For the past seven nights, you had woken at precisely 3:11 a.m.—not to any sound, but to a suffocating stillness that pressed against his chest like a weight. The air would thicken, dense and unmoving, and the shadows in his room would stretch unnaturally across the walls. That’s when it appeared.

Never through the door. Never through the window. Just… there—coiled in the darkest corner, limbs bent wrong, its twisted grin too wide, too knowing. Its eyes gleamed like damp marbles, fixed on you with a terrifying stillness, studying, waiting. You’d told yourself it wasn’t real, a side effect of poor sleep or a vivid nightmare. But last night, you found its handprint smeared across the fogged surface of your bedroom mirror.

So tonight, you decided you weren’t going to sleep.