Dear reader, after all, such stories usually begin with something inconspicuous, something insignificant. And so began my story, with the disappearance of the most ordinary things.
Waking up in the darkness of my bedroom, I usually expected comfort and predictability. However, today something was off. My first step towards the kitchen to make coffee marked the beginning of a strange and unexplainable saga.
The slippers that I usually took off before bed and left by the bedside were gone. “Well, it’s just absent-mindedness; I probably forgot where I put them,” I thought, trying to convince myself. But as I felt around the floor, I realized they hadn’t just casually wandered off in the nocturnal darkness.
And that’s when suspicions arose. Walking out to the kitchen, I noticed that a vase of fresh flowers was missing from the table in the living room. I glanced into the dark corner of the room as if expecting someone to be hiding there. But the silence remained impenetrable. I mixed my discontented thoughts with a tired sigh, not anticipating that this was just the beginning.
The entire day at the office felt like a mysterious fog. It wasn’t thinking about a robbery since nothing valuable had disappeared. In theory, I could have somehow lost both slippers at once, but flowers… Maybe I just don’t remember waking up at night and putting them away? I don’t understand… Work seemed insignificant compared to the inexplicable disappearance of household items. I paced between desks, trying to understand what was happening. My subconscious whispered that it was unusual, something was confusing, but I tried to ignore these premonitions.
Returning home, I hoped the house would become my fortress, but an invisible tension hung in the room, and I felt goosebumps on my skin. I remembered that moment in the morning when the slippers vanished and tried to find an explanation. But my rationality hit a wall of the unknown, and I felt that this nightmare was only just beginning.
My world became increasingly fragile with each morning, discovering that another piece of reality vanished along with some item from my home. Doubts crept into my mind, and I increasingly suspected that the answers were hidden in the darkness of the night when it seemed I was losing control over myself.
The solution was inevitable – a surveillance system. Every camera inside my apartment became a witness to this strange theater, where I was both the actor and the spectator. Night after night, I watched myself, as if through a stranger’s eyes, trying to unravel the mystery of my own insane sleepwalking.
Waking up in the morning, I began reviewing the recordings. There I was – unquestionably me, but I couldn’t notice anything strange in my sleep except for one thing: on all the cameras, a segment from 1:32 to 1:49 at night was cut out. It was a fragment where even the cameras couldn’t penetrate, as if something inside me refused to reveal its secrets. In the darkness of my soul, hid something I couldn’t see even in the most nightmarish dream.
The next morning arrived. At that very moment, when the first rays of light barely illuminated the room, I woke up, feeling the dampness of dusk. My heart pounded, not yet fully realizing the surrounding darkness. But in the dark corner of my bedroom, I noticed a shadowy figure – tall, slender, with long bony arms.
The frightening figure stood motionless, eyes fixed on me, as if conducting a detailed analysis of every thought. The fear emanated from its presence, and I felt it creeping into my soul, like icy fingers seizing me.
Suddenly breaking free from the bed, I rushed out of the room, feeling the dark gaze following me. Nausea from fear engulfed me, but I didn’t stop until I found myself outside, wearing only underwear, standing on the threshold of my apartment.
In the end, I lied and told my family that I had to leave for business and asked them to move my things to another apartment. They asked about the reason, but I never told them the truth. Since then, I often wake up at night and stare into the dark corner of the room.