Rajeev always laughed at horror stories.
Sleep paralysis? Ghosts? "It's just your brain tricking you," he would say.
Until it happened.
The first night, he woke up at 3:14 a.m., staring at the cracked ceiling of his one-room apartment.
He couldn't move. Not even blink.
His chest weighed heavy—like someone was sitting on it.
In the far corner of the ceiling, something moved.
Not crawling… not flying… flowing—like liquid shadow.
It had no form. Just two eyes—white, round, wrong.
They blinked at him.
And smiled.
He screamed inside, but his lips didn't move. He begged in silence.
Then the thing whispered directly into his skull:
"I was born in that moment between wakefulness and sleep. You created me."
Then it vanished.
He woke up with tears down his face and fingernail scratches on his chest.
But he lives alone.
The next night, it returned.
And the next.
And the next.
He stopped sleeping. For three days, he fought it. Caffeine. Pills. Fear.
But the body breaks.
At 3:14 a.m., his body gave in.
This time, he didn't just see it.
He felt it enter him.
Through his mouth.
Through his eyes.
Now when he's awake, he still sees it—in reflections, in shadows, behind blinking lights.
But worst of all?
When he closes his eyes…
they stay open.