For most of his life, Daniel Thorne had managed to keep the darkness at bay. Like many, he buried his anxieties under the mundane rhythms of everyday life. He hid behind the comfort of his routines—his job at a small accounting firm, his modest apartment with pale yellow walls, and the occasional drink with friends who spoke of nothing deeper than sports scores and traffic complaints.
But, as with all things buried, the darkness has a way of creeping back.
Daniel had always been afraid of sleep. As a child, the fear had been simple—the typical monsters under the bed or shadows in the closet. But as he grew older, it morphed into something far more insidious. Sleep was a surrender. Sleep was vulnerability. In sleep, he was powerless. And in sleep, the dreams came.
It had been years since the dreams started again. They came in waves, arriving in his mind uninvited, with no explanation or pattern. Sometimes they were brief, nothing more than a flash of unease before he woke up, gasping in the dark. But other nights… other nights, they felt like they lasted for hours—whole lifetimes spent in the claustrophobic grip of some unseen force, pulling him into the depths of his mind.
The worst part wasn't the dreams themselves—it was what followed.
July 10th
The day felt like any other—gray skies, the hum of office lights, the quiet drone of his coworkers tapping away at their keyboards. Daniel had managed to sleep for a full five hours the night before, a minor victory. Yet, there was a weight in his chest, a suffocating pressure that seemed to grow throughout the day. By noon, it was unbearable.
He excused himself from work early, mumbling something about a headache, and took the subway home, fighting the nausea that twisted his stomach with every rattling stop. His apartment felt strangely cold when he entered, despite the sweltering July heat outside. He closed the blinds and sank into the worn couch, resting his head in his hands.
It started as a whisper—so quiet he wasn't sure he heard it at first.
Daniel.
The voice was soft, almost soothing, but it sent a chill down his spine. He lifted his head, scanning the room. Empty. He was alone.
His phone buzzed on the table, snapping him out of his trance. Just a message from a coworker, something about the next day's meeting. But the unease lingered. He shook his head and headed to the bathroom, splashing cold water on his face.
When he looked up into the mirror, his reflection didn't move.
For a split second—just a heartbeat of time—his reflection stared back at him, motionless. Its eyes were wide, unblinking, and its mouth was open slightly, as if it was gasping for air. Then, it moved again, perfectly in sync with him.
Daniel stumbled back, his heart pounding in his chest. His reflection blinked, looking just as startled as he felt. For a moment, he thought it was a trick of the light, his tired brain playing games with him. But as he backed out of the bathroom, he felt that pressure again—crushing, suffocating.
You can't run.
July 11th
The dreams came that night.
They began the way they always did, with Daniel standing on the edge of a vast, dark chasm. There were no stars in the sky, no light, no sense of where the ground began or ended. Just him and the abyss below. He could hear whispers, not unlike the voice from the day before, swirling around him, calling his name in tones that shifted from soft to malicious, over and over.
And then, he fell.
The sensation of falling was endless. Time stretched, and the voices grew louder as he plunged deeper into the void. He could feel them crawling across his skin—cold, invisible hands dragging him down, down into the depths of something he couldn't name.
This was the moment the fear always hit—the primal, unshakeable fear of the unknown. It wrapped itself around his throat like a noose, tightening until he couldn't breathe. His mind screamed for it to stop, but there was no waking up. Not yet.
As he fell deeper, he caught glimpses of something waiting below. A shape—indescribable, shifting, and pulsating like a living shadow. It wasn't human. It wasn't anything he could comprehend. It had eyes, or maybe mouths, or maybe both. But they were wrong. Twisted, hungry things that saw right through him, gnawing at his very existence.
When he finally jolted awake, drenched in sweat, the voice followed him out of the dream.
I'm waiting.
July 12th
Daniel didn't sleep at all that night. He couldn't. Every time he closed his eyes, he felt it—the presence. He didn't need to dream anymore to know it was there, lurking at the edge of his consciousness, waiting for him to slip.
He dragged himself through the day in a fog, his limbs heavy, his thoughts muddled. His coworkers noticed the dark circles under his eyes, but no one said anything. They had stopped asking how he was months ago.
By evening, the pressure in his chest had returned, but now it was worse. It felt like something was sitting on his ribs, pressing down with invisible hands, trying to crack him open. He could barely breathe.
He lay on his couch, staring up at the ceiling, watching the shadows grow longer as the sun dipped below the horizon. The whispering started again.
Daniel.
It wasn't his imagination this time. The voice was clearer, sharper. It came from the dark corner of the room, where the shadows had pooled into an unnatural, inky blackness. He tried to sit up, but the pressure on his chest pinned him down.
You know what's coming.
His hands trembled as he pushed himself off the couch, moving toward the light switch. The room seemed to stretch as he walked, the distance between him and the switch growing longer and longer. His heart raced, pounding so hard he thought his ribs would crack.
Just as his fingertips grazed the switch, the whispering stopped. The shadows in the corner rippled, and for a moment, he saw something move. It was small, almost imperceptible, but it was there—crawling, skittering just out of sight.
When the lights flicked on, the room was empty.
But Daniel knew he wasn't alone anymore.
July 14th
He hadn't slept in three days.
His mind was unraveling. The lines between reality and nightmare had blurred beyond recognition, and he couldn't tell where the waking world ended and the dreams began. The voice was always there now—whispering, laughing, taunting him.
He couldn't escape it.
The apartment felt like a prison, the walls closing in tighter every time he moved. Shadows followed him everywhere, flickering at the edges of his vision, darting away whenever he turned his head. He knew what they were now.
They were it.
The thing from his dreams had crossed over. Somehow, it had followed him into the waking world, and it was growing stronger. He could feel it gnawing at his thoughts, worming its way deeper into his psyche, feeding off his fear.
Stop fighting, Daniel.
The voice was louder now, more insistent. It spoke directly into his mind, bypassing the need for sound altogether. It felt like an invasion—a violation of his very self. He couldn't shut it out. He couldn't hide.
By the time night fell, Daniel had given up. His body was too exhausted to keep moving, and his mind too fractured to form a coherent thought. He sat on the edge of his bed, staring into the dark, waiting.
The shadows were back, swirling at the foot of the bed like liquid smoke. He didn't move. He couldn't.
The pressure on his chest returned, harder than ever before. He gasped for air, but his lungs wouldn't expand. It felt like a hand—a real, tangible hand—was gripping his throat, squeezing tighter and tighter.
His vision blurred as he struggled to breathe, his body convulsing as the grip around his neck tightened. The shadows grew larger, swelling to fill the entire room.
And then, through the suffocating darkness, it came.
The figure from his dreams.
No longer an abstract presence, it stood before him—tall, twisted, and wrong in every conceivable way. Its form shifted constantly, never settling on one shape, its eyes burning with a malevolent hunger. The thing leaned in close, its mouth—or what might have been a mouth—hovering inches from Daniel's face.
It whispered.
Now, Daniel. Now you're mine.
July 15th
They found his body the next morning.
Daniel was lying on his bed, eyes wide open, mouth frozen in a silent scream. His hands were clenched into fists, nails dug so deep into his palms that they had drawn blood. The room was cold, unnaturally so, and despite the heat outside, there was a thin layer of frost on the window.
There were no signs of a struggle, no forced entry, no cause of death that the coroner could determine.
But the shadows in the room seemed darker than they should have been.
And if you listened closely—late at night, when the world was quiet and still—you could almost hear the faintest whisper echoing in the corners.
"Daniel."