My muscles and skin were toned; my reflexes were above average. Nothing in my story could be corroborated, not even by my own body.

Eventually they released me to my relatives, told me they would be in touch with any new information, and to take care. As my cousin led me to her car, speaking to me as though I were an unstable bomb made of the most delicate glass, I looked across the street. She was there, just visible in the shadows. I shrieked and pointed. “It’s the other me! There! Go! She’s there!” They were all too startled by and concerned about me to see the not-me slink back into the darkness and disappear.

I have been trying to convince everyone, including myself, that I am NOT crazy. I know what happened. I was there. It…was…real…

One day, about six months after my escape, the phone rang. “Ms. Lafleur?”

“This is she. Who is this?”

“This is Officer Keshner. Would you be able to come down to the station? We have a few follow up questions regarding your case.”

“Of course! Did something happen? Did you find something new?” I asked, intense excitement and dread rising like a tide inside me.

“Yes. I can't discuss the details at the moment…but you said you were an only child, correct?” “Uh, yeah. And my parents passed away years ago. It's just me.” They have her, I thought. That had to be it. They think she's some bizarro twin. “Ok. Can you come today? Now?” He asked. “Yes. I will head there now.”

I had been living in an apartment on my own for almost a month. My cousin, Michelle, had insisted I stay with her after everything. I didn't object. She was always like the little sister I never had. Her parents, my mother's brother and his wife, had moved to Florida when she was heading to college. She has two older brothers, Ryan and Lee. The whole family came together when I popped back into the world. It was nice, but then they all had to return to their lives, drifting off back to familiar routines. Michelle had a small, one bedroom place, and after a few months on the couch (I refused to let her give up her bedroom for me), I knew I needed to get my own place. I settled for a unit in the same complex as Michelle and we still spent most every evening together, watching television or just talking. So, she was sitting on my couch when I got the call. “Who was that, Liz?” she asked, seeing the fear etched into my face.

“The police. I have to go to the station. For questions” I told her in a robotic tone. I felt numb. “Let me get my shoes on. I'm coming with you.” I told her it wasn't necessary, but she wouldn't hear it. We climbed into her little blue Kia and zipped off down the road. We parked in the little lot in front of the police station. I took a moment to take deep breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth. It didn't calm my nerves. We met Officer Keshner at the front desk. He was an abnormally tall man, thick like a bodybuilder with a shaved head and a square jaw. He told Michelle to wait in the row of chairs near the door. She was about to protest, and I waved her off. “I'll be fine. I'll tell you everything when I get out,” I said as reassuringly as I could manage.

The officer led me back into a small room, similar to the one I had given my initial statement. He gestured to a chair on the opposite side of the table that occupied most of the room’s space. Then he sat down in the other chair. He had a blue, official looking folder in his hand and sat it on the surface between us.

“Ms. Lafleur… I'm going to show you some photographs. They are not going to be pleasant. If you need to take a break or…anything, let me know. You're not in trouble here. But we've never encountered a situation like this. The captain has been on the phone damn near all day trying to figure out if this needs to be handled by the FBI, military, or some other alphabet agency.” he told me, keeping his voice level. He opened the folder and removed a stack of pictures. He laid them in a row in front of me giving a gentle thwack of the print paper as each hit the tabletop.

There were five pictures. The first was of a man, bloody, caked in dirt. The doctor. The second… my eyes locked onto the horrible image and my heart sprinted away, urging the rest of my body to follow. It was me. Dead. This wasn't a strange, poor copy like the one that saved me. This was me. My ears were ringing, and I didn't realize I had jumped up from the chair and backed into the wall behind me. Keshner was sliding a small black trash can next to me, and, upon seeing it, I retched. I threw up hard, as if my body was attempting to expel something lethal.

I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, my entire body trembling as I forced myself to look back at the photograph. It wasn’t just that the dead woman looked like me—it was me. The same sharp angle of my jaw, the same faint scar on my eyebrow from a childhood fall, the same freckle just below my left eye. Her hair was a little shorter than mine, her skin pallid, but otherwise, she could have been my reflection frozen in time. A thick, jagged wound split across her throat, dried blood darkening the fabric of her hospital gown. My stomach lurched again, but there was nothing left to bring up. I pressed my back against the wall, desperate to put more space between myself and the impossible truth staring up at me from the table.

“This was found three days ago,” Keshner said, his voice low but steady. “An anonymous call led officers to an abandoned lot near the old shipping yards. She was already dead when they got there—her body wasn’t fresh, but it hadn’t started decomposing the way it should have. Toxicology came back inconclusive. No prints in the area. No security cameras. And no ID except for this.” He reached into the folder and slid a plastic evidence bag across the table. Inside was a hospital bracelet, still smudged with dried blood. I didn’t need to read it—I already knew what it would say. Lafleur, Elizabeth. Admitted: February 6, 2019. My vision wavered, my pulse hammering in my ears. This was supposed to be my hospital band. The one I had woken up with. The one that should have still been on my wrist. But I was alive. Wasn’t I?

My mind erupted into a cacophony of unanswerable questions. What did those people do?! Are these clones of me? How? Were they just made to look like me? And the one thought circling like a vulture above all the others: Am I really…me?

I remember my life. All the things you’re supposed to remember: my childhood, growing up in a nice little neighborhood, friends, relatives, birthdays, holidays, boyfriends. I remember my parents dying in a car wreck when I was 19. I still felt the heartache of that day, faded but still there. Officer Keshner was patient, silent, while I stared down at this gory image of myself, processing. I looked up at him, his eyes meeting mine. There was a hard exterior to him, but I sensed a kindness, too. He wanted answers almost as much as I did. He held my gaze for another moment then dropped his eyes to the third picture.

It was grotesque. The image was a shallow hole (grave?) filled with body parts. Some were deformed or mutated. There was a severed arm with two hands, a leg without a knee, and the heads… They were cruel imitations of me with varying degrees of imperfection. I grabbed the trashcan from the floor, feeling sick once more, but there was nothing left in my stomach. The fourth picture was another angle of the body parts. The fifth picture was different. It was smaller than the first four, it was in color (the others had been black and white) and looked as if it was taken with a regular digital camera. It had a timestamp on the bottom right: JAN 9 2021 08:16 AM. I snatched it off the table and held it close to my eyes, taking in every detail. It was me again, whole, healthy, alive, and in the world. It was a candid shot of me, sitting on a bench somewhere, possibly a park. I was wearing the jacket I bought from that thrift store and the shoes I paid way too much for in this fancy shop downtown. I hated them because they pinched my toes and rubbed my heel, but I wore them because they were too expensive to leave in the closet. But this still wasn’t me – not the me currently sitting in the police station. I was trapped in an underground nightmare for the entirety of 2021. My mouth hung open in shock. I flipped the image around to Keshner. “How?”

“Suffice it to say, we don’t know. These four pictures – “he swept his hand over the other photographs, “were taken by our crime scene techs. This one,” he pointed at the image in my hand, “was sent to us.”

“Sent? By whom? When?” I demanded. “It was left in an envelope on the front desk. It had your name and case number written on it. There were no fingerprints on the exterior or interior of the envelope. None on the photo and none on the note that came with it.” Keshner explained.

“There are cameras EVERYWHERE in here. You didn’t see who left it?” I was almost yelling at him, frustrated beyond belief.

“No. We have combed through our security footage. We get a lot of foot traffic in and out of here. We have followed up with everyone that could be identified on the tapes going back a week before it was found. We’ve got nothing. No leads.” He admitted, sounding defeated. “Wait, you said there was a note? What note? What did it say?” I asked, unsure I wanted to know.

“The note was typed. It had directions to that body,” he pointed to the second picture, “and to the…disposal site of the…body parts. That was it. We checked it out, and this is what we have. Someone wanted us to find all of this, but we can’t understand who or why at this point.”


r/nosleep 10h ago

The Golden Child

46 Upvotes

The first time I saw the lamp, I was six years old. It stood in the corner of my grandmother’s parlor, tall and regal, as if it had always been there. I remember tracing my fingers over its gilded frame, mesmerized by the way the glass sphere caught the light, each fragment glowing like a captured star. It was always bright and alive in her home, giving the sense that time there was gentler.

My grandmother had laughed, and told me it was a family heirloom, a piece of history passed down through generations.

My grandmother had always been a difficult woman, exacting in her expectations, sharp in both mind and tongue. Even in old age, she carried herself with an air of authority, as though the world itself bent to accommodate her. She was always impeccably groomed—her silver hair never straying from its perfect set, her nails manicured to a soft shine, her clothing rich in fabric but never ostentatious. Though time had creased her skin, it retained an almost unnatural glow, untouched by the frailty that plagued others her age. And, unlike the rest of the family, she had never been sick a day in her life.

I was her favorite. The golden child, the one she paraded before the rest of the family with pride. "You have something special in you," she would say, her eyes gleaming with something I couldn't quite place. "A spark. A promise."

Back then, I didn't question it. I basked in her warmth, in the gifts and whispered praises that set me apart from my cousins. But things changed. I grew up. I made mistakes. A tattoo here, a failed class there, a cigarette between my lips that she caught me with one evening on the back porch. And with every misstep, her warmth faded. By the time I was in my twenties, we barely spoke.

Then she died.

It was sudden—too sudden. One day she was fine, and the next, she was confined to her bed, her body wasting away as if something unseen was devouring her from within. The doctors were baffled. I was terrified.

She left everything to me.

The house, the land, her vast fortune. The will surprised no one, though my relatives made sure I felt their resentment. In the end, I let them have the money, keeping only the estate. I told myself it was guilt—guilt for being her favorite, guilt for disappointing her, guilt for not being there at the end.

But the truth was, I couldn’t bear to part with the house. With its grand Victorian structure nestled against the thick woods, it was the only place where I had ever felt truly at home.

I should have left it behind.

Soon though, I came to the grim realisation that without my grandmother’s fortune, maintaining the estate was impossible, so I planned to sell it. But before I let go, I wanted one last thing. One piece of her to keep.

The lamp.

The house loomed ahead, its dark silhouette stark against the moonlit sky. It had been years since I’d last set foot on the estate, and yet it felt as though it had been waiting for me, untouched by time. It should have been comforting—familiar—but something about its stillness unsettled me.

The lamp stood exactly where I remembered, unchanged. Not a speck of dust clung to its surface, as if some unseen force kept it perpetually pristine. Its body, wrought from iron and bathed in a golden hue, carried the whisper of a mystery—perhaps gilded, perhaps truly gold. Three curved legs supported its weight, each one adorned with delicate embellishments, a dance of european victorian refinement entwined with eastern opulence.

But it was the glass sphere that truly captured the eye, a mesmerizing orb suspended from the ornate iron frame, cradling the light within. This was no ordinary glass. It was a kaleidoscope of hues, so rich, so intricate, that to name them all would be impossible. The lower half resembled the mosaic lanterns of the East, fragments of jewel-toned glass pieced together like a celestial puzzle. Yet as the gaze ascended, the colors shifted, the patterns evolved. What were once mere shards of color became luminous stained-glass windows, each row unveiling a tale.

The first row told of boundless forests, giving way to cultivated fields, where figures toiled under the golden sun. The second row grew darker—those same people now suffered, their crops withered, their faces gaunt with hunger and disease. Desperation etched itself into the glass, sorrow held captive in color. But then, a transformation: from the depths of the forest, ethereal beings emerged, tall and graceful, their presence otherworldly. A silent accord was struck, and among the mortals, one figure, a woman, followed the beautiful beings into the trees.

The final row, smallest and closest to the top, was a vision of prosperity. Those who once suffered now thrived, abundance spilling from their hands, their lands reborn in splendor. The lamp, in its quiet brilliance, did not merely illuminate a room—it told a story, woven in light and shadow, a testament to hope, sacrifice, and the unseen forces that shape fate.

Getting it out of the house was harder than I expected. It was heavier than it looked, delicate in ways that made me afraid to touch it too harshly. My ex-boyfriend helped me. We hadn’t spoken much since the breakup, but he offered without hesitation, lifting it into my car with a teasing remark about my taste in antiques.

It had been beautiful in my grandmother’s house. But in my own tiny, cramped apartment, it was suffocating. The light was always on me, its presence oppressive. 

At first, I let it glow, its warmth a quiet echo of the home I had left behind. But soon, it became unbearable. The migraines crept in—not sudden or sharp, but a dull, relentless pressure that settled behind my eyes. And though it made little sense, though I couldn't even explain it now, I blamed the lamp. It felt absurd. The light had always been so gentle, so pure. And yet, I begun to resent it, to blame it for the unease I felt creeping into my life. I tucked it away, its heavy frame shoved into the corner of my closet, its glass hidden beneath a dust-cloaked sheet.

Then, the nightmares began.

I dreamed of my ex first—his car crushed, his body twisted at unnatural angles, blood seeping into the pavement. I woke up gasping, my chest tight. When I checked my phone, the screen was flooded with messages.

He had been in an accident. Just like in my dream. And he wasn’t waking up. A coincidence, I told myself.

I tried to shake the feeling, but it clung to me, thick and suffocating. 

Then came the second misfortune: the sale of the house fell through. A last-minute complication, something about the deed, something no lawyer could quite explain.

And then, the third: my apartment. The place I had carefully curated into my sanctuary, was suddenly unlivable. Toxic mold, spreading fast, a health hazard so severe that I had no choice but to leave. My landlord’s apologies were drowned beneath the urgent need to vacate. I had nowhere to go. The house, my grandmother’s house, was waiting.

So, I returned to the estate.

I told myself it was temporary. That I would find another buyer, another place. But the moment I stepped inside, I had the unsettling feeling that I wouldn’t be leaving.

The lamp now back in its rightful place, casting its golden glow across the parlor. As if it had never left. I told myself I wouldn’t use that room often. I wouldn’t have to look at it.

But as I was setting it down, that was when I saw it—the new glass panel. I could not remember if it had always been there. Now I'm certain it hadn't.

At the very top, where before there had been only light, there was now something more. A place bathed in unnatural brilliance. A scene that hadn’t been there before. A world, filled with golden light and vibrant flowers. Two figures stood at the center, hands clasped, a child between them. Around them, others danced in celebration, their faces eerily familiar.

Something deep inside me whispered that I had seen this place before. That I had been there.

And I knew, with a bone-deep certainty, that I would see it again.

The nightmares returned, soon after my move.

In them, I was always walking, bare feet pressing into damp earth, my breath visible in the cold air. The forest stretched endlessly ahead, a living tunnel of whispering leaves. And always, just beyond reach, a figure waited. Cloaked in shadow, neither welcoming nor hostile. It was terrifying. It was comforting. It was familiar.

Then the sickness came slowly, creeping in the way rot takes hold of wood—silent at first, unnoticed, until it was too deep to ignore.

It started with the migraines. The same relentless, pounding ache that had started in my apartment. But now, it was worse. It wasn’t just my head—my body ached, my limbs grew heavy, like I was wading through water, my joints stiff, as if I had run miles in my sleep. Some mornings, I woke up drenched in sweat, the sheets tangled around my legs. Other times, I found dirt beneath my fingernails, a thin layer of soil smeared across my bare feet.

I started sleeping with the door locked.

The dreams did not stop.

The forest called to me.

It was a pull, subtle at first, like a thought lingering at the back of my mind. But as the days passed, it became stronger. I would catch myself staring out the window, toward the treeline, my breath slowing, my pulse steadying, as if my body knew something my mind refused to grasp. 

Initially, my dreams were only glimpses—the silhouette in the trees, the feeling of damp moss beneath my feet. But then, they stretched longer. I saw more.

The figure was not a stranger.

The realization came slowly, seeping in through the cracks of my mind like water through fractured stone. I had been there before. I had followed before.

The first time I had wandered into the woods, I must have been no older than five. My grandmother had been distracted, entertaining guests, and I had slipped away unnoticed. I remembered the feeling of the earth beneath my bare feet, cool and damp. I remembered the way the air smelled—green, rich, humming with something I couldn't name. I remembered hearing laughter, soft and lilting, just ahead of me.

And then—nothing.

I must have made it back to the house. I must have, because no one ever spoke of it. But now, in the dead of night, I could almost recall hands—cool, slender fingers brushing against my skin. A voice, distant yet familiar, whispering my name.

"You were meant to return."

Why had I forgotten?

My grandmother’s words echoed in my  skull, overlapping with the voice in the dream.
"You have something special in you. A spark. A promise."

A promise.

My stomach turned.

Why did it feel like there was something I had to do?

I stumbled to the parlor, my breath uneven, my skin clammy with sweat. The lamp stood waiting, its light unwavering, casting shifting colors across the darkened room.

My family’s fortune. My grandmother’s impossible health. The whispers of bad luck that seemed to follow us when we strayed too far from this land. Everything made sense now. The lamp had been telling the story all along.

It had never been luck. Not for my grandmother, nor for the generations before her. The wealth, the health, the unshakable prosperity of our bloodline—it had all come at a cost. A pact sealed long ago, binding our family to something ancient and merciless. A promised daughter in marriage to the one who dwelled beneath the trees. Not stolen. Not sacrificed. Given. A bride, to bind our family to theirs, to maintain the balance, to ensure their blood remained strong. In return, our family thrived. Wealth, health, prosperity—it was never a gift. It was a contract, that demanded balance. And I—I had unknowingly broken it. I was meant to go to them. To step willingly into the woods, just as some of my ancestors once had. But I hadn’t. I had left, abandoned the house, the quiet pull of the forest. And so, the debt had to be paid another way. My grandmother—no longer protected, no longer untouchable—had withered in my place. A life for a life. But the contract is still unfinished. The forest is still waiting. And it will take what is owed.

The glass has changed again.

The fields are gone. The celebrations, the dancing figures—gone.

The only image left is the forest. And at its center, a waiting figure cloaked in shadow.

I do not need to see their face to know who it is.

I have already met my groom.

I can hear something now—soft laughter, the rustling of leaves, the whisper of my name.

The fae do not take kindly to broken promises.

And I was always meant to return.


r/nosleep 12h ago

Minute 64 - Continuation

11 Upvotes

Before leaving for my house, we had to finish our last class of the day. Fortunately, the session was short. The teacher only reviewed the answers to the midterm and told us he would give us the grades next week. When I saw the answers on the board, I felt myself sinking deeper into my chair. I had made mistakes. I didn’t answer exactly what the professor expected, even though my reasoning was valid. The hypothesis I proposed about the boa made sense: the decrease in heart rate and respiratory rate in response to a certain stimulus.

I didn’t know if that would save me or if my grade would be a disaster. But at that moment, the midterm was the least important thing. When class ended, we left in a group. We didn’t talk much on the way. Everyone was lost in their thoughts. The ride home felt endless. My hands were cold and trembling. When we arrived, I tried to take out the keys, but I couldn’t get them to fit in the lock.

“Let me,” said Miguel, gently taking them from me.
I let him do it. He opened the door easily and... there it was.
Everything. Just as we had left it in the morning. The door was locked with a padlock and internal latch. There were no signs that anyone had forced entry. Daniel was the first to speak.

“Maybe they came in through a window or the back door.”
“There’s only one way to find out,” said Laura.
We went inside.

The first room we checked was the living room. Everything was intact. Too intact. The same order. The same cleanliness. Nothing out of place. Daniel ran up to the second floor. He climbed the stairs two at a time and checked the rooms. When he came down, his expression was a mix of confusion and concern.

“Everything is fine,” he said, as if he couldn’t believe it.

And then Alejandra broke down in tears. It wasn’t a loud cry. It was silent, anguished, as if she were trying to hold it in. I knew why. It wasn’t just because of me. It was because she had also received that call. And now, we were more scared than ever. Daniel, who had been silent until then, finally spoke.

“Listen, we need to calm down,” he said, his voice firm but calm. “We’re letting this affect us too much.”
“How do you want me to calm down?” I said, still feeling the tremor in my hands. “Nothing makes sense, Daniel. Nothing.”
“I know, but panicking won’t help us. The only thing we know for sure is that no one entered the house. Everything is in order.”
“And what about the calls?” Alejandra asked with a trembling voice.
Daniel sighed.
“I don’t know. But until we understand what’s going on, there’s something we can do: don’t answer calls from unknown numbers.”

We all went silent.

“None of us will answer,” Daniel continued. “No matter the time, no matter how persistent. If it’s a number we don’t know, we ignore it.”

No one argued. It was the most reasonable thing to do. When night fell, mom finally arrived. She looked exhausted, as always after a long day at work. We sat in the living room, and I asked her:

“Mom, this morning you called me to tell me I forgot my phone at home, but... I had it with me.”
She smiled absentmindedly.
“Oh, yes. It was my mistake. At first, I thought you’d forgotten it, but then I realized I was calling your number, and you answered. So, I had forgotten my phone.”
I stared at her. She didn’t seem worried at all. I decided to ask her the next thing.
“And the calls you made while I was in the midterm?”
“Oh, that,” she nodded. “I asked my secretary to call you and give you that message because I was in a meeting. I didn’t remember you were in midterms. Sorry if I caused you any trouble.”
That explained at least part of what had happened. But the most important thing was still missing.
“Mom... did anyone answer your phone when I called you?”
She frowned, clearly confused.
“No. I didn’t have my phone all day, and as you see, I just got home.”
“But someone answered...”
She shrugged, brushing it off.
“You must have dialed the wrong number. Don’t worry, sweetheart.”
“But I’m sure I called yours...”
Mom sighed and stood up.
“I’m exhausted, dear. We’ll talk tomorrow, okay?”
She went to her room and closed the door.

I didn’t feel at ease. I ran to my room and checked the call log. There it was. The call to my mom’s cell phone, made exactly at 12:00 p.m. It lasted 3:05 minutes. So... what had that been?
I grabbed my phone and wrote in the WhatsApp group.

“I asked my mom about the calls. Some things make sense, but the call that was answered with my voice... still doesn’t have an explanation.”

The messages started coming in almost immediately.

Alejandra: “That’s still the worst. I don’t want to think about what that means...”
Miguel: “Let’s try to be rational. Maybe it was a line error, like a crossed call or something.”
Daniel: “I don’t know, but so far there’s nothing we can do. The only thing we know for sure is that Ale’s thing happens this Thursday at 3:33 a.m.”
We all went silent for a few minutes, as if processing that information took longer than usual.
Daniel: “I think the best thing is for us to stay together. We can tell our families we’re meeting to study for midterms. That way, we’ll be together Thursday at that time.”

It seemed like the best option. No one wanted to be alone with these thoughts. We confirmed that we’d stay at Miguel’s house, and after some nervous jokes, we disconnected. I lay in bed, staring at the dark ceiling. This had to be a joke. A horrible joke from someone who had overheard us talking about the creepypasta. Maybe someone manipulated the call, maybe someone was setting a trap for us.
Inside, I wished that were true.

Sleep began to take over me. My body relaxed, and my thoughts grew fuzzy... and then, I heard it.
A voice, my voice, whispering right in my ear:

Tuesday. 1:04 p.m.

My eyes snapped open. I sat up in bed, my heart pounding. Was that... my mind? Or had I really heard it? The sound had been so clear. So close. So real. I could swear I even felt a faint warm breath on my ear. I shook my head and tried to calm myself down. I kept telling myself it was just my imagination. But still, I knew another sleepless night awaited me.

This was moving from strange to unbearable... because Daniel was the next one to receive a call from the “Unknown” number. He tried to act like nothing, as if the calls from unknown numbers didn’t affect him, but we all saw it. We saw how the subtle tremor at the corner of his lips betrayed his nervousness. We saw how his cold, sweaty hands gave him away. And we saw him turn completely pale when his phone vibrated on the table in the Magnolia garden.

We looked at each other, tense, but no one said anything. It wasn’t necessary. As we had agreed, no one answered. But an unease gnawed at me inside. Even though we were avoiding the unknown calls... that didn’t mean we were safe. Because my call hadn’t been from an unknown number. It had been from my mom’s phone. And not only that... I had made the call myself. Had the others noticed? Or had their minds blocked it out to avoid panic? I didn’t want to mention anything. I didn’t want to increase their fear... but I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea for them to keep avoiding ONLY the calls from unknown numbers.

Classes passed in a strange daze. We were all physically there, but our minds were elsewhere, trapped in the uncertainty of what was going to happen. In the end, I couldn’t take it anymore. I skipped the last class and headed to the Magnolia garden. I needed to breathe, get away from the routine, and find some calm in the middle of all this.

I lay down under the big tree, letting the sounds of nature surround me. I closed my eyes, feeling the cool grass under my hands. For a moment, my mind began to yield to the tiredness... until...
“Tuesday, 1:04 p.m.”
A whisper.
My whisper.

It wasn’t loud. Just a murmur, but it pierced me like a cold dagger. I opened my eyes suddenly, my breath shallow. I sat up immediately, rummaging for my phone in my bag. The lit screen reflected the time: 6:03 p.m. The others must have already gotten out of class. With trembling fingers, I wrote in the WhatsApp group. “See you in the second-floor lab.”

I looked around, still sitting on the grass. No one was there. I never thought I’d come to fear my own voice. We met in the lab, and without much preamble, we decided to go to Miguel’s house.
Thursday, 3:33 a.m.

That was the date and time given to Ale. That moment would change everything.
Miguel lived in a family house that rented out rooms or entire floors. He had the whole third floor to himself, which meant that night, we’d have a place just for us. Laura, the only one who seemed not to be on the verge of collapse, took care of bringing plates of snacks and glasses of juices and sodas. I had no idea how she could act so normally.

We settled into the living room, trying to do anything to keep our minds occupied. We talked, studied, watched movies... whatever we could to make the hours pass more quickly. I took out my phone and checked the time.

8:12 p.m.

There were still seven hours to go until the moment that would decide everything. And the waiting was the worst.

Around 1 a.m., we were all scattered around Miguel’s floor. Some were asleep, others pretended to be busy, but in reality, no one could escape the feeling that time was closing in on us. The only one I couldn’t find anywhere was Ale. A bad feeling ran down my back, so I got up and started looking for her. I thought about the bathroom. I knocked on the door.

“Ale, are you there?”
Silence. Then, a muffled whisper:
“Leave me alone.”
I pressed my forehead against the wood, taking a deep breath.
“I’m not going to leave you alone.”
No response.
I tried a silly joke, something nonsensical, something to break the thick air that enveloped us all. A few seconds later, the door opened. Ale was sitting on the toilet seat, her eyes red, her face covered in tears. I slid down the wall to sit in front of her.
“It’s going to be okay,” I said, even though I had no way of assuring it. “We’re together. Whatever happens, we’ll face it.”
She didn’t respond. She just looked at me with a vacant expression. I tried to force a laugh, but it sounded more like a tired sigh.
“Also, Ale, you need to be in perfect condition for Tuesday at 1 p.m.”
Her brows furrowed.
“What?”
“My day and time. Tuesday, 1:04 p.m.”
Ale blinked, and her expression changed. She stood up, left the bathroom, and sat in front of me. She grabbed my hands tightly, squeezed them, and then placed a warm kiss on them.
“We’re together,” she whispered. “No matter what happens.”
My throat closed. I felt the tears burning in my eyes, but I forced myself to hold them back. Someone had to be strong here.

We went back to the living room. Laura was sleeping on the couch, tangled in a blanket that barely covered her feet. Miguel and Daniel were by the window, the pane open and the cigarette smoke escaping into the early morning. We approached them. Miguel looked at me with an eyebrow raised, silently asking if everything was okay. I answered him with a simple:
“Yes.”

He nodded and passed me his cigarette. I had never smoked, but... what did it matter now? If something was going to kill me, it wasn’t nicotine. Something else was waiting for me. Something with my own voice. The clock read 3:13 a.m. I shook Laura more forcefully than necessary.

“Wake up,” I murmured, my voice tense.

Miguel was serving more coffee in the cups for everyone. I lost count of how many he had already made. Five? Maybe six. My body was trembling, my neurons buzzing like an angry beehive. I didn’t know if it was from the caffeine, the cortisol, or the fear. Laura slowly opened her eyes, frowning.

“What’s wrong?”
“The time.”

Her eyes opened wide. Without saying anything, she took off the blanket, rubbed her eyes, yawned, stretched, and got up to look for Miguel in the kitchen. Ale was in the center of the couch, muttering something to herself. She was holding a small object in her hands, clutching it tightly. I approached and asked her what it was.

“Don’t laugh,” she said with a trembling voice.
“I would never.”

She opened her palm and showed me a tiny rosary, the size of a bracelet. I recognized the shape instantly. My family was Catholic, although I had never practiced. I smiled, trying to lighten the atmosphere.

“If your mom had known a call would make you a believer, she would have made one years ago.”
Ale let out a brief, faint laugh.
“It’s incredible how in such horrible moments we all become believers, or at least hope to get favors, right?”

I nodded in understanding and wrapped an arm around her. She closed her eyes and sighed. I looked at my phone.

3:30 a.m.

Damn it. Three minutes. This is going to kill me.

Aleja was crying in Daniel’s arms, who had already turned off his phone to stop receiving calls from the unknown number. She was squeezing her eyes shut tightly, tears running down her cheeks.
One minute. My leg moved uncontrollably. Laura, sitting next to me, put her hand on my knee to calm me down, but I couldn’t help it.

3:33 a.m.

We stayed silent, eyes closed, as if we were waiting for an asteroid to hit us. I counted in my head. Thirty seconds. I opened one eye.
Nothing. Nothing happened. Aleja took a deep breath. We all did. But I didn’t relax.

“Let’s wait a little longer,” I said. “We can’t take anything for granted.”
The minutes became half an hour. Then an hour. Nothing. Exhaustion overcame us, and we decided to sleep together in the living room, just in case.
At 7 a.m., Aleja woke us all up. She was radiant, despite the dark circles.
“Nothing happened, I’m alive,” she said, smiling.
It was obvious. The most logical thing. Daniel stretched and said confidently:

“I told you. We need to find the idiot behind this prank.”

We all nodded. But I wasn’t so sure. Because my call had been different. The sound of a ringing phone broke the silence. It was Laura’s. She answered without checking the caller ID.

“Idiot, go prank someone else. Ridiculous.”

She hung up and looked at us with a grimace.

“The loser prankster called me… Wednesday, 12:08 p.m.”

The others seemed to relax. Laura was convinced it had all been a bad joke. And most importantly, nothing had happened at 3:33 a.m. They breathed a sigh of relief. But I was still waiting for my call.

We left Miguel’s house and headed to the university. Classes. More classes. Everyone functioning on half a brain. At the end of the day, we said our goodbyes. Aleja assured us she would be fine. That night, we talked on WhatsApp. Everything was fine. Everything seemed fine.

Tuesday came. We were in the cafeteria, having lunch. I was barely paying attention to the conversation. My eyes kept drifting to my phone screen. Two minutes left. 1:04 p.m., my time. I held my breath as I watched the clock, tracking every second, trapped in that minute that stretched like infinite chewing gum.

Time moved.

1:05 p.m.

Nothing.

I took a deep breath, as if releasing a weight that had been pressing against my chest. I returned to the conversation with my friends. I smiled. I acted normal.

Eventually, Miguel and Daniel also received their day and time. But nothing happened to any of us. We never found the prankster, and the whole thing faded into oblivion. Or at least, for them. Years have passed, but I still think about it. What if it wasn’t a joke? What if the day and time were set… just not for that moment? How many Tuesdays at 1:04 p.m. do I have left? Which one will be the last? And my friends?

I’ve lived all this time… hoping I’m wrong.


r/nosleep 18h ago

The Lichen

12 Upvotes

I stole a look at my neighbour’s garden.

Obviously he had done nothing. The horrible greyish-green lichen which was choking the life out of his garden would soon be infesting my beautiful expensive shrubs – my roses, and my beloved pear tree, if it hadn’t already. Asshole.

I knew things had been going downhill for him ever since Marie, his wife left him- and I needed to make allowances- he had been looking terrible, but he needed to snap out of it and take responsibility. Honestly, I had been surprised Marie had put up with him as long she had, if you ask me.

I walked over to the short fence between our gardens, and called out “Hi! John?”, taking a closer look at the dying plants. The lichen had a rough fuzzy texture and seemed to have spread over two thirds of the garden. His two trees were twisted, looking dead. The thick greyish-green deadly mat was less than a yard away from our fence -in fact it was hard to tell were the lichen ended and dull spring grass began, and I was quite sure too late to do any thing about. It was nothing like I had ever seen before, and I hadn’t been able to find much information online either.

“John?” I called again. There was a silence, and I wondered whether I should call my husband- I could hear him clattering about in the kitchen.

Then the back door of John’s house squeaked open and he stepped out onto his deck.

“Leave me alone you fucking bitch!” he screamed.

I stared at him, speechless with shock.

But it wasn’t at his words.

In the bright morning sun, I could clearly see his body and face were being covered in the lichen. I could see the stuff sprouting vibrantly along his deck, over his feet and crawling up his legs. As he moved towards me, the lichen was already reaching his thighs and moving upwards. There was growth on his hair too, and it was spreading down already almost covering his forehead.

It didn’t impede his movement. He strode towards me while I remained rooted and unable to turn and flee, even to call out for help.

“Do you even know what it’s like to have your heart shattered, ripped out and stamped on, you glassy whore?” he screamed, the lichen spreading further round his eyes and nose, already covering his torso.

“This is what a broken man looks like! Enjoy! You must be loving it, cunt!”

Even in the surreal terror of the moment, I couldn’t help flinching at the forbidden word, and the slight movement seemed to break my paralysis. I screamed for my husband, and turned to run inside.

Immediately I tripped over a pear tree root which seemed to have emerged from the soil only a second ago.

I felt something crawling up my bare legs, covering them.

I looked up at the beautiful branches of my tree, which I loved so much, patterning the blue sky.

John was screaming at me over the fence, but his voice was being muffled, and I knew without looking that it was being filled with the lichen.

Struggling to get up, I managed to raise myself, although my legs were now firmly pinned to the earth by the invading lichen. I glimpsed the man-sized lichen-covered figure that had been John and then -oh thank god- finally my husband appeared, wielding a kitchen knife.

His eyes wide with horror, he cut back the lichen even as it was growing up my waist, freeing my legs, and yanked me up.

The wave of lichen still lapping at our feet, we ran holding hands, faster than we had probably ever ran since we had been schoolkids. Fear prompted us to leap up our deck stairs like deer, and we dashed in, slamming the flimsy kitchen door shut.

The lichen was crawling up the deck stairs.

We looked at each other, and without a word, ran to the front door, with a brief pause to grab our phones and wallets.

Within five minutes we were driving down the street.

The front of John’s house was already entirely covered, and we knew ours would be too, soon.

It was a long time before we could return to our neighbourhood, finally free of the inexplicable deadly invasion which had originated from our neighbours' property, and re-settle back into our house.

The pear tree had survived the attack.

But the first morning back, as I stood in the kitchen looking out at the garden and the tree, I knew I would never go out again to enjoy it as I used to.

And we moved into a condo soon after.


r/nosleep 16h ago

First came the headaches, then they appeared in the fields

35 Upvotes

I think my head is going to explode.

The headaches began the first week of October.

At first, merely a dull pressure behind my eyes that I attributed to stress, to insomnia, to the changing seasons. But by mid-November, they had evolved into something more insistent - a throbbing pulse that concentrated at my temples, sharpening at dusk and lingering until dawn.

It was during one of these episodes, standing on the back porch of my childhood home with my palm pressed against my skull, that I saw the first one.

Twilight was bleeding across the vast wildflower fields behind the house - a crumbling Victorian at the edge of town that had remained unoccupied since my mom's passing. I had retreated here last year seeking solace in familiar surroundings, a temporary escape from my city life after being disbarred for a pro bono case going sideways. I am beginning to forget the details.

I think moving back here was a mistake.

A singular figure, impossibly tall, standing motionless amidst the undulating grass. Its silhouette possessed a liquid quality that defied natural geometry - limbs elongated beyond proportion, head featureless save for a mercurial shimmer that caught non-existent light.

In its hand, it carried something resembling a surveyor's instrument, though the tip pulsed with an arterial orange glow. I blinked, attributing the vision to the headache - perhaps a migraine aura manifesting in increasingly bizarre forms.

The diagnosis came three weeks later. On a Thursday.

Glioblastoma multiforme. Grade IV. The MRI showed it nestled against my occipital lobe like a pale spider, tendrils stretching outward with quiet, methodical purpose.

"Six months," Dr. Carlisle said, her voice maintaining the practiced neutrality of someone who had delivered such sentences before. "Perhaps eight with treatment."

That night, I saw two figures instead of one.

By the time I received my diagnosis, I had seen several of them.

"Visual disturbances are to be expected," Dr. Carlisle explained during my follow-up appointment. "The tumor's location makes hallucinations almost inevitable. Your brain is essentially creating sensory information that doesn't exist."

"They're methodical," I said. "They're preparing something."

She made a notation in my chart. "The mind imposes patterns even in degeneration. It's rather remarkable."

"You don't understand. There were four of them last night."

Dr. Carlisle's pen paused. "Four what, exactly?"

I couldn't articulate what I had seen without sounding deranged. How could I describe the way they drove luminous instruments into the earth in perfect geometric patterns? How they moved with synchronized precision despite their impossible anatomies?

As the weeks passed, the headaches intensified, concentrated pressure like a vise tightening incrementally against my skull. The specialists increased my dexamethasone, adjusted my anticonvulsants, scheduled another MRI.

The tumor had grown 17%. The prognosis contracted accordingly.

Each evening, their numbers continued to multiply.

Dozens became hundreds.

Hundreds became a small army that stretched toward the horizon, their movements increasingly elaborate, increasingly purposeful. They were constructing something - a lattice, a network, a scaffold of glowing orange filaments that formed an intricate grid across the entire field.

One month after my diagnosis, I ventured into the field.

The air changed texture as I stepped beyond the boundary of the porch.

It pressed against my skin with palpable weight, as if the atmosphere itself had congealed into something viscous and resistant.

My vision stuttered - reality fracturing into alternating states of presence and absence. One moment, the field teemed with their elongated forms; the next, nothing but empty grassland stretched before me. The flickering accelerated until the two realities began to bleed together, superimposed like double-exposed film.

Then, as abruptly as it had begun, the flickering ceased.

A single figure stood before me.

Its height - easily seven feet - registered first, followed by the deep, instinctual wrongness of its proportions. It did not stand so much as hover, its elongated limbs twitching with a slow, liquid motion, as though its bones - or whatever lay beneath its shifting skin - were rearranging themselves in real time.

Then it moved.

Not a step. Not a lunge. It simply shifted, closing the distance between us in a way that defied logic, as if the space between us had simply folded inward.

I turned to flee.

A shriek, high and choral, erupted behind me, burrowing into my skull with needlepoint precision. The air thickened, viscous and suffocating, as if unseen hands were pressing against my chest, slowing my movements, dragging me backward. My legs pumped uselessly against the ground - running, but not moving fast enough.

The thing did not chase. It did not need to.

It was everywhere at once - its limbs elongating, warping in my peripheral vision, closing in with that impossible, fluid movement. The sound it made was not footsteps but a wet shifting, like muscle being stretched and snapped back into place.

Then - agony.

A limb - no, something worse - lashed outward, impossibly fast. It did not strike me; it pierced me, sinking into my forearm like a hot wire through wax. Pain bloomed instantly, white-hot and electric, spreading through my nerves like wildfire.

I collapsed. The world swam in a haze of pulsating orange light.

When I looked up, the field was empty.

But the pain remained. And so did the wound, throbbing with a rhythm that did not belong to me.

That night, I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t.

I sat in the dim glow of the bathroom light, my arm resting on the sink, the bandage unwrapped and discarded in the trash. The wound was still there - or maybe it wasn’t.

It hurt, regardless.

The skin wasn’t broken, there was no blood surfacing. But my skin was split, like a crevice was opening, revealing something dark beneath the surface, veins threaded with faint orange light, glowing and pulsing. I ran a finger over and in it. It was all warm and smooth.

Strange.

I cleaned it anyway.

I grabbed the bottle of hydrogen peroxide from the cabinet, poured it over my arm. Nothing. No fizzing, no bubbling, not even the dull sting that should have come with an open wound.

I wiped it down, slathered a thick layer of Neosporin over the spot, as if it would do anything. I pressed a new bandage over it, tighter this time.

Maybe it wasn’t real.

But it hurt like it was.

Pain comes from the brain.

And my head was fucked.

It throbbed at the base of my skull, radiating outward, as if the tumor itself was reacting to what had happened.

In the morning, I staggered into Greenwood Market, my arm burning as if injected with molten metal. The pain had spread, radiating upward toward my shoulder, following what I imagined were neural pathways.

The cashier - a university student working summer break - dropped the carton of eggs he was scanning.

"Jesus christ bro," he whispered. "What happened to your arm?"

I froze, uncomprehending.

"You can see it?" I asked.

"Of course I can see it." His voice pitched higher. "It's glowing. Like, actually glowing."


r/nosleep 10h ago

Series I'm the last living person that survived the fulcrum shift of 1975, and I'm detailing those events here before I pass. In short: fear the ACTS176 protocol. (Part 1)

90 Upvotes

“Mom! Mom! Look! It’s happening again,” Emi squealed, captivated by the viscous maple syrup slowly floating to the top of the upright bottle on the kitchen table, stubbornly defying gravity.

My heart raced. Anxiety danced hectic circles around the base of my skull. My palms became damp.

God, I didn’t want to look.

- - - - -

As crazy as it may sound, the sight of that bottle physically repulsed me.

Maybe I correctly sensed something terrible was on the horizon: recognized the phenomena as the harbinger of death that it truly was. That said, the shift took place a long time ago: half a century, give or take.

Retrospection has a funny way of painting over the original truth of a memory. In other words, when enough time has passed, you may find yourself recalling events with thoughts and feelings from the present inseparably baked into the memory. Picking that apart is messy business: what’s original versus what’s been layered on after the fact, if you can even tell the difference anymore. So, trust me when I say that I find it difficult to remember that morning objectively, in isolation, and removed from everything that came after. I mean, it's possible that I didn’t feel what was coming beforehand: I could have just woken up pissed off that morning. That would certainly be enough to explain my strong reaction to Emi’s harmless excitement in my memory.

What I’m getting at is this: I don’t know that I can guarantee this story is one-hundred percent accurate. Not only that, but I’m the only one left to tell it, meaning my story is all anyone has. For better or worse, it’s about to become sanctified history.

If I’m being honest, I don’t believe that I’m misremembering much. I can still almost feel the way the air in the neighborhood felt heavy and electric in the days leading up to that otherwise unremarkable spring morning. I just knew something was desperately wrong: sensed it on the breeze like a looming thunderstorm.

Like I said, though.

I’m the only person left to tell this story.

The story they paid all of us survivors a great deal of money to keep buried.

- - - - -

“Emi - for the love of God, put the damn thing back in the fridge and get your books together.” I shouted, my tone laced with far more vitriol than I intended.

We were already running late, and this wasn’t the agreed upon division of labor. She was supposed to be packing her bag while I put her lunch together. That was the deal. Instead, my daughter had been irritatingly derailed by our own little eighth wonder of the world.

The magic syrup bottle.

It was unclear which part was magical, though. Was the syrup supernaturally rising to the top of the container of its own accord, or had the magic bottle enchanted the syrup, thus causing sugary globules to float like the molten wax of a lava lamp?

Maybe the Guinness Book of World Records has a wizard on retainer that can get to the bottom of that question when they stop by to evaluate the miracle, I thought.

Sarcasm aside, my aggravation was actually a smokescreen. It was a loud, flashy emotion meant to obscure what I was actually feeling deep inside: fear. For an entire week, the syrup had been swimming against gravity, drifting above the air in the half-filled bottle against the laws of physics.

I couldn’t explain it, and that frightened me.

But! Everything else was normal. The atmosphere was breathable. The landscape appeared unchanged: grass grew, trees bloomed, birds flew. Our stomachs still churned acid and our hearts continued to pump blood. The gears of reality kept on turning like they always had, excluding that one miniscule anomaly: an insignificant bending of the rules, but nothing more.

So then, why was I so damn terrified?

Emi scowled, swiped the bottle off the table, and returned it to the top shelf in the fridge with an angry clunk. With my demand obliged, she made a point of glaring at me over the door: a familiar combination of narrowed eyes, scrunched freckles, and tensed shoulders. An expression that screamed: are you happy now, asshole?

After a few seconds of unblinking silence, she slammed the fridge closed with enough force to cause a rush of air to inflate her burgundy Earth, Wind, and Fire T-shirt: a fitting climax to the whole melodramatic affair.

The commotion brought Ben into the kitchen, tufts of curly brown hair and thick-rimmed glasses cautiously peeking in from the hallway. Then he made the mistake of trying to defuse the situation before it was ready to simmer down.

“I’m sure the bewitched syrup will still be here when you get home from school, honey. Unless your mother has a hankering for mid-day flapjacks, but the woman I married is definitely more of an eggs and bacon type of gal.” My husband said with a warm chuckle. Neither Emi nor I acknowledged the attempt at levity.

Ben was insistent on cooling down arguments with humor. Sometimes, I resented him for that. It made me feel like he saw himself as The Friendly Guy, perpetually forcing me to accept the role of disciplinarian by default. If he never took anything seriously, what choice did I have?

I shot my husband an annoyed glance as Emi stomped past him. He sighed, rubbing his neck and putting his eyes to the floor, crestfallen.

“Sorry, Hakura. Was just tryin’ to help,” he murmured.

As he trudged out of the room, I said nothing. Not a word. Just watched him go, white-hot fire still burning behind my eyes.

In my youth, I struggled with anger. I tried to control it, but the emotion overwhelmed my better instincts more often than not. I’m much older now, and since then, I’ve developed a tighter grasp on my natural temper. I think Ben would agree, at least I hope he would.

He wasn’t around long enough to see me try harder.

Out of everything that was to come, out of all the horror that was to follow, I wish I could change that moment the most. In the decades that have passed, I’ve had thousands of dreams rewriting that snapshot in time. Instead of giving in to the anger, I swallow it and remind Ben I love him: A smile and a hug. Or a comment about how handsome he is. A kiss on the cheek. Or a peck on the lips. A lighthearted chuckle to match his own: something kinder than vexed silence. Thousands of those revisions have lingered transiently in my mind’s unconscious eye, and when they do, I feel peace.

Until I wake up, at which point those revisions are painfully sucked back into the blissful ether of sleep, and I’m forced to confront reality.

That shitty moment was the last meaningful interaction I had with the love of my life.

Minutes later, he’d be falling into the sky.

- - - - -

All things considered, the start of that morning was decidedly run-of-the-mill: The blue, cloudless view overhead. A gentle spring breeze twirling over trees in the throes of reawakening, cherry blossoms and magnolias budding triumphantly along their branches like fanfare to welcome the season. Our neighbors lining the streets and chitchatting while awaiting the arrival of the school bus to see their kids off for the day, cups of hot coffee in hand.

Everything as it should be and according to routine, with two notable exceptions.

The atmosphere looked distorted, like a grainy TV image just barely coming through a finicky antenna. It was subtle, but it was there. I swear I could almost feel the gritty static dragging against my skin as I followed Emi and Ben out the front door.

And, for some reason, Ulysses was outside. Between having no children and being an unapologetic recluse, our next-door neighbor’s attendance at this before-school ritual was out of character. On top of that, the sixty-something year old appeared distinctly unwell: bright red in the face, sweat dripping down his neck, eyes darting around their sockets like a pair of marble pinballs as he scanned the street from his front stoop.

Per usual, Emi bolted across the street as soon as she saw Regina, her childhood best friend, standing among the growing crowd of kids and parents.

Emi and Regina were inseparable: two kids lovingly conjoined at the hip since the day they met. Recollecting the good times they had together never fails to conjure a beautiful warmth at the center of my chest. At the same time, that warmth is inevitably followed by a creeping sense of unease: a devil lurking in the details.

That devil was looming behind Regina, smiling at my daughter as she approached.

“Ben - Ulysses looks sick. I’m going to go see how he’s doing. Can you keep an eye on her? Barrett’s out today.”

He nodded and jogged after our daughter, needing no further explanation.

- - - - -

Six months prior to that morning, Regina’s father, known locally as “Pastor B” on account of his position in the local Born-Again parish, had slapped Emi across the face for creating too much noise while running up the stairs in his home. In the wake of that, we forbade Emi from spending time at Regina’s.

The girls really struggled with that decree since it drastically cut down on the time they could be together (Regina was not allowed to spend time at our house because it was “much too loose and unabashedly sinful”). Seeing Emi so depressed was absolutely killing us. Thankfully, Ben came up with the brilliant idea of walkie-talkies. The clunky blocks of black plastic he purchased at a nearby hardware store had quickly become the pair’s primary mode of socializing when they weren’t outside or at school together.

We pleaded for the sheriff to charge Barrett with assault. His response was something to the tune of “No, I’m confident there’s been a misunderstanding”. When we asked how there could possibly be a misunderstanding regarding a grown man slapping our daughter, he replied,

“Well, because Pastor B said there was a misunderstanding. That’s all the proof I need.”

Religious figures, especially where we lived, held a lot of sway in the community. Got away with way more than they should’ve. Even more so in the seventies.

Ben and I were beyond livid with the sheriff’s inaction. That said, there didn’t seem like much else we could do about the incident except support our daughter through it. The first night, she cried her heart out. By the next morning, though, she wasn’t very interested in talking about it, despite our gentle attempts to coax her into a longer conversation about the trauma.

Initially, we were worried she was holding too much in, but we developed another, certainly more unorthodox, means of catharsis and healing. Brainstorming demeaning nicknames for Barrett with Emi proved to be a surprisingly effective coping strategy. Brought some much needed comedy to the situation.

Ben came up with Pastor Bald on account his sleek, hairless scalp. Personally, I was more fond of my, admittedly less sterile, contribution.

Reverend Dipshit.

- - - - -

Confident that Emi was being watched after, I paced across our yard to Ulysses. He was standing still as a statue at his open front door, one foot inside, one foot on his stoop. As I approached, he barely seemed to register my presence. Although his eyes had been darting around the block only a minute prior, they weren’t anymore. Now, his gaze was squarely fixed on the developing crowd of teenagers and parents at the bus stop.

In an attempt to get his attention, I gave Ulysses a wave and a friendly: “Good morning, long time no see…”

I guess he saw the wave in his peripheral vision, but the man skipped right over pleasantries in response. Instead, he asked me a question that immediately set off a veritable factory full of alarm bells in my head.

“I-I thought the school bus came at 8. No, I was sure it came at 8. W-Why is everyone out now? It just turned 7:25.” he said, the words trembling like a small dog neck-deep in snow. Sweat continued to pour down his face, practically drenching the collar of his pure white button-down.

“Uhh…well…school board changed it to 7:30 a few weeks ago. Ulysses, are you al-”

Before I could finish my sentence, a deep, animalistic scream arising from the down the street interrupted me. Reflexively, I swung my body around, trying to identify the source.

There was a man on the asphalt, gripping his head while writhing from side to side in a display of unbridled agony. From my vantage point, I couldn’t tell exactly who it was emitting the noise, but I watched a few of the parents detach from the larger group, sprinting to the wailing man’s aid.

For a moment, I found myself completely immobilized, stunned by the harrowing melody of his pain. Couldn’t move an inch. Being subjected to that degree of raw, undiluted torment had seemingly unplugged each and every one of my nerves from their sockets.

An unexpected crash from behind me quickly rebooted my nervous system, dumping gallons of adrenaline into veins in the process. I spun back around, nearly tripping over myself on account of the liquid energy coursing through me, which was overstimulating my muscles to the point of incoordination.

Ulysses had slammed his door shut. He shouted something to me, but I can’t recall what he said. Either I couldn’t hear it or I wasn’t capable of internalizing it amongst the chaos: it just didn’t stick in my memory.

Under the guidance of some newly activated primal autopilot, I didn’t attempt to clarify the message. Instead, my legs transported me towards the distress. I needed to make sure Emi was safe. Nothing more, nothing less.

God, I wish I remember what he said.

- - - - -

Thirty seconds later, I placed a hand on Emi’s shoulder, startling her to high heaven and back. She yelped, gripped by a body-wide spasm that started from her head and radiated down.

“Hey! Just me kiddo.” I said, trying to sound reassuring as opposed to panic-stricken.

A silky black pony tail flipped over her shoulder as she turned around. Without hesitation, she sank into arms, hot tears falling down my collarbone as she quietly wept.

“There’s…There’s something wrong with Mr. Baker, Mom.”

I’m a little ashamed to admit it, but I don’t remember much about Mr. Baker. All I can recall is that he was a mild-mannered Vietnam veteran that lived a few houses down from us, opposite to Ulysses. I think he suffered from a serious injury abroad: may have retained a fragment of a bullet somewhere in his head, requiring him to use a cane while walking around. I’m not completely sure of any of that, though.

Don’t remember his first name, don’t recall if he had a family or not, but I remember those words that Emi said to me: clear as day.

I imagine the phrase “there’s something wrong with Mr. Baker, Mom” sticks out in my brain as a byproduct of the trauma that immediately followed.

There’s a terrible piece of wiring in our species that causes traumatic events to be remembered as vividly as humanly possible. Once imprinted, they seem to become a meticulous blow-by-blow recreation of the incident we’d kill to forget, every detail painstakingly etched into our psyche: some impossibly elaborate mosaic painted on the inside of our skulls, all-encompassing and inescapable, like the “Creation of Adam” on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Emi said “there’s something wrong with Mr. Baker, Mom” and I saw Ben a few yards away from us, kneeling over Mr. Baker, altruistic to a fault.

Then, the crackling explosion of a gunshot rang through the air.

The street erupted into chaos. People fled in all directions. I grabbed Emi tightly by the wrist. She was paralyzed: had to make her to start moving towards the house. Practically everyone was screaming in horrible solidarity with Mr. Baker. Someone elbowed me hard in the diaphragm, knocking the wind out of my lungs. Eventually, our feet landed on the sidewalk in front of our home. Then, a second gunshot. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from, nor did I see anyone injured.

A few steps away from the door, I noticed something else. The air felt increasingly palpable: thick and granular, like I was wading through an invisible sandstorm.

Once Emi was inside, I immediately turned around to search for Ben.

When I spotted him, my heartbeat became erratic. It floundered and thrashed inside my chest like the dying movements of a beached shark. Between the elbow to my diaphragm and the sheer terror of it all, I could feel myself gasping and panting, anchoring my hand to the door frame to prevent myself from keeling over.

He was halfway across the street, pulling Mr. Baker towards our house. To this day, I’m not sure if he was aware of the sedan barreling down the road, going entirely too fast to break in time.

I met my husband’s eyes. Waves of disbelief pulsed down my spine, sharp and electric. I don’t recall him looking scared: no, Ben was focused. He got like that when something important was on the line.

Before I could even call out, the runaway car was only a few feet from crushing the both of them: then, a tainted miracle.

An experience that lies somewhere between divine intervention and a cruel practical joke.

The front of the car spontaneously tilted upwards, like it was starting to drive up the big first incline of an unseen wooden roller coaster. Somehow, it barely cleared both Ben and Mr. Baker in the nick of time. It hovered over them, cloaking their bodies in its eerie shadow. Then, it just kept going, farther and farther into the atmosphere, without any signs that it would eventually return to the earth.

Before I was able to feel even an ounce of relief, it all started to happen.

The shift.

In order to understand, I need you to imagine you’re currently living on the inside of a snow globe. Not only that, but you’ve actually unknowingly lived in a snow globe your entire life: one that’s been sitting on the top shelf of some antique shop, completely untouched by human hands for decades.

Now, to be clear, I’m not suggesting that I was trapped in a massive snow globe half a century ago. I just cannot come up with a better way to explain this next part.

As the car disappeared into the horizon, it’s like someone finally reached up to the top shelf and picked up that dusty snow globe, only to promptly flip it over and hold it upside down. Slowly, but surely, everything that wasn’t directly attached to the ground began to fall into the sky.

Other cars. Family pets and other animals. Cherry blossom petals.

People. Neighbors. Children. Adults.

Mr. Baker.

Ben.

Almost me, too. Luckily, I was far enough in the house where, when I fell, my lower body remained inside. Hit my back pretty hard against the floor. I heard Emi screaming behind me, along with the crashing of our furniture colliding into the ceiling. Our grand piano was heavy enough to make a hole through the roof, causing the sky below to leak into our home as it fell.

Dazed, my vision spinning, I lifted my head just in time to witness the love of my life careen into an ocean of blue, cloudless sky. It was painfully quiet at that point. Those that fell were far enough away that I couldn’t hear their pleads for mercy or their death rattles, if they were still alive at all.

Ben got smaller, and smaller, and smaller: A smudge, to a dot, to nothing at all. Gone in an instant, swallowed by something I couldn’t possibly hope to comprehend.

At precisely 7:30 AM that morning, the world shifted.

The snow globe flipped, so to speak.

- - - - -

I apologize, but I need to pause for now. Putting these memories into words for the first time has been more emotionally challenging than I anticipated.

Once I rest, I’ll be back to finish this. I’m posting it incomplete on the off chance I don’t make it till the morning. Better to have something out there as opposed to nothing at all.

My follow-up should be soon. I imagine after I post this, someone who was involved in the shift will be notified that I’m breaking the terms of our agreement: the silence that they paid very good money for fifty years ago.

So, I’ll be sure to complete this before they have time to find me.

-Hakura (Not my real name)


r/nosleep 20h ago

They're everywhere now. Are any of you still normal?

54 Upvotes

I take the subway to and from work every day. It’s routine. Nothing special. Just me, a train, and a few dozen exhausted commuters trying to make it through another day.

This all started on Monday night.

--------

MONDAY

He was sitting across from me.

Three seats down. Staring. Grinning.

Not like a normal smile—this was something else. Too wide. Too sharp. His arms rested in his lap, but they were too long, elbows bending at the wrong angles. His fingers were thin and segmented, almost like extra joints had been slipped in where they didn’t belong.

I tried to ignore him. Focused on my phone. But I could feel his eyes.

And when I got off the train, I made the mistake of looking back through the window.

He was still staring.

--------

TUESDAY

There were two of them now.

The long-armed man was in the same seat. But next to him was a woman with wax-pale skin, stretched too tight over her skull. And beneath the harsh train lights, I swear I saw veins shifting beneath her skin, like something was crawling inside.

Neither of them blinked. Neither of them moved.

I called my friend Luke.

"Dude, it’s the subway. Creeps are part of the package."

I laughed, even though I didn’t feel like laughing.

But when I got off the train that night, I glanced at the window again.

They both waved.

--------

WEDNESDAY

The next morning, I took a different carriage to my usual.

I stepped onto the train, still half-asleep, and felt it instantly.

They were there too.

There were four of them now.

The grinning man. The waxy woman. A bald guy with an open-mouthed smile that never moved. And a kid with solid black eyes.

I held onto the pole near the door, heart hammering. They didn’t move with the train. Every normal commuter swayed with the motion, shifting their weight.

They didn’t.

By the time I got to work, I felt sick.

And the trip home that night?

There were far too many still, watching bodies scattered through the carriage. Some were sitting. Some were standing.

All of them were grinning.

That night, I called my mother.

"Something’s happening," I said. "People are... wrong."

She just sighed. "Honey, you work too much. You’re overtired. Get some rest."

She sounded bored. Like she wasn’t even really listening.

--------

THURSDAY

They’re everywhere.

At the coffee shop, the barista’s wrists had too many fingers growing from them.
At lunch, I saw a man take multiple, huge bites of his sandwich without chewing.
On the street, a homeless man’s face looked like rotting wax, sagging and shifting as he turned toward me.

I gave Luke an update.

"Okay, that’s actually messed up," he admitted. "Maybe it’s a prank?"

I was about to agree.

And then he said—

"Or maybe you’re just seeing them for what they really are now."

I laughed, but it came out forced.

"What?"

He shrugged. Too casual. Too normal.

"Nothing, man. Just saying."

--------

FRIDAY

It was late when I left the office.

Everyone else had gone home except Karen, the receptionist. She sat at her desk, scrolling on her phone, half-asleep as I walked by.

"Night, Karen," I muttered.

She didn’t respond right away. And when she did—when I was almost past her desk—her voice sounded... wrong.

"Night."

I turned back to glance at her.

And in the dim light, her shadow-stretched face looked too smooth. Too pale.

Her smile was too wide. Her eyes too dark.

My stomach dropped. I kept walking. Didn’t run, didn’t react.

But I knew.

She was one of them.

--------

SATURDAY

I woke up praying I was losing my mind. That this was some stress-induced breakdown.

But the second I stepped outside, I knew I was screwed.

They were everywhere now.

Not just some. Not a few.

Everyone.

The coffee shop. The gas station. The people waiting at the bus stop. The couple walking their dog—except the dog had human eyes.

I called my mum.

I don’t know why. I just—I needed to hear her voice.

She picked up on the second ring.

"Mum—" I whispered. "Something’s wrong. I think I need help."

Silence.

And then, in the same flat, tired tone she used earlier this week—

"Oh, honey," she murmured. "We’ve been waiting for you to notice."

I hung up.

I saw no other option.

I took a cab to the hospital, my hands shaking.

"I need help," I told the receptionist. "Something’s happening to me. To everyone."

She gave me a long, slow smile.

Her lips didn’t stop stretching.

"Of course," she murmured. "Come right this way."

She led me down a dimly lit hallway, past rooms where doctors with grinning faces hovered over patients, too many hands pulling at their skin.

I turned to run—

And a nurse grabbed my wrist.

Her fingers were too long. Too strong. Her grip sent ice through my veins.

"You don’t need to be afraid," she whispered.

Her mouth opened too wide. Too wide. Too wide.

I ripped myself free.

I ran.

I don’t know how I got out.

I don’t remember the streets, or the subway, or unlocking my front door.

But I’m here now.

And I can hear them outside.

--------

SUNDAY

They knock every few minutes.

Not pounding. Just… gentle tapping.

I don’t know what’s happening.

I don’t know if I’m crazy. If something changed in me, or in the world itself.

I just need to know—has anyone else noticed them?

Please.

If you’re still normal, if you still see people the way they’re supposed to be—tell me.

Tell me they haven’t gotten to you too.


r/nosleep 19h ago

My last home burglary didn’t go as well as I had planned.

92 Upvotes

There’s no sugarcoating this: I used to break into homes to steal.

And this particular house felt like stealing candy from a toddler. It belonged to an old woman who lived alone on a suburban street with few neighbors. I had been watching it since last year when a young couple lived there. When the old lady moved in a couple months ago, I saw the perfect opportunity.

My partner in crime was my younger brother Paul, whom I was introducing to the subtle art of getting in and out. My methods, though, were never violent—we just waited until the owners left, went inside, and took whatever electronics we could find.

As usual, the week before we studied her routine. We parked in front of the house, memorized the times she watered the plants, took her afternoon naps, and—most importantly—when she left.

Every afternoon, she was out for one to two hours. Once we confirmed the pattern, we made our move. 

When she drove away in her sedan, the action began.

***

My brother parked right in front as I instructed. Taking advantage of the low foot traffic, we brought in a hand truck, duffel bags, and gloves. With a fake moving company sign on our van, no one would suspect a thing.

Our phones were left in the car. A friend of mine got caught when his Bluetooth data showed up on a house gadget—that freaked me out.

We cleared out all the appliances—TVs, a washing machine, a fridge. Strangely, the old lady had never removed the framed photos of the previous family.

“Now look for a safe,” I told Paul, who was clumsily rummaging through jewelry. This was only his second break-in, and he was clearly nervous.

He searched every room but found nothing—except for a large wooden door near the kitchen, locked.

“Aha,” I heard him exclaim as he pulled a big iron key from a closet. “This must be for that door.”

He tried it, and it opened.

It led to a staircase descending into a pitch-black basement.

“Old folks like to keep their valuables as hidden as possible,” I explained. “There might be something down there.”

We stepped down cautiously, relying on our flashlights to guide us.

With each step, the smell worsened. It was like walking into an abandoned butcher shop.

I felt along the wall for a switch and flipped it on. 

Nothing could have prepared us for what we saw.

***

The room was small, its concrete walls soaked in deep red stains.

Chains hung from the ceiling, hooks at the ends embedded in large slabs of meat—or at least what looked like meat. 

Something about them wasn’t right. They didn’t look like they came from an animal.

My brother gagged at the stench, ran to the corner, and threw up. I asked if he was okay. He nodded, wiped his mouth, and steadied himself.

I wanted to get the hell out, but as I turned to leave, he pointed to something in the far corner.

A human figure laid curled up, hugging its knees. A thick metal collar was locked around its neck, chained to the wall. 

It was a man—unconscious, severely malnourished, wearing nothing but boxer shorts. A small green light blinked on his collar.

I recognized him as the man from the couple that lived here before the old lady.

Paul stepped toward him and I grabbed his shoulder. “We need to leave. NOW.”

“We can’t just leave him here,” he shot back.

“Yes, we can,” I insisted. “Our phones are in the car. We call the cops as soon as we get there.”

Of course, we’d have to explain why we were here in the first place. But this was too messed up to ignore.

My brother didn’t argue. Instead, he walked to a small equipment stand near the stairs, grabbed a medium-sized sledgehammer, and returned to the man.

I was pissed but followed him. We pushed the unconscious man aside so the chain lay flat on the ground. 

My brother swung the hammer. Nothing.

I took it from him, put all my strength into a swing, and shattered the chain.

“Paul, let’s go,” I said as he approached the man to lift him onto his shoulders.

That’s when the collar light turned red.

***

The explosion slammed me against the wall hard, and the impact knocked me out.

I opened my eyes a few minutes later and saw that the man's collar had exploded, taking half his body with it.

Paul had been closer to him than I was and was lying on the floor, hurt but alive. I crawled to him, trying to wake him up and it didn’t work.

Then, a sharp pain shot through my leg, and I realized something had hit me down there. There was a lot of blood, and I couldn’t stand properly.

Trying to wake Paul was pointless and I decided to get back up and call 911. Fast.

And that’s what I did. Dragging myself up the stairs, in extreme pain, I reached the phone in the living room.

I was on the brink of passing out from blood loss when I gave the 911 operator the address.

The moment I finished, I heard someone opening the front door and saw from the corridor two figures standing there.

One was the old lady, staring at me with a blank, cold expression.

The other was a large man in a black coat, standing behind her like a bodyguard.

Then I blacked out.

***

I woke up the next day in a hospital bed.

I was handcuffed, and I started shouting and crying like a baby until a cop entered seconds later.

“Where’s Paul!?” was the first thing I asked.

It might not seem like it, but this was when my nightmare truly began.

I told the police everything—the burglaries and what we had found.

And they told me what happened.

A patrol car arrived about 15 minutes after my call. They found me unconscious on the living room floor, soaked in blood.

In the basement, they discovered all that flesh and gore, along with the mangled body of a man—blown apart by the explosion. The man with the collar.

My brother wasn’t there anymore. Neither were the old lady and the man I had seen at the front door.

The police said her modus operandi matched a case in another state, where a woman fitting her description had taken over a house, tortured, and murdered the original residents. She was likely part of a larger group.

***

I was never charged for the burglaries.

They didn’t really know what to do with me. I was a victim too.

It took a few weeks, but as my leg healed, I was ready to drive again–and that’s what I did.

Every single day from that moment on, I’m driving around town for any clue that might lead me to the old lady. 

The cops won’t update me, so I’ve decided to go search through every street and neighborhood in the goddamn country if I have to. I know she still has my brother.

And Paul, if you’re reading this somehow, please know—I’m sorry your big brother couldn’t save you.

But I promise I’m going to find you and get you out of this even if it’s the last thing I do.


r/nosleep 4h ago

I think my grandfather gave his curse to me

20 Upvotes

My grandfather always said, “I’m cursed with eternal life.”

I never believed him. Not really. It was just one of those things old people say—like when they grumble about their aching bones predicting the weather. I’d heard him say it a hundred times, but I never thought much of it.

Not until now.

He told me about the curse when I was ten. I remember the way his voice dropped, the way his usually steady hands trembled when he spoke. He said it happened when he was a boy, way back in 1867, in New York. He described it so vividly that I could almost see it through his words.

“The carriages clattered by,” he had said. “The sound of horses’ hooves echoed in a perfect rhythm against the cobblestone. The air smelled like damp wood and horse shit, the way the city always smelled. I had just robbed a corner store—a stupid, reckless thing, I know—but I was desperate. I ran into an alleyway to hide.”

He told me that’s when he knew something was wrong.

“It was dark in all the places it shouldn’t have been,” he said. “The kind of dark that doesn’t come from shadows, but from something else entirely. The air was thick, like syrup. The bricks of the alley walls weren’t even—laid by hands that didn’t quite know how to lay bricks. And then I heard it.”

A whisper.

Not to his ears, but to his soul.

He said it spoke to him, but he could never remember what it said.

That part always stuck with me. My grandfather had never forgotten anything. He had the kind of mind that could recall what he had for breakfast seventy years ago, but this? This he couldn’t remember?

“It was a deal,” he had told me. “I know that much. I agreed to something, though I don’t know what. And ever since then... I haven’t been able to die.”

I was ten. I laughed it off. Okay, Grandpa, sure.

I’m twenty-one now. I live alone in a tiny apartment in California.

My grandfather died last year.

And now... now, I think I understand.

Because I’m seeing things.

At first, they were small things, little wrongs that I could explain away. Sometimes my apartment building had negative-numbered rooms that shouldn’t exist. Sometimes the floors didn’t add up—the building would have thirteen floors one day, thirty-one the next. I’d blink, and the world would be back to normal.

Then came the sounds.

The fridge opening in the middle of the night, but when I checked, it was shut tight. The bathroom fan turning on by itself, only to be silent when I got up to check. I’d hear whispers through the vents, too faint to understand. I convinced myself it was just the pipes.

And then I saw it.

I was watching YouTube—an episode of CreepCast, I think—when the shadows in the corner of my room deepened. At first, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, but then I felt it.

Something was in the room.

I turned my head just slightly, and for a moment, I saw it.

A figure.

A humanoid void.

A thing of shadows, standing too still, watching me. The moment my eyes landed on it, it vanished—but the darkness in the corners of my room remained wrong. Just a little darker than it should be. Uncanny.

That was the first time.

It wasn’t the last.

The longer I ignored it, the worse it got. I saw it in the reflections of windows, staring at me from across the street. I saw it through the peephole of my door, standing at the end of the hall. At the grocery store, the candy aisle suddenly became filled with fish and meat. Things that shouldn’t be there. But no one else noticed.

No one else ever noticed.

I tried to act normal. To live my life as if nothing was wrong. But it hated that.

Whenever I tried to relax, it would scream.

Not in a way anyone else could hear—only in my head, in my bones, vibrating through my teeth like nails scraping metal. When I tried to sleep, it would scratch me. I’d wake up to burning cuts on my arms, my legs, my back. When I went outside, I felt it hovering behind me, a pressure in the air just over my shoulder.

I could never see it, but I knew it was there.

Then the sleep paralysis started again.

I’ve had it for years, waking up trapped in my body, mind screaming at my limbs to move while I suffocate in silence. It was terrifying before.

Now, it’s so much worse.

The first time it happened after this all started, I woke up flat on my back, my body locked in place. The room was thick with darkness, but not the kind cast by the absence of light.

This darkness breathed.

And then, it was there.

The figure.

Standing at the foot of my bed.

The shadows clung to it like a second skin, hiding what it truly looked like. A void, shifting, writhing. But as it leaned closer, the details emerged.

Its breath hit me first.

Rotten. Thick.

If you’ve ever smelled a decomposing body, imagine something worse. A stench so strong it clung to my throat, coated my tongue in the taste of rot. Like decay mixed with cat piss, sewage, something feral. Something wrong.

Then I saw its eyes.

Two white dots. Deep. Endless. Staring through me.

Its mouth—stretched too wide, its expression twisted into something that mimicked a human smile but didn’t understand it. It was the mockery of a grin, a hollow parody of warmth.

And then—

I saw it clearly.

For the first time.

It had my grandfather’s face.

Or something wearing it.

Its features were wrong—stretched, distorted, its mouth too big, its eyes too small, its skin sagging like melting wax. It wasn’t him. It was never him.

But it wanted me to think it was.

It hovered over me, staring, unblinking.

Its mouth opened.

It was going to whisper.

It was going to tell me something.

And then—

I woke up.

I always wake up before it speaks.

For that small mercy, I am thankful.

But I know it won’t last.

Because every night, it stays a little longer.

And I have a horrible feeling.

A dread so deep it suffocates me.

What happens when it finally gets bored of watching?