I can’t recall the precise moment when I stopped trusting my own mind. It might have been weeks ago, or perhaps months; time has become a blurry, indistinct concept. My days bleed into nights, my nights into days, with only the vaguest of transitions between. Lately, I’ve been finding it difficult to tell where my dreams end and reality begins.
It started innocuously enough—little things that seemed unimportant at first. A misplaced object, a forgotten name, a conversation I couldn’t quite remember. These were all minor annoyances, easily dismissed as the byproducts of stress or fatigue. After all, I’d been working long hours, pushing myself to meet deadlines, to maintain the appearance of normalcy even as my internal world began to unravel.
But then, the dreams came. Vivid, strange, and disturbingly real. I would wake in a cold sweat, heart pounding, certain that what I had experienced was more than just a figment of my imagination. The line between waking and sleeping grew thinner with each passing night, until I could no longer distinguish one from the other.
It began with the house—a sprawling, decrepit mansion that seemed to exist only in my dreams. Every night, without fail, I would find myself standing before it, the blackened, rotting wood creaking under an unseen pressure. It was a place of decay, of forgotten memories and unspoken horrors. The air around it was thick, suffocating, filled with the scent of damp earth and mold. I didn’t recognize the house, but it felt strangely familiar, as if it were a part of me, or I a part of it.
Inside, the rooms were dark and labyrinthine, the walls covered in peeling wallpaper that seemed to shift and writhe in the dim light. I would wander through endless corridors, my footsteps echoing in the silence, until I reached the room at the heart of the house. The door was always closed, its surface marred by deep, angry gouges, as if something—or someone—had tried to claw its way out
I never dared open it. The terror that gripped me in those moments was overwhelming, a primal fear that left me paralyzed and breathless. I would wake up just as my hand reached for the doorknob, my body drenched in sweat, my mind reeling from the intensity of the experience. Each time, I told myself it was just a dream, but deep down, I knew there was more to it than that.
One night, after yet another harrowing dream, I found myself staring into the bathroom mirror, my reflection distorted by the fog of my breath. The person staring back at me looked haunted, eyes hollow and bloodshot, skin pale and clammy. I barely recognized myself. As I leaned closer, I noticed something that sent a chill down my spine—a faint, almost imperceptible scratch on the side of my face. It was thin and shallow, the kind of mark one might get from brushing against a thorn or a jagged edge.
But I knew better. I hadn’t been near anything that could have caused such a scratch. The realization hit me with the force of a freight train: the mark had come from the dream. I stumbled back from the mirror, my mind racing. How could that be possible? How could something from a dream leave a mark on my body?
The logical part of my brain tried to rationalize it away. Perhaps I had scratched myself in my sleep, or maybe it was a lingering imprint from some forgotten event during the day. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something far more sinister was at play.
That night, I didn’t sleep. I sat up in bed, eyes wide open, afraid of what I might see if I closed them. The hours dragged on, and the silence of the house became oppressive, each creak and groan of the floorboards magnified in the darkness. My thoughts spiraled out of control, a tangled web of fear and paranoia. Was I losing my mind? Or was there something else, something malevolent, lurking in the shadows of my consciousness?
When dawn finally broke, I felt no relief. The sunlight did nothing to dispel the darkness that had taken root inside me. I went through the motions of the day, barely aware of my surroundings, my thoughts consumed by the house, the dreams, and the mark on my face. I found myself dreading the approach of night, knowing that sleep would bring me back to that cursed place.
But I couldn’t avoid it forever. Eventually, exhaustion claimed me, and I slipped into the now-familiar nightmare. Once again, I stood before the mansion, its decaying facade looming over me like a dark omen. This time, however, there was something different. The door to the room at the heart of the house was slightly ajar, a sliver of darkness spilling out from the crack.
My heart raced as I approached, every fiber of my being screaming at me to turn back, to run as far away as possible. But I couldn’t stop myself. I had to know what was behind that door. With trembling hands, I pushed it open, the hinges groaning in protest.
Inside, the room was empty, save for a single object—a large, ornate mirror standing in the center. Its surface was cracked, the fractured glass reflecting distorted images of the room around me. As I stepped closer, I saw my reflection, twisted and warped, staring back at me with an expression of sheer terror.
And then, the reflection moved.
It wasn’t a subtle shift, like the play of light or a trick of the eye. No, this was deliberate. The figure in the mirror raised its hand, but it wasn’t mirroring my movements. Instead, it reached out toward me, its fingers clawing at the glass as if trying to break free.
I stumbled back, my breath catching in my throat. The figure’s eyes locked onto mine, and I felt a cold, creeping dread settle into the pit of my stomach. There was something wrong, something deeply, fundamentally wrong. This wasn’t just a dream—it was a nightmare, a living nightmare that had crossed the boundary between sleep and reality.
Desperately, I tried to wake myself up, to force my eyes open, to escape the horror unfolding before me. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t break free. The dream held me captive, its grip tightening with every passing second.
The figure in the mirror smiled—a twisted, grotesque grin that sent a shiver down my spine. Slowly, deliberately, it pressed its hand against the glass, and I watched in horror as the surface began to crack and splinter, the fractures spreading like spiderwebs.
“No,” I whispered, shaking my head in denial. “This isn’t real. This can’t be real.”
But the figure only smiled wider, its eyes gleaming with malice. The cracks in the mirror deepened, and with a sharp, earsplitting sound, the glass shattered. Shards flew in every direction, and I threw up my hands to protect myself. But when I lowered them, I found myself standing in the room once more, the mirror whole and unbroken.
Except, it wasn’t just the mirror that had changed.
The reflection was no longer my own. The figure that stared back at me was someone—or something—else entirely. It was me, but not me. The eyes were wrong, filled with a darkness that was alien and terrifying. The skin was pale, almost translucent, and the smile that played across its lips was one of malevolent delight.
For a moment, I couldn’t move. I was frozen, trapped in the gaze of my own distorted reflection. And then, slowly, the figure stepped out of the mirror. It moved with a fluid, almost serpentine grace, its eyes never leaving mine. I backed away, my heart pounding in my chest, but there was nowhere to go. The walls of the room closed in around me, the darkness suffocating and absolute.
The figure reached out, its hand cold and clammy against my skin. I flinched, but I couldn’t pull away. I was rooted to the spot, helpless, as it leaned in close, its breath hot against my ear.
“Where do your dreams end,” it whispered, its voice a low, rasping hiss, “and where does reality begin?”
I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out. The darkness closed in, swallowing me whole, and I was lost.
When I awoke, I was lying in my bed, drenched in sweat, my heart racing. The room was still, the morning light filtering through the curtains. For a moment, I thought it had all been a dream, just another nightmare in the endless series that had plagued me for weeks.
But then, I felt it—the cold, clammy hand still resting on my arm.
I looked down, and my blood ran cold. The figure from the mirror was lying beside me, its eyes wide open, staring up at the ceiling. It didn’t move, didn’t breathe. It was as still as a corpse.
And yet, I knew it was alive.
Slowly, I turned my head to look at the mirror on the wall. My reflection was gone, replaced by the empty, gaping void of the shattered glass. The figure in the bed stirred, its hand tightening around my arm, and I felt a cold, creeping dread settle into my bones.
I realized then that the line between dreams and reality had been crossed, and there was no going back. The figure had escaped, leaving me trapped in its place. My mind was no longer my own, my reality no longer certain. The dreams had become real, and I was lost in their endless, twisting labyrinth.
As the figure in the bed slowly turned its head to look at me, its eyes gleaming with a dark, malevolent light, I knew that I had made a terrible mistake. I had opened the door, and now, there was no escape
For where do our dreams end, and reality begin? Sometimes, it’s not as simple as it seems. And sometimes, the answer is more terrifying than we could ever imagine.
I am still here, lost in the darkness, waiting for the day when someone else will dare to open that door. But until then, I remain trapped, a prisoner of my own mind, forever wandering the shadowy halls of that cursed house.
And I know, deep down, that I will never wake up again.
Hayden Coombs 