I wouldn’t go to sleep right now, even if it were possible. I’m sharing all of this because I don’t know what else to do. Staying awake indefinitely is obviously not sustainable, but I’ll fall off that cliff when I get there.

I woke up in the middle of the night two nights ago to tapping on my window. It’s creepy enough to hear that while living alone, right?

Well, I live in the third story of an apartment. I have no balcony.

There was no point in calling the police, because they can’t arrest flying people or ghosts, and I would undoubtedly be told that it was all in my head.

So I wrapped the pillow around my ears and pulled a blanket over my head. It muffled most of the sound.

The tapping instantly switched to the window on the other side of the room. Like – immediately, as though the person could teleport.

Or if there were two people.

I didn’t sleep that night.

When the sun finally rose, I told myself that I’d had an hours-long series of fucked up dreams. I crawled out of bed, not wanting to look at the windows, but knowing that it would ease my mind when a smiling man wasn’t hovering thirty feet off the ground.

There was nothing but the street below. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Then I looked up.

The pane was covered in fingerprints. Most of them were concentrated around the latch, as though someone had been pushing in their fingers inside, trying to open it up.

I dozed periodically at work. Every time I drifted off, though, I started dreaming of tapping on the window and snapped wide awake.

I told myself that I was going to sleep through the night last night. Hell, I was tired enough. I was out as soon as I hit the pillow.

The tapping woke me instantly.

I told myself that it was just a series of nightmares. But when it bounced from one window to the next and then back again within a two-second span, enough adrenaline pumped through my chest to assure me that I was not, in fact, sleeping. I peeked my eye over the blanket.

A long, pale finger was squeezing its way through the windowpanes.

I leapt out of bed and slammed the window firmly shut. The finger pulled itself back outside.

I didn’t sleep that night, either.

Once again, I got braver with the morning light. Once again, I checked the windows.

Once again, I regretted it.

A streak of blood sat on the pane, shining a dull red in the rising sun. I wanted to puke.

I stumbled to my phone. Police could take a sample, right? As long as I had physical evidence, I could call. I looked down at the screen.

That’s when I saw the blood on my finger. I raced to the bathroom to wash it off, disgusted that I’d gotten some of it on me after being so careful. I shoved my hand under the faucet, watching the red swirl down the drain.

The blood didn’t go away.

That’s because it was my finger that was bleeding.

In the exact same place that I’d slammed the intruder’s finger between the panes.

I wracked my brain, trying to figure out how I could have gotten such a deep gash, but there’s no other explanation.

And now it’s nighttime again. I have nowhere else to go, because I have no friends in this city, and earning $19.13 an hour means I cannot afford a hotel.

Typing it all up makes me feel slightly saner, even with an injured finger, because I have no one else to share it with.

And I desperately want to distract myself from the knocking sounds outside my window.

BD

W

E