I woke up at night, when death had forgotten me. My eyes were open – but I did not see the light. The ceiling above me pulsed like raw meat. And in the corner, where silence once lived, something was echoing my own breath.
I wanted to scream, but there were fingers in my mouth. Strange ones.
My body lay still, as if preparing for a confession. But inside my chest, something non-cardiac was knocking – if a heart is even capable of whispering instead of beating.
“Do not get up,” said a voice that had no throat. “You did not wake up. You only stopped dying.”
I remembered every door I never locked. Every window left open in the dark hour. Every word I whispered in my sleep, believing sleep to be safe. And they – those who listened… have returned.
They laid down beneath my bed, looked through the mattress, and with their eyes, cauterized my dreams.
Now I do not sleep. I do not eat. I do not breathe without permission.
My body is not my own anymore. It is a vessel.
And my soul? It is… …still screaming somewhere in the walls, In the pipes, in the pillows, but I have no ears to hear it.
And only the dawn brings not light, But another night – the one in which even ghosts whisper: “Turn back. It is too deep here.”