I’ve stumbled upon something that concerns everyone, something so disturbing that, once you know about it, falling asleep may never feel safe again. It’s all around us, a constant presence, yet it’s nowhere to be seen. I’m not here to explain it. Someone else, better equipped, will have to take on that task. I’m only here as an unwilling witness.
My awakening, if I can call it that, happened yesterday. I was home sick in my tiny New York apartment, lying on the couch in my underwear, watching the news, surrounded by tissues, and eating cereal even though it was dinner time. It was the kind of uneventful day you’d expect from a bachelor in his thirties. Nothing unusual. And that’s part of what makes this so hard to explain. There were no warning signs. Not even a vague sense of unease. I went to bed early, expecting the next day to play out just like the one before. Outside my window, the steady hum of New York traffic helped lull me to sleep.
I woke with a jolt to an unusual sound: silence. A bluish, electric light poured through the window, as if a lightning bolt had been frozen in midair just outside. I glanced at the alarm clock on my nightstand. It read midnight, but I quickly realized it had stopped. I felt slightly feverish, though my mind was clear enough to know I wasn’t dreaming. The strange light and the unnatural quiet left me disoriented. With a groan, I pushed off the covers, sat on the edge of the bed to gather my thoughts, then stood and walked to the window to find the source of the light.
I expected to see a massive spotlight aimed at my window, but that wasn’t the case. As far as I could tell, the strange, bluish light blanketed the entire city, yet it didn’t seem to come from any specific source. Down on the street, every car had come to a stop and been left behind, their doors hanging open. Had I missed an emergency alert? I couldn’t begin to make sense of what I was seeing.
A young couple stood on the sidewalk. At first, I felt relieved to see them, but after watching for a moment, I noticed something was off. They weren’t moving. They just stood there like mannequins. I turned on the TV, hoping to find some answers. The news channel was live, as usual, but the anchor wasn’t speaking. She stared into the camera without blinking, the bluish-white light casting an eerie glow on the right side of her face.
Something strange entered the frame from the left. It looked like a tentacle, but it had no texture. Just pure black, as if it absorbed all light. It moved slowly toward the woman’s head, its motion fluid and unnatural, as if gravity had no hold on it. Even though I knew she was sitting in a studio miles away, the way she stared into the camera while that thing crept toward her made me deeply uneasy. I flinched when the tentacle, without leaving a mark, passed straight through the side of her head. It didn’t pierce her, it simply phased through. A shadow from something massive fell over her, and then she let out a scream, raw and senseless, filled with pure terror.
I turned off the television immediately, nearly dropping the remote. What the hell was that? My thoughts were all over the place. I looked out the window again. The couple was still there, completely motionless. Then I noticed a few more people inside the cars. None of them were moving. The traffic lights had stopped too, just like my clock.
I stepped back from the window as a shadow spread across the ground. Cautiously, I leaned forward to see what was casting it. Something began to drift into view, accompanied by a faint electrical hum. I could hardly believe what I was seeing. A giant, squid-like creature was floating just above the street. Its tentacles matched the ones I had seen on the television. It hovered closer to the couple on the sidewalk and gently slid two tentacles into their heads. They didn’t react at all.
This time, there was no screaming. The couple simply took off all their clothes and walked away, moving as if they were under the creature’s control. I tried to follow them with my eyes, but they soon disappeared from view. Then another black squid appeared. It drifted straight through a building, as if it didn’t exist on the same plane as ordinary matter. The sight made me feel deeply unsafe. If they could pass through walls, there was no way to keep them out. One could float into my apartment at any moment, and I wouldn’t even hear it coming.
I sat down with my back against the wall, my mind racing through every possibility I could imagine—from a sudden mental breakdown to an alien invasion. Eventually, I crawled into the bathroom and lay down in the tub. It wasn’t actually safer there, but it felt like it was. I have no idea how long I stayed like that. It must have been at least half a day. Then, without warning, the strange light vanished, and the familiar sounds of the city returned. I grabbed my phone and stared at the screen until it finally lit up, displaying one minute past midnight.
Exhausted, I climbed out of the tub and looked out the window. Everything appeared normal again. Cars passed by as usual, and people went about their lives as if nothing had happened. It was as if those strange twelve hours had never existed. But the couple—the ones the creatures had taken—were gone. They never came back.
It felt like my entire world had come apart. I threw on a pair of sweatpants and my stained robe, then rushed outside. People gave me condescending looks the moment I stepped out of the building, but I didn’t care. I needed answers. Someone must have seen the couple disappear from the sidewalk, I told myself. I ran up to a cab.
“Excuse me!” I called out, louder than I meant to. “I live next door and, um…” The driver looked at me like I was some kind of meth addict. I couldn’t blame him. “Did you see the couple who were standing right there?” I pointed to the spot on the sidewalk. “I saw them from my window, but—”
“I didn’t see any couple,” the man said flatly.
“Are you sure? Because—”
“Dude,” he interrupted, “I’ve been staring in that direction since I parked, and I didn’t see any goddamn couple.”
“But they took off their clothes!” I said. “How could you have missed that? Look, the clothes are right there!”
I picked them up off the ground and held them out to him.
“Hey, man, don’t bring that trash into my car!”
“But they were right there!” I shouted. Then I turned to a woman waiting at the bus stop across the street. “Hey, you! Did you see the couple standing over there?”
She gave me a dismissive shake of her head.
“Freaking crackhead,” I heard the driver mutter before pulling away.
I stood there feeling ridiculous, even though I knew I was right. The clothes were still on the ground, clear proof that it hadn’t been a hallucination. If I’d imagined the whole thing, the clothes wouldn’t be there. I went back up to my apartment and turned on the television. The news anchor was reporting the day’s headlines, completely unaware of the tentacle I had seen earlier.
I sat on my bed, trying to make sense of what had happened, but I was too exhausted to think clearly. I hadn’t slept in over a day, yet somehow, no time had passed. The only thought I managed before drifting off was that I had been trapped in some surreal space between one day and the next. I didn’t know if that was the right way to describe it, it was just how it felt. When I woke up in the middle of the day, the memory of what happened at midnight was still with me.
Feeling rested, I could think more clearly, though I still couldn’t make sense of it. It was as if the entire world had been frozen in place, giving those horrifying creatures the freedom to do whatever they wanted.
I stepped outside to get some air. The woman’s dress was still there, drifting across the sidewalk in the wind. Did anyone miss her? Or had she vanished from everyone’s memory, just as she had vanished from the world? Questions spun through my head. I stopped at a street corner and looked up at the sun, squinting. This was stranger than even the wildest theory I could imagine, stranger than aliens or secret experiments. It felt like it concerned reality itself. How else could the entire sky have turned that electric blue? Now, even though the sky looked normal again, something about it felt wrong. It didn’t appear any different, but after what I’d seen, I couldn’t shake the sense that it was just an image projected onto a massive screen. The thought left me with a creeping, claustrophobic feeling, like I was trapped inside something. I grew dizzy. I didn’t want to be outside anymore, because it didn’t feel like outside at all. I turned and ran home.
Later, as the clock on my wall crept toward midnight, I thought about taking a sleeping pill. I didn’t want to wake up in that strange, in-between state again. But in the end, I decided against it. I needed to know whether it would happen again or if it had been a one-time event. So I sat at the kitchen table, waiting anxiously for the final hour of the day to arrive.
As the clock on the wall stopped ticking, the blue light flooded my apartment. It wasn’t over. Just moments later, one of the enormous floating squids drifted through my living room. I stood frozen, watching as it passed through and disappeared into the wall on the other side. This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening. I wanted to run, to escape, but there was nowhere to go. What if they realized I had broken free from the trance that everyone else seemed to be caught in?
Everyone else?
I crept over to my computer and pulled up a BBC broadcast. The same thing was happening there. A man being interviewed had stopped moving, though he was still speaking—but it wasn’t English. It sounded like gibberish. Behind him, Tower Bridge was clearly visible, with several of the creatures soaring through the sky around it. To see if this was happening everywhere, I opened YouTube and found a live stream of Shibuya Crossing in Tokyo. All the cars had come to a stop, their black surfaces reflecting the buzzing blue sky. The people either stood completely still or moved in strange, aimless patterns. One of them was laughing uncontrollably.
A noise came from upstairs. I quickly shut the laptop, worried someone might have heard me. It sounded like a struggle. A frail old woman lived in the apartment above, and I couldn’t imagine her making those sounds. Concerned she might be in trouble—and hoping for some answers—I crept up to her floor. The hallway outside my front door was silent, dimly lit by the strange light filtering in from outside. As I climbed the stairs, the air grew thick with tension, almost electric, as if it were charged with static. My hair stood on end, and my skin tingled. I stopped in front of her door and pressed my ear against it. Everything inside was quiet now. I bent down and peered through the letter slot. At first, nothing seemed out of place, then I noticed a flickering shadow moving across the floor. I stood there for a few seconds, hesitating. Maybe she was awake, like me. That thought gave me just enough courage to try the doorknob.
“Ruth?” I whispered.
I didn’t see her at first, only the strange, flickering shadow cast across the Persian carpet. Then I looked up at the ceiling. Ruth was there, completely naked, spinning rapidly in midair. The speed was unnatural, almost impossible to process. I stared in disbelief. Then she urinated. She sprayed the entire room, and some of it hit my face. Gagging, I stumbled back in shock and fled downstairs to my apartment, where I scrubbed myself clean, trying not to throw up.
I looked out the window. Was I really the only one awake, the only one able to see what was happening?
I picked up my phone and called a friend. I didn’t expect it to work, but after about five rings, he answered. A wave of relief washed over me.
“Yes?” he said.
“Hey, man, it’s me—” I began, but he cut me off.
“Yes?” he repeated.
“Are you seeing what’s going on? I mean, it’s like the whole world has turned into—”
“I’m a forester, not a historian,” he said.
“E-excuse me?” I asked, my panic rising again.
“Following the direction of the screaming, you’ll find the big, black moose’s head at the entrance of a tunnel.”
His voice was flat. He wasn’t himself.
“Come on, man, snap out of it!” I said, fighting back tears.
“Please return me to my original form... please.”
His voice had changed. It sounded more human now, less robotic. Had I somehow reached him?
“You there, man?” I yelled. “Stay with me, okay? I’ll—”
“The muscles of my limbs are stretched to their limits.”
He was sobbing now, whispering into the phone.
“Are you hurt?” I asked. “Did one of those things get to you?”
“As I am dying, my internal organs shift inside.”
His crying deepened.
“Shit, man...” I didn’t know what else to say. “Listen, don’t go anywhere.” I looked around, scrambling for my car keys. “I’m coming to—”
“I can feel them shifting in my flesh. The sheer weight of it shakes the ground as I stagger and struggle to my feet.”
His voice played in my ear as I grabbed my car keys from the cabinet in the living room.
“If only there were a way I could stop the things in front of me.”
“W-what?” I asked. “What’s in front of you?”
“The smell of blood surrounds me,” he continued, ignoring my question. “Blood and death. It’s everywhere. The bodies of the living are solidified, and blood gushes from their wounds.”
“Are you at your place?”
“Yes?”
The dull, detached tone had returned.
“Stay with me, man!” I pleaded. “Don’t—”
“I’m a forester, not a historian.”
“What does that even mean!” I shouted. “I’m coming!”
He didn’t respond with words. Instead, he let out a bone-chilling scream.
Then the call ended.
Outside, the first thing I noticed was the absence of weather. There was no wind, and the temperature felt exactly the same as it had inside. The pigeons on the sidewalk stood frozen, as if someone had pressed pause on them. On the street corner, a little boy kept making jazz hands again and again while blood trickled from his nose. His face was locked in a wide, unnatural grin. I had no idea how to blend in—everyone was behaving so strangely—so I didn’t even try. I ran to my car, shoved the key into the ignition, and started the engine. But before I could pull away, the boy jumped in front of the car, still making jazz hands, still smiling. A small crowd began to gather around the vehicle, their mouths moving in unison as they mumbled words that made no sense. I climbed onto the roof of my car through the sunroof. Up in the sky, an airplane hung motionless, frozen in midair. One of the horrifying creatures hovered beside it, guiding a passenger out through the door with its tentacles. I had nowhere to run. The people around me weren’t attacking, but they made sure I couldn’t get away. They blocked every path, their movements subtle and deliberate. One of the creatures floated past above me, casting its enormous shadow across the street. Do they know about me? Still on the roof of my car, I shouted at the people to wake up, over and over, until my voice gave out.
“Why aren’t you listening to me?”
“You’re crazy!” someone shouted back.
“That’s why you’re in my room!” a little girl yelled. “Get the fuck out.” She burst into laughter. “This is why I’m still here, doing this shit.”
“But you’re not saying anything!” an old man shouted at me.
I sat down and buried my face in my hands. I gave up trying to reach them. It’s hard to say how much time passed while I sat there. Eventually, I stood up again, ready to leap over the crowd. One of the creatures began to rise from the ground a few hundred meters away, its movement slow but ominous. It floated toward me, reaching out with its massive tentacles. Even at that pace, I knew I couldn’t outrun it. Its ability to pass through anything made escape on foot impossible. As it drew closer, the air thickened with static. My hair stood on end, and I felt a surge of energy rising through my body. The sensation made me nauseous and lightheaded. I climbed back into my car, started the engine, and—driven by pure desperation—threw it into reverse and slammed the pedal to the floor.
The crowd scattered quickly, but I still felt a small bump under the tires. I didn’t have time to think. I couldn’t let that thing reach my mind with one of its grotesque tentacles. I spun the car around and weaved through the stalled vehicles ahead of me, finally reaching a relatively empty pedestrian street. I slammed the gas pedal down. Two creatures emerged from the buildings on either side, phasing straight through the walls. Several more descended from the sky, closing in fast.
I drove for what felt like hours, desperately trying to escape the creatures that followed me without pause. I only stopped once to push a stroller off the sidewalk I was speeding down. The baby inside was wailing, but no sound came from its mouth.
As I continued, I passed people engaged in the most bizarre behaviors I had ever witnessed. The least disturbing among them was a young woman in a business suit having sex with an old taxi driver on the hood of his car. From there, it only got worse. A middle-aged man was binge-eating feces in a dog park. A two-hundred-pound man stood on his head with an unsettling grin frozen on his face. A teenage girl held her own eye—still attached by the optic nerve—in her hand and watched herself sing a lullaby.
Manhattan—like the rest of the world—had become a living nightmare under the looming presence of the giant black squids. I thought about the people around me, and about everyone else too. By tomorrow, they wouldn’t remember any of it. To them, it would be as if none of this had ever happened.
But it did happen. That man really did fill his mouth with dog feces, and that woman really did have sex with that old man. How long has this been going on? I had no answers—only more questions. Had I been acting like this too, in the time between days? Had it been happening my entire life? The thought made my stomach churn.
I made a sharp turn onto Park Row, heading for the Brooklyn Bridge. When I reached it, I stopped in the middle of the span. Creatures were approaching from both directions. There was nowhere left to run. The East River shimmered below, reflecting the white-silver glow of the electric sky. I walked to the edge and gripped the railing with both hands. For the first time in my life, I seriously considered ending it all. A little girl walked up to me. For a moment, I thought she might try to comfort me. But instead, in the same flat, emotionless voice my friend had used, she said:
“As a symbol of Farölk, they put me on my knees before I was old enough to drink wine, so I could be taught the true form of Farölk.”
I stared at her, trying to make sense of the words. But as the meaningless sentence hung in the air, I turned back to the railing and began to climb.
“The ancient gods have made the world blind to their power,” she said, her voice flowing without pause, the words spilling from her drooling mouth as if they couldn’t be stopped. “These gods are both power-hungry and charming. Though relentless in their quest to rule, none are the true monarchs of a ravaged world. They are insidious creatures, imposing their will on the living and shaping their nature, tempting them with their petty struggles. This is the true danger of these gods. They work, they speak, they spy, they manipulate...”
She stopped mid-sentence and walked back to the car she had come from. All around me, people began returning to their original positions, spitting out whatever they had been chewing and straightening their clothes. The creatures were nearly upon me. Then, in an instant, the midnight sky returned. Airplanes shot forward in the sky without any buildup, as if they had never stopped at all. The creatures vanished just before their tentacles could reach me. I climbed down onto the sidewalk and broke into tears. The little girl stared at me from the car window, her expression blank, as if she had never seen me before.
My friend, who lived near Fort Greene Park, opened the door and looked surprised to see my exhausted face at such a late hour. There were no signs of a struggle; he seemed perfectly fine. I urged him to check his phone. Still confused, he picked it up as I let myself inside.
“Can you see if you got a call from me in the past few hours?” I asked, hoping there would be some kind of evidence.
He glanced at the screen. “No, there’s nothing.”
“Goddamnit,” I muttered. “I was hoping—”
“Hey, what’s going on with you?” he said. “Are you alright?”
“I’m okay. It’s just that... I don’t even know where to begin, to be honest.”
“Why don’t you try from the start?” he said, pausing the game he’d been playing on his Xbox.
I told him everything, though it came out a bit jumbled.
“Are you on drugs?” he asked. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard, and trust me, I’ve heard a lot of crazy shit.”
“I didn’t expect you to believe me,” I said. “But during this... this day between the days, I really did call you. You picked up. I thought I got through to you. You said something about not being a historian, but a forester.”
“Wait—whoa,” my friend said, his face suddenly pale. “What did you just say?” His lower lip started to tremble, and there was a fear in his eyes I hadn’t seen before. “Did you just say...”
“You kept repeating it: ‘I’m a forester, not a historian,’” I said.
“J-just now, while I was playing, I had this weird flashback. Like a dream I must’ve forgotten a long time ago. I was talking to someone, and my body was twisted in some messed-up way. There was blood everywhere. And I remember saying those exact words: I’m a forester, not a historian.”
“It wasn’t a dream, man,” I said, part relieved, part horrified. “It was real. You were talking to me. On the phone. You said those words to me.”
He walked over to the window.
“I don’t see anything out of the ordinary,” he said.
“This isn’t something you can see just by looking outside,” I replied. “It’s completely hidden. You only experience day and night, never what happens in between.”
I sank into the sofa and turned on the news. They were reporting from a crime scene. It only took a second for me to recognize the location. It was right outside my building. My heart skipped a beat. Then my picture appeared on the screen. The anchor said I was wanted for a hit-and-run. The victim was a little boy. The same boy who had been making jazz hands. A city map appeared next, showing the crash site. A red line traced a path from my apartment to the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge.
“Several police cars were involved in the chase,” the reporter said, “but lost track of the subject after he exited his car on the bridge—”
My friend started walking toward me. I quickly turned off the TV before he could see my face on the screen.
“What was that?” he asked.
“N-nothing,” I said. “Just some car accident near my place.”
But it wasn’t nothing. It was them—the creatures—twisting reality, trying to manipulate everyone into doing their bidding. I’m hiding in a McDonald’s right now. I have nowhere left to run, hunted during the day and in whatever exists between the days. There’s nowhere to go. Except, maybe, another ledge.
Author’s note:
Thank you for reading my story! If you enjoyed it, feel free to explore my novels at www.tobiasmalm.com. If you’d like to support my work and help me dedicate more time to writing, you can do so through my Patreon.