The Weight of the Moth

The first time I felt it, I was eight, sleeping beside my mother in our cramped one-room apartment on the third floor of a building that smelled of boiling cabbage and mildew. My father had left us the year before, and my mother worked nights at a laundry, so I often fell asleep to the hum of the fluorescent light in the hallway, a sound that seemed to seep through the cracks of our door. That night, I woke to a pressure on my chest, as if a great weight was pressing me into the mattress. I couldn’t move, couldn’t cry out. Above me, in the faint glow of the streetlamp filtering through the curtain, I saw a shape—a woman with skin like old paper, hair that floated around her head as if underwater, and eyes that were just black pits. She didn’t look at me; she stared at the ceiling, her mouth open in a silent wail. And then she was gone, and I could breathe again.

I told my mother the next morning, but she dismissed it, saying it was a nightmare brought on by too much cheap candy. But I knew it wasn’t. I felt cold for days, and the memory of that weight lingered, a phantom ache. As I grew older, the episodes became less frequent, but they never fully stopped. Each time, it was the same: a suffocating presence, a vision of that woman, and then release. I never told anyone after my mother’s rebuff. I thought I was cursed, but I also thought it was just a part of me, like a scar.

Years later, I left that city for university—a sprawling campus in a town that prided itself on being the oldest in the country. The dormitory was a converted monastery, all stone arches and narrow windows, and it came with a library of whispered legends. Students spoke of a nun who glided through the basement with no legs, and a young woman who appeared in the reading room at 3 a.m., her eyes dripping tears of ink. I rolled my eyes at all of it, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that those stories were warnings, not entertainment. I felt watched, though I knew I was alone.

During the first semester break, I returned to my hometown to stay with my mother and my younger brother. My mother had remarried a gruff, silent man who spent his evenings in front of the television, and my brother was now a gangly teenager who mocked my city ways. The apartment had changed barely at all—the same cracked tiles, the same smell of lemons from the cleaner my mother used obsessively. I took the room I used to share with my brother, but now I had it to myself, since he had moved into the living room. I fell into bed that night, exhausted from the train ride and the weight of being home.

At 2:47 a.m., I woke to that familiar pressure. My limbs were pinned, and my lungs could only take shallow sips of air. The room was pitch black, but I could feel a presence hovering above me, a cold that seeped into my bones. I forced my eyes open, and there she was—the woman from my childhood, but sharper, more vivid. Her skin was the color of moonlight on a tombstone, her hair was a curtain of night, and her fangs were elongated needles. But her eyes were not black pits this time; they were a deep, bleeding red, and they bore into mine with a hunger that made my heart stutter. She wore a moth-eaten shroud that seemed to writhe around her. She opened her mouth, and I heard a sound that was not a voice—it was the fluttering of a thousand wings, a dry, rustling noise that filled my ears. She whispered, not to me, but around me, ‘You see me. You always see me.’ And then she descended.

I felt the pain first in my chest, as if she was clawing through my ribcage. Then, she moved, sliding off me and onto the floor, and I saw her crawl toward the door that led to my mother’s room. My brother was sleeping in the living room, right outside. I tried to scream, but only a dry wheeze escaped. I managed to turn my head, my neck muscles screaming in protest, and I saw her form flow under the crack of the door like smoke. I heard a muffled cry, then silence. The pressure lifted, and I was free, gasping and drenched in a cold sweat.

I stumbled out of bed, my legs trembling, and flung open my mother’s door. She lay in bed, her face peaceful, but her chest was not rising. The man beside her was sitting up, his eyes wide, his mouth working soundlessly. I shook my mother, but she was cold. I screamed, and the man finally found his voice, a hoarse cry that woke the neighbors. In the chaos, I saw my brother standing in the hallway, his face blank, his eyes hollow. He whispered, ‘She’s coming for us all.’ And then he collapsed.

The days that followed were a blur of police, autopsies, and accusations. The doctors said my mother died of a heart attack in her sleep, and my brother was in a catatonic state from shock. But I knew the truth. The woman had found me again, but this time, she hadn’t just wanted me—she wanted to feed on the fear, on the love, on the threads that bound us. I moved away, changed my name, tried to start over. But I know she’s still there, lurking in the corners of my new apartment, waiting for me to close my eyes. Last night, I woke to that familiar weight, and she was there, her red eyes inches from mine, her breath cold as the grave. She smiled, her fangs glinting, and whispered, ‘You brought me back. Now we can never be apart.’ I don’t know how much longer I can keep her at bay. But if you feel a weight on your chest tonight, don’t open your eyes. She might not let you wake.