The Insomniac’s Visitor

The night was thick with the hum of the old fridge and the occasional drip from a leaky faucet. I’d been crashing on my aunt’s pull-out couch since the eviction notice, the one that smelled of mothballs and stale potpourri. The window unit rattled, spitting cold air, and the streetlamp outside cast a jaundiced glow across the peeling wallpaper. My Glock 19 sat on the end table, a familiar weight in this strange place, its tritium sights a faint green dot in the dark.

I’d learned to sleep in fits, my ears tuned to the building’s groans—the settling of pipes, the creak of loose floorboards in the hallway. That night was no different. I drifted off to a half-sleep, the kind that leaves you feeling like you’ve been running in place. At around 3 AM, I woke with a start, my heart doing that weird stutter. I lit a cigarette, the smoke curling toward the window, and watched the orange tip dance in the reflection. When I finished, I stubbed it out and rolled onto my side, facing the couch’s scratchy back.

Then came the feeling—a prickle at the back of my neck, a whisper in the static of my mind. I’m not alone. I rolled onto my back, my eyes snapping to the window. The glass seemed to bend, the streetlight stretching into a smear of amber. My limbs turned to lead. I tried to move, to reach for the Glock, but my arm was dead weight.

My gaze fell to the foot of the couch. A figure squatted there, a silhouette darker than the room’s shadows. It was hunched, like a gargoyle, its head tilted at an unnatural angle. I couldn’t see its face, just a void that seemed to drink the light. My breath caught. I tried to scream, but my throat was locked.

The figure rose slowly, still in a crouch, its limbs moving in a way that defied anatomy—like a spider unrolling its legs. It loomed over me, blocking the window’s glow. I could smell it now: damp earth and rotting leaves, like the air after a flood. My eyes watered, but I couldn’t blink.

It leaned closer, and I heard a sound—not a voice, but a frequency that vibrated in my teeth, a hum that grew into the buzz of a fluorescent bulb about to burst. The hum resolved into words, though its form didn’t change. They seemed to originate inside my skull: ‘You see me now. You will always see me.’

A sudden crack from the end table—the Glock, sliding to the floor—broke the paralysis for a heartbeat. My fingers twitched, but the figure snapped its head toward the sound, and the weight returned tenfold. My vision tunneled. The room turned to static.

When I came to, the room was silent. The window unit hummed its usual tune. The Glock lay on the carpet, the safety still on. I scrambled for it, aimed at the shadows, but the figure was gone. Only the lingering smell of wet leaves remained.

I didn’t sleep the rest of the night. I sat against the wall, back to the corner, the pistol across my knees. The streetlight flickered, and I swore I saw a shape in the window’s reflection—a crouching form that vanished when I turned my head.

Dawn came, and with it, the sounds of the city waking. I packed my things, but I didn’t leave. Every night since, I sleep with the lights on, the blinds shut. But the feeling never goes away. Sometimes, in the quietest hour, I catch a glimpse of that crouched shape in my peripheral vision, always there, waiting. The insomniac’s visitor never really leaves.