The Weight on Monday

It began with a pressure, like the whole house had settled onto my sternum. I woke—or thought I did—to the dim green glow of my alarm clock reading 3:13 AM. The air was thick, smelling of old dust and the faint, sweet rot of the apples my grandmother had left in the fruit bowl a week ago. I tried to sit up, but a weight, invisible and immense, pressed me down. It wasn’t just on my chest; it was over my whole body, like being buried alive. I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, could barely breathe. My heart hammered, each beat a dull thud against the unyielding mass. Then, as suddenly as it came, it lifted. I gasped, sitting bolt upright, drenched in sweat. But the room was wrong. The walls were the same sage green, but the furniture was rearranged, and the window facing the street was now a brick wall.

I stumbled out of bed, my legs feeling like they were made of rubber. The hallway stretched longer than it should, and the floorboards creaked in patterns I didn’t recognize. I found myself in the kitchen, though I had no memory of walking there. The fluorescent light buzzed, casting a sickly pallor. I was making a sandwich—turkey and Swiss, my usual—but my hands moved as if on their own. A knock thudded through the house, heavy and impatient. I set the knife down, my skin prickling. Through the frosted glass of the front door, I saw a silhouette: a woman, tall, with hair in a tight bun. She was my cousin Eliza—or at least, she looked like her. But her face when I opened the door was contorted in a fury I’d never seen on her. Her right hand was gripping the doorframe, knuckles white, and her eyes were black—not just dark, but utterly void, like the liquid in a well at midnight. She opened her mouth, and a sound came out that wasn’t her voice. It was a low hum, layered with whispers, as if a crowd of people were speaking beneath the surface. ‘You let him in,’ she said, her lips moving but the words not quite syncing. ‘You repeated the name. Now he’s here.’ I tried to slam the door, but my body wouldn’t obey. I was frozen, watching her step inside, her shoes leaving wet prints on the tile. She reached out, her fingers long and cold, and touched my forehead. The touch was like ice and fire at once, and suddenly I was elsewhere.

I was in my childhood home, but twisted. The stairs led to a ceiling, the doors opened to brick. And I was not alone. A figure stood at the end of the hall—tall, thin, wrapped in a long coat that seemed to absorb light. It had no face, only a smooth, pale oval where features should be. And as it turned to me, I saw that its coat dripped with something dark and viscous, pooling on the floor. I tried to run, but the ground was sticky, holding me. The figure’s head tilted, and a voice issued from the blank expanse of its face, a voice that sounded like my own, but older, wearier. ‘You brought me back when you wrote of me. You gave me weight. Now you must carry it.’ The weight returned, pressing me into the floor, my face against the cold, damp boards. I couldn’t breathe. I felt my ribs creak, my lungs compress. And then I woke up—really woke up—gasping on my bedroom floor, the mattress tipped over, the sheets twisted around my legs. Sunlight was streaming through the window, normal and bright. My phone was buzzing with notifications. But on my bedside table, there was a wet footprint. Small, like from a shoe, but the toes were longer than any human’s.

Since that night, the weight has returned at odd hours. Not always at 3:13 AM. Sometimes in the middle of a work call, or while I’m brushing my teeth. And when it happens, I see him—the faceless man—standing just at the edge of my vision. The other day, I found a photo on my phone that I never took. It was a picture of my reflection in the hallway mirror, but my eyes were black, and there was a smile on my face that wasn’t mine. The worst part? I called my cousin Eliza, the real one, and she was fine, but she said something that chilled me: ‘You wrote about him, didn’t you? You gave him a name. In my dream, he told me to tell you that now he has a name, he can come and go as he pleases. And he’s hungry.’ I tried to laugh it off, but my chest ached. I could feel him listening. I think he’s always listening now. I don’t know how to write him out, how to unmake him. He’s in my head, in my home, in the spaces between my thoughts. And every time the weight comes, I’m afraid that one day, it won’t lift.