Jason hadn't slept in six days.
At first, it was just stress. Work deadlines. An angry manager. A breakup that left a vacuum of silence in his tiny apartment. He told himself it was temporary. The bags under his eyes, the dull headache, the constant itch behind them—all manageable. He drank coffee by the pot. Took cold showers. Walked laps around his block at 3 a.m. The city never slept. Why should he?
By day four, the hallucinations started.
Shadows moved when he wasn't looking. Faces formed in the wallpaper. He could hear the apartment breathe: a soft, wet inhale whenever he blinked. He spoke out loud to himself, to stay anchored. But his voice echoed strangely. Like something was replying a half-second too late.
His hands trembled. His thoughts skipped like a scratched record. And the worst part—he couldn't remember when he last tried to sleep. Something inside him refused. Something warned him that sleep was no longer safe.
He kept the lights on at all times.
He boarded the windows. He turned every mirror to face the wall. Something in the mirror wasn't moving right. On day five, his reflection blinked without him.
Jason started bleeding from his nose. His ears rang with a high, whining frequency. Like the world was screaming in a pitch only he could hear. Words scratched at the inside of his skull.
"Let us out."
He didn't remember writing that on the walls. But it was there. Dozens of times. Carved deep, red crust around each letter. Was it blood? Was it his?
He turned on every electronic device he owned. TVs, radios, old cell phones. White noise helped. Until it didn't.
Because the static began to speak.
Whispers first. Then full sentences. Always in his voice.
"You're not tired. You're shedding."
"Sleep is a prison for minds like yours."
"They're inside your dreams, Jason. They know your shape."
He unplugged everything.
He tried calling for help. His phone dialed before he could press anything. The voice that answered screamed his name back at him. He threw it into the toilet.
His neighbor knocked that night. Said people were worried. Said he sounded like he was crying through the walls. Jason didn't open the door. But he pressed his ear against it. The neighbor wasn't breathing.
He listened for twenty minutes. Not a single inhale.
He didn't eat. He didn't feel hunger anymore. He felt hollow. Like something was digging space inside him.
His eyes were so dry they cracked. Blood vessels burst like fireworks. He stared at the ceiling for hours. Shapes formed in the plaster. Circles. Eyes. Spinning.
He tried to remember his mother's name. Nothing came.
He scratched his arms until they bled. Just to feel something. Just to confirm he was still there. But the wounds didn't sting. The blood looked wrong. Too dark. Almost black.
He laughed for a full hour.
The walls laughed back.
When he walked into the bathroom, he found his bathtub filled to the brim with hair. His own hair. Still warm, still growing, writhing like worms. The faucet whispered in his voice: "Cleanse the vessel."
He bit into a raw onion and tasted strawberries. His tongue peeled like dead bark, revealing something pink and pulsing underneath. It twitched when he touched it.
He saw things in the TV even though it wasn't plugged in. A family sitting on a couch, staring back at him through the screen. All of them wearing his face, smiling too wide. They waved in unison.
The refrigerator door opened by itself. Inside, severed hands clapped politely.
He blinked, and the floor turned to teeth. Each step he took was a crunch, blood rising up through the gaps. He couldn't stop smiling. He couldn't stop.
His notebook pages tore themselves out and crawled across the floor like insects. They piled up in a nest beneath his bed. Something large breathed under there, rhythmically, waiting.
He began hearing whispers in the pipes—deep, moist clicks that formed words just at the edge of comprehension. He took apart the sink and screamed when dozens of eyeballs spilled out, blinking up at him, reflecting his own panicked face in each glossy surface.
He took a fork and began scratching messages into the hardwood floor: "I AM STILL INSIDE", "LET ME OUT", "SLEEP IS THE ENEMY."
The walls dripped pus. The light bulbs pulsed like hearts, leaking hot fluid that hissed on the floor. Jason watched them dim and brighten in rhythm with his own heartbeat—or something else's.
He found an old photograph of himself as a child taped to the window. Except the child was grinning in a way he never had. Its eyes were black holes, and behind it, an arm stretched into the frame. An arm that ended in a dozen fingers, none human.
His skin began to peel in thin strips. He caught one and pulled it down his arm like wet paper. Underneath, instead of muscle or bone, there were shifting runes, etched deep, glowing faintly like embers.
The hallway stretched. He walked for what felt like hours and never reached the end. The lights blinked out behind him, one by one. In the pitch darkness, he could hear them walking beside him. Bare feet slapping wetly on tile.
He finally turned around.
There was nothing.
He opened the oven and found his childhood pet inside, perfectly preserved. Its eyes were open. It mouthed his name.
He screamed until his voice cracked. Blood bubbled up his throat. The taste was familiar. Like rust and honey.
He gouged at the wallpaper with his fingernails, searching for something beneath it. Layers upon layers peeled back, revealing old photographs glued to the wall: each one of him, asleep, taken from above. In every one, a tall shadow loomed near the bed.
He dug deeper.
His fingers broke through plaster and insulation. Something writhed behind the wall. Something breathing.
A hand reached out and gripped his wrist.
He didn't pull away.
On the sixth night, Jason lay on the floor, surrounded by torn pages from his notebooks. None of the writing made sense. Spirals. Glyphs. Words in languages he never learned. Some moved when he looked away. He blinked once. The lights flickered.
When they came back, a figure stood over him.
Tall. Pale. No face. But familiar.
Jason didn't scream.
"Who are you?" he whispered.
The figure crouched. Touched his forehead with an elongated finger. Jason's mind filled with a sound he had no ears for. It split his thoughts like lightning.
"You are the gate," it said. Or maybe it was his own voice again.
He woke up hours later. Or maybe minutes. Or days.
The walls were gone. The apartment had no corners now. It stretched forever in every direction. Floating shapes hovered above him, watching.
Jason stood, bones cracking like tree limbs. He felt new joints. His tongue had grown. His teeth were not his own.
He had not slept.
He would never sleep.
Sleep was a cage.
He had broken free.
The apartment floor rippled beneath him, soft and pulsing like flesh. A giant eye opened in the ceiling and blinked, leaking thick yellow tears that burned his skin. Jason laughed as his skin bubbled.
In the kitchen, the fridge was breathing. It spoke to him in the voice of his dead father, begging to be fed. Jason fed it his fingernails, one by one, and sang lullabies his mother never taught him.
He drew pictures on the walls with his blood—of doors opening into mouths, of spiders crawling from his own ears. One drawing reached out and held his hand.
When he opened the closet, he found his own body hanging from a meat hook. It was still twitching. The eyes opened, bloodshot and yellow. "Why did you wake up?" it asked.
He swallowed broken glass to stay alert. It sang to him all the way down.
He no longer felt pain. Only clarity. Beautiful, raw clarity.
In the final hours, the walls peeled back like skin. Behind them was a sky of writhing tendrils, of hands reaching inward. Jason understood then: sleep was not rest. Sleep was imprisonment. Sleep kept the others out. Awake, he could see them.
They were always there.
Watching.
Waiting.
Smiling.
And now, he waits.
Listening.
For others like him.
For those who are just beginning to wonder...
What happens when you stay awake too long?