The Static Between Sleep

My name is Leo, and I’m nineteen, living in a basement suite in Edmonton, Alberta. It’s a cramped, damp place with a single window that looks out onto a forgotten alley, and the fluorescent light in the bathroom flickers with a dying hum. I’ve always been a light sleeper, so when I first woke to that shape hovering over my bed, I blamed it on a half-remembered nightmare. It was a black, starless void against the grey of my ceiling, and it lasted only a heartbeat before it was gone, leaving me gasping and drenched in cold sweat. That was three months ago. I’ve since learned to sleep with the lights on, a cheap lamp on my nightstand, and I’ve convinced myself it’s just my anxiety playing tricks.

But last Tuesday, I woke to find the bathroom door slightly ajar, and something stood in the dark threshold. It was taller than any man, a silhouette without edges, and it seemed to be waiting. I froze, my heart hammering, but when I blinked, the door was closed again, the light from my lamp pooling on the floor. I didn’t sleep after that, and the next day I told my roommate, Sam, about it. He laughed, saying it was probably a coat rack, but that night, after we’d watched a horror movie, he insisted on turning off all the lights and closing my door “for my own good.” I lay in the pitch black, my breath shallow, and I heard it—a long, shuddering exhale right next to my ear, like a tire leaking air. It wasn’t a scream, but it was hungry. Instead of screaming, I laughed, a nervous, hollow sound, because I thought I was finally losing it.

That laugh seemed to be a signal. Since then, the encounters have escalated. I’ll wake to find the pillow beside me dented, as if someone had been lying there. The bathroom mirror will be fogged up when I haven’t showered. And this morning, I found a single, perfect line of salt on my windowsill—a ritual I’ve never performed, but one I know from a folklore blog I read. The thing, whatever it is, is learning. It’s not just appearing; it’s mimicking my habits, my fears. It’s trying to understand how to break me.

My name is Leo, and I don’t sleep anymore. I stay up with every light in the suite blazing, until the sun creeps through the grimy window. But just now, as I was writing this, the fluorescent bulb in the bathroom flickered once, and then twice, and then it held a steady, cold light. And I see, in the reflection of the mirror, a shape that is almost me, but not quite. It’s wearing my face, but the eyes are wrong—they’re bottomless pits that seem to breathe. It’s not going to give me the mercy of a scare. It’s waiting for me to close my eyes, to believe I’m safe again. And I’m terrified, because I don’t know if I’ll ever wake up again.