The Harness of the Empty Hours

The clock on my nightstand said 3:47 AM, which was normal for me these days. Since the mill shut down, my nights had become a gray blur of insomnia and bad decisions. The pills the clinic gave me—Doxepin, I think—they worked for a while, but the dreams broke through. In the dreams, I was always drowning in a room full of dry air.

Then last Thursday, I woke up at 3:47 PM, not AM. That was new. My curtains were thick, but a single blade of light cut across the ceiling, and hanging from that ceiling was a woman.

She was upside down, suspended by heavy iron chains that ran from her wrists and ankles to bolts in the four corners of my room. The bolts had not been there the day before. I checked—I had painted this room myself, and I would have noticed. Her head hung low, her mouth open, inches from mine. I could taste her breath—a faint, moist nothing, like the air inside a tomb. Her skin was the color of old parchment, mottled with dark patches, and her hair was thin, spread like webs across the floor. A leather band covered her eyes, cinched tight around her skull, and beneath the band, I saw the faint outline of stitches—the kind you’d use to sew a wound closed.

I did not move. I did not scream. I only thought: ‘Is she dead?’ And I hoped so. Because if she was dead, then this was just a hallucination, a product of my fried nerves. But if she was alive, then she was breathing into me, pushing her stale air into my lungs, and that was worse.

Her body was encased in a suit of dull, gray rubber—the kind worn by deep-sea divers, but older, cracked, with thin metallic filaments woven into the fabric. The chains were not attached to the suit; they passed through small grommets at the cuffs, and as she swayed gently, the chains groaned. I counted the links. There were forty-two on the wrist chain, a number that felt important, though I didn’t know why.

I spent a long time staring at her. I had three reasons. First, she seemed to know me intimately. The way her mouth was positioned over mine—not quite touching, but perfectly aligned—suggested she had been there before, many times, in my sleep. Second, she was dead, or so I believed, and yet she was present in my waking life, which made her a mystery I had to solve. Third, because I was terrified that if I looked away, she would be gone, and I would be left with nothing but the grinning void that had been gnawing at my sanity for months.

I noticed the intricate stitching on the leather band, the way it formed runes that my eyes skittered over, refusing to decode. The rubber suit emitted a faint smell of ozone and brine, like a beach after a storm. And beneath that, a whisper of rot, sweet and cloying.

Then I heard it—a low, rhythmic sound, not from her, but from the walls. It was like a heartbeat, but slowed to half its natural pace, and it came from all directions at once. My own heart tried to sync with it, and I forced myself to breathe against the pull.

‘You are not dreaming,’ a voice said. It came from no speaker, but from inside my skull, as if the thought had always been there. ‘You are finally awake.’

I blinked. The woman did not move, but her lips twitched, as if she were about to speak—or had just finished. I tried to rise, but my body was as heavy as stone. The chains above me began to tighten, one by one, groaning like old bones. The woman ascended, inch by inch, her mouth leaving mine. And as she rose, I saw the rest of her—the suit was split at the side, revealing a long, black slit where a wound should be, but there was no blood, only a darkness that seemed to drink the light.

‘You kept me waiting,’ the voice continued. ‘You thought the pills would stop me, but they only loosened the latch. Now the door is open, and you must pay the toll.’

The chains stopped. She was now suspended at the center of the ceiling, her arms and legs spread like a star. The leather band began to unstitch itself, thread by thread, and when it fell away, I saw her eyes—milky white, no pupils, but they still seemed to see me. She smiled, and her teeth were black, filed to points.

I tried to scream, but my throat was filled with water that had not been there a second before. I was drowning in my own bedroom, the air turned to liquid, and she descended again, faster now, her mouth finding mine. This time, she bit. Her teeth sank into my lower lip, and I tasted rust and copper. She drank, and with each pull, I felt my own life seeping away, but I was no longer afraid. I was relieved. Because if she was feeding, then she was not dead, and if she was not dead, then I was not insane—I was merely prey.

The room spun. The heartbeat in the walls slowed further, as if it were falling asleep. And as darkness closed in, I saw her fully—the rubber suit, the chains, the stitched flesh—and I understood. She was not a person. She was a harness, worn by something else, something that rode her like a mount and now, at last, had found a new rider.

The last thing I saw was the ceiling, where the bolts were gone, replaced by four empty holes that wept a clear, viscous fluid. And I heard the voice again, soft as a lullaby: ‘You will not wake up now. You will wake up down here, with me, forever.’

When I woke again, it was 16:00. The sun gave a sickly orange glow through my curtains. The woman was gone. The bolts were gone. But the holes remained, and in each one, a single black thread was embedded, like the residue of a torn seam. My lip was swollen, and when I touched it, two small punctures remained, weeping a thin, clear fluid.

I have not slept since. I have not taken my pills. I have burned the curtains. But at night, I hear the chains moving in the attic, and the slow, steady heartbeat in the walls, and I know that she is waiting. She knows my name now. And she is patient.

The funniest thing is, the doctor asks me why I’m so tired. I just smile and say, ‘I have a new roommate.’

But I don’t tell him the rest. I don’t tell him that every time I close my eyes, I see her mouth, open and waiting, and I feel the gentle pull of my own breath leaving me, stolen to feed the harness. I don’t tell him that I’ve begun to see the runes in the grain of my wooden floor, and they are not gibberish—they are instructions.

And tonight, at 3:47, I will follow them. I will find the door she came through. And I will open it.

After all, she probably knows me better than I know her. It’s only polite to introduce myself.