The Man
He woke with a start.
His heart thundered against his ribs, slick with sweat, chest heaving as if he’d run miles. The dream dissolved quickly—just shadows now—but its residue clung like cobwebs behind his eyes. He stared at the ceiling fan, unmoving in the dark. It wasn’t the dream that terrified him, not exactly. It was the feeling that something had followed him out of it.
He got up, shook it off. The day would begin whether he was ready or not.
Later that morning, he met up with friends at Claire’s apartment. There were five of them crowded on mismatched furniture, trading jokes and coffee. But one man sat stiffly in the far corner—silent, staring, as if propped up like a mannequin.
His skin was dry and thin, like crêpe paper stretched over too-sharp bones. He wore old-fashioned clothes—something like a priest’s collar. His brows were thick and arched steeply, like they had been painted on in anger. And his eyes—protruding, unblinking, and too close together—seemed to pierce through everyone else and settle only on him.
“Who’s that?” he asked, quietly enough not to embarrass anyone.
Claire looked up from her tea. “Who’s who?”
He tilted his head toward the man. “Him. In the corner.”
Everyone looked. They looked through the man. Their eyes passed right over him, landing on the bookshelf behind.
“Are you okay?” Claire asked.
He nodded, uneasy. The man had not blinked once.
That night, he dreamed again.
This time the man was at the foot of his bed. Not moving. Just watching. When he opened his mouth, black moths spilled out onto the sheets. He tried to scream, but the room turned upside down and the ceiling opened into a second sky full of whispering voices that spoke only in vowels.
He woke gasping.
The man from the dream had been in his apartment all day. On the subway. At the crosswalk. Watching him from a window two stories up. Always just watching. Never speaking.
He confronted his friends again. They laughed nervously, assuming he was joking. But they didn’t understand the weight behind his eyes, or why he no longer answered their texts at night.
Days passed. Each dream worse than the last. The man began appearing closer. Sitting beside him on the couch. Walking behind him in mirrors. Resting his chin on his shoulder while he ate.
No one else ever saw him.
He stopped seeing friends altogether. Blocked numbers. Moved apartments. Tore mirrors off the walls. Still, the man followed.
He barely slept now. When he did, he’d find himself inside a dream of a dream—waking only to realize he was still asleep. One time he tore out his own eyes in a nightmare. The man handed them back.
In a final plea for clarity, he visited his father.
The old man welcomed him with warm arms and a cluttered kitchen full of overcooked stew. They sat at the table like they used to. Safe. Familiar.
Then he saw the man again—emerging from the hallway like a memory dredged up too quickly.
His father didn’t seem to notice.
The man shuffled forward and, with the gracelessness of a puppet, hoisted himself onto the old man’s lap like a child begging to be held. His father kept stirring the stew.
“Dad,” he said, trembling, “there’s someone sitting on you.”
His father looked at him with confusion, then pity. “Son… you sure you’re getting enough sleep?”
The man smiled, his teeth small and square, like baby teeth crammed into an adult’s mouth.
He ran. He didn’t know where. He just needed to move, to breathe, to leave his own skin behind.
Finally, collapsed in a motel room with thick curtains and a faulty lock, he lay on the unfamiliar bed and cried himself to sleep.
He woke with a start.
His heart thundered. Sweat soaked his shirt. He stared at the ceiling. For a moment, he didn’t move.
There was no sound.
Until the bedsprings beside him creaked under a new weight.
He turned his head—slowly, slowly—and there he was.
The man, closer than ever.
He whispered something this time.
“You see me now… and you always will.”
He screamed, and—
He woke with a start.
Again.
This time, he didn’t scream. He just lay still, chest rising and falling, waiting to see if the bedsprings beside him would creak again.
They didn’t.
The room was quiet. The motel clock blinked 3:33 AM in red, pulsing digits. There were no shadows on the wall. No figure sitting at the foot of his bed.
Maybe it was over.
He slowly sat up. The sheets were soaked through. He reached for the light switch.
Nothing.
His fingers pressed plastic. No click. No bulb.
That was the first sign.
The second sign came when he looked in the bathroom mirror.
There was no reflection.
Not just of the man—but of himself.
He touched the glass. Cold. Real.
No fog, no trick of the light. Just absence.
Then, in the empty mirror, movement.
Behind him.
He spun around—
Empty room.
But when he turned back, a single word had appeared in the mirror, written in fog:
“Always.”
He checked out of the motel that morning and went home. Or tried to.
The city had changed.
Or maybe he had.
Street names were slightly off. Storefronts looked warped, like someone had drawn them from memory and forgotten the details. People didn’t meet his gaze anymore—they looked just past him, as though avoiding something behind him.
Even children stepped aside in wide arcs when passing him on the sidewalk.
He asked a barista for coffee. She took his money, but never handed him the cup. Just stood there, eyes glazed, until he walked away.
It wasn’t the world he remembered.
It was close, but… off.
As though he was walking through a copy of his life, tainted by something unseeable.
Something always a step behind.
He dreamed again.
But this dream wasn’t like the others.
He was in his old childhood home. It was snowing through the ceiling. The rooms were empty. He could hear the laughter of his friends from the first story—Claire, Aaron, Malik—echoing from rooms that didn’t exist anymore.
The man was nowhere to be seen.
Until he found the door.
It wasn’t there in real life. It had never been. At the end of the hallway, a door with no knob, painted entirely black.
Something pounded behind it. Slowly. Rhythmically. Like a heartbeat made of fists.
And then a voice.
His own. Whispering from the other side.
“Let me out.”
He woke up.
At least… he thought he did.
He was in his apartment. The light was on.
He could see himself—fully, completely—in the mirror.
No man. No whispers.
Had it finally ended?
Then his phone buzzed.
A single text.
From a number he didn’t recognize:
"You woke up in the wrong direction."
He dropped the phone.
He turned back to the mirror.
There were two of him now.
One standing in the room.
The other inside the mirror.
The one in the mirror smiled.
And beside that version of him, the man stepped into view—his eyes as close together as ever, his crêpe-paper skin flaking at the edges.
The mirror version whispered:
“You see me now, and you always will.”
He screamed, and—
He woke with a start.
I found this piece amazing. The concept itself makes me just walk and think about it, look back at the mirror :-)
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