The Paper Slip

It was a Friday night when I trudged back to my dorm, the hallway lights flickering like a dying heartbeat. My roommate, Jake, had left for the weekend, leaving the room to me, which normally felt liberating. But tonight, as I pushed open the door, a thick, unseen weight pressed against my chest. The air was stale, and the silence was too deep, as if the room itself was holding its breath. I shrugged it off, chalking it up to a long week of exams, and flicked off the lights.

I crawled into bed, the sheets cool against my skin, and closed my eyes. Minutes ticked by, but sleep wouldn’t come. An unease prickled at the back of my neck, and I forced myself to open my eyes. There, against the far wall, stood two figures. They were pitch black, solid shadows against the dimly lit room, their outlines slightly blurred as if they were made of smoke. They didn’t move, just stood there, watching me with hollow where eyes should be. My heart hammered. I blinked, and they were still there.

Fumbling for the lamp, I slapped the switch, flooding the room with harsh yellow light. The shadows vanished, leaving only the mundane clutter of my desk and books. I laughed nervously, muttering, ‘Just my imagination. Exhaustion.’ I turned off the light again, determined to sleep. But as I lay in the dark, the presence returned. This time, one figure was crouched above me, hovering on the ceiling like a spider, its hands reaching down, inches from my face, as if to touch me. The other stood by the bed, and in its hand was a small, white rectangle, like a ticket or a slip of paper.

I screamed, shooting up, and the shadows dissolved once more under the light. The rest of the night, I kept the lamp on, my eyes fixed on the ceiling, but they didn’t return. I convinced myself it was a hallucination, a trick of stress and lack of sleep. But deep down, I knew what I saw was real.

That same night, I had a dream, or maybe it wasn’t a dream at all. I woke up in the middle of the night soaked in cold sweat despite the room being stiflingly hot. The thermostat read 95 degrees, and I had three blankets piled on me, yet I shivered violently. A feverish dizziness swept over me, and I felt a crushing pressure on my chest, as if something was sitting on me. I tried to move, but my limbs were heavy as lead. Through the fog, I saw the two shadows again, but they were closer, almost merging with me. The one with the white slip brought it to my face, and I could see it clearly now—it was a train ticket, dated for the following Friday, with my name printed on it in a jagged, spidery script.

In the dream, I tried to scream, but no sound escaped. The figures began to speak in a language I didn’t understand, a low, guttural chant that vibrated through my bones. The ticket glowed with an eerie white light, and I felt a tugging sensation in my chest, as if something were being pulled from me. And then, everything went black.

I woke up on Saturday morning, gasping for air, my clothes drenched. The heat was still on full blast, but I felt a cold dread that had nothing to do with temperature. The ticket was not in my hand, but its image was burned into my mind. And there, on my desk, next to my notebooks, lay a small, white slip of paper that I had never seen before.

I’ve been sleeping with the lights on ever since, but I know they’ll come back. They always do. And that ticket, it’s a promise. A promise that next Friday, they’ll take me somewhere I don’t want to go.