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#372 What Keeps You Up at Night

Now that spooky season’s on its way, I’ve noticed various changes creeping into the world around me, from spine-chilling new releases in local bookshop windows to scarier movie suggestions on my favorite streaming platforms. This week, let’s lean into the most terrifying time of the year and write stories that center around worry, dread, and the small hours of the morning...

🥇 Winner

The UnDreamer 3.0

Winner of Weekly Contest #372 🏆

“It’s 2084 — sleeping is keeping you poor!” Garret Glover grinned at the 50 megapixel front camera of his mounted iPhone 27, which he was live-streaming from. He glanced at his personal phone and checked the content brief from NoSleep: Catchy opening line. Suggestion: In the year 2084, sleep is for the poor! Explain how the UnDreamer 3.0 has benefited you. Suggested focus: increased time for productivity at home and on the go, dream + memory tracking benefits. Demonstrate the product, highlighting key features: MemoryLock and DreamDecoder. C...

54 likes 35 comments 35
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⭐️ Shortlisted

This week's prompts

Write about a character who wakes up in the middle of the night, or is unable to sleep.

– 112 stories

Start or end your story with a strange and/or persistent sound.

– 52 stories

Write a story about a fear that turns out to be justified — or entirely imagined.

– 66 stories

Include the words "Who’s there?" or "It’s probably nothing" in your story.

– 34 stories

Write about a character who can’t stop checking something.

– 49 stories

Stories

There Are Scarier Things Than the Monster Under Your Bed

Weekly Contest #372

Siobahn lurched awake, pulling her hand away from the edge of the bed. It had been dangling over as it always had when she slept. This time, something touched her. It wasn’t a bug or a strand of hair. It was an unmistakable grip. The woman caught her breath, but adrenaline had pushed all remnants of sleep far away. Siobahn grabbed her phone and turned the flashlight on. Slowly, she made her way to the edge of the bed. She took a breath and before she could give herself time to think about what she was doing, Siobahn hung over the edge to pee...

12 likes 1 comment 1
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Whatever You Do, Don't Wake Michelle

Weekly Contest #372

Content warning; This story contains themes of death and loss. If you are sensitive to these topics, you may want to skip this reading or proceed with caution. I kept thinking that I couldn't wait to go home as I sat at the dining room table of the foster care shelter in which I worked. I stared at the clock, eleven p.m.; that meant three more hours left of my shift. Even three hours had felt like forever. I got up from the table and pushed my chair in. I couldn't be reckless because all the residents were supposed to be asleep. One wrong ...

11 likes 4 comments 4
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Whiskers and the Button Eyed Mouse

Weekly Contest #372

Whiskers and the Button-Eyed Mouse Whiskers had been awake for six minutes, and already the mouse had committed three suspicious silences. It sat beneath the coffee table, exactly where it had been left the night before, with its gray felt body slumped to one side and its stitched black eyes looking nowhere in particular. Its pink yarn tail curled like a question mark. Its tiny red ribbon, chewed into a ragged fringe, lay flat against its chest. Too flat, Whiskers thought. He crouched behind the leg of the sofa, belly low, tail puffed to twi...

11 likes 1 comment 1
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I See You

Weekly Contest #372

Laurel couldn’t breathe. Not that that mattered to her tía Rosa, whose arms crushed her in a bear hug. “I forget how beautiful you are, mija!” She cried, “why you stay away so long?” Her family was always prone to exaggeration. Really it had only been a year since they last saw each other on Thanksgiving for her mom’s birthday. Too short a time if you asked Laurel, but she supposed when the black cat lived with her phone on do not disturb a year of unanswered calls could feel like a decade. Standing rod stiff in the doorway of her tía’s s...

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She Kept Me Up Again Last Night

Weekly Contest #372

Last night, I couldn’t sleep… again. I know it keeps happening, I’m trying to figure out a solution, she just… she won’t stop talking. What? No, not Sylvie… the… you know. Her. I guess I’ve been anxious about a lot of things, that one application is out on submission. I know I’m not supposed to just keep refreshing the page, I know I need to be patient. But it’s either stare at the same unread application or keep listening to her. Last night she was wearing these lacey, black underwear with little pleated frills. Not to be sexy or anything, ...

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there's a bear in the woods, can you see it?

Weekly Contest #372

a forest setting, a familiar trail, tired limbs. it's sometime past midday, and you’re five miles down a path you’ve traveled more times than you can count. you’re crouched at a riverbank, flipping stones over to watch the crawfish scurry away into the current. the water feels cold on your fingers, the summer heat feels warm. a drawstring bag hangs loose around your shoulders, full of the protein bars your mom always buys. inside there’s also some bug spray and some sunscreen, and a metal water bottle that makes anything inside it taste like...

11 likes 1 comment 1
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Up All Night

Weekly Contest #372

It wasn’t unusual for Hank to be up all night, wandering through the neighborhood, at first seeing the gilded lights on in the apartments and houses, but as the hours slipped by, seeing window after window going dark like velvet. He didn’t sleep. Couldn’t sleep. Had forgotten how to sleep. Didn’t want to remember. That’s not to say he never shut his eyes. When he was on the bus, sometimes he’d nod off. When he was at work, there were moments when the projector was doing its own thing and he leaned back in his chair and thought of her. D...

11 likes 1 comment 1
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Summer Is Not Dead: The Seasonal Killer

Weekly Contest #372

The cicadas screamed so loudly from the trees that Mark could barely hear himself think. REEEEEEEEEEEEE. He didn’t mind. It was the sound of summer refusing to leave. REEEEEEEEEEEEE. “Pumpkin spice. Yuck.” Mark spat onto the sidewalk and watched the brown glob sizzle in the August heat. Ninety-four degrees. That was what the bank sign had said three blocks back. Ninety-four damn degrees, and somebody had just sold him a pumpkin-spice coffee. “I don't get it.” Across the street, the family had been decorating their house for Halloween for the...

10 likes 4 comments 4
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Baby Bird

Weekly Contest #372

Hollow bird bones, gathered in cloth. That’s all she is. The other mothers spoke of magic, of newborn scrunches and tiny toes. Of a slow, warm bubble that swaddles mother and child alike, hazy and sweet as milk-breath. There is no bubble. The world is sharp, and she is soft, and I am all that’s between them. It’s not enough. A sliver of night peeks through the end of the curtain, whipped by branches of the silver birch outside. A shade darker than black, their movements frenzied by wind and rain. They steal my eyes from her. I should draw...

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The Empty Train

Weekly Contest #372

She was glad she could hear people. The compartment had four seats, and three were empty. Her suitcase lay in the overhead rack; her laptop bag occupied the seat opposite. She had taken off her wet coat and hung it beside the window, where it dripped onto the carpet. There was room to put her feet up. She had been awake since five. The storm had flooded the roads out of the city. Two taxi bookings had been cancelled; a third driver had called to say he wasn't going anywhere near the northern bypass. But the trains were running, and someone f...

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Ghost Walz

Weekly Contest #372

I shivered and awoke with a start. The room was dark except for a single pale white hand reaching out towards me. My mouth was dry and I felt terrified, but the hand only cupped my face and then withdrew. The hand was attached to a beautiful woman in white with platinum blonde hair and silver eyes who looked down at me with an indiscernible expression and then took a few steps back, gesturing for me to follow. “Who? Who are you?” I asked. A light clicked on to my left. “What’s going on?” Mai asked rubbing her eyes. “There’s someone,” I g...

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Of Colors

Weekly Contest #372

The pain struck her abdomen with unrelenting might, as it did every morning for the past five years. Olivia pressed her pillow down on her stomach and breathed in deeply. Twenty breaths were the norm, and then the pain would dissipate, but today it was stubborn. Twenty-six. Twenty-seven. After fifty breaths, Olivia was finally able to sit up in her bed and get ready for the big day. The wooden stairs of her hundred-year-old house creaked loyally with each step as she lumbered her way downstairs to the kitchen. A red robe—far too long for her...

10 likes 1 comment 1
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Scott Street Soucouyant

Weekly Contest #372

“A soucouyant do that.” Anand Persad was standing at the front of the class with most of his fellow students surrounding him. There was a purple bruise on his right arm and for the life of him, he didn’t know where it came from. It didn’t hurt, even after all the pokes it got from his friends. “I telling you,” his friend Kareem said. “I telling all of you. A soucouyant do that.” “Soucouyants aren’t real,” a commanding voice said, causing the crowd to disperse. “Also, you are to speak in Standard English in my class. No Trinidadian Creole. Pl...

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Stiff as a Board

Weekly Contest #372

On the lawn, the living dead shambled about like drunks searching for their lost wallets and keys. Felix Hastings’s stomach shrivelled. ‘Jesus,’ he whispered, ‘it’s like Comic-Con.’ Alistair shuffled up next to him, face illuminated by the lighter he held. He looked Felix up and down. ‘All right, Felix? How you doin’, man?’ He turned from the lawn of the dead. ‘Um, okay, I guess? I still feel awful about—’ Alistair waved a hand to silence him. ‘Don’t overburden yourself with that now, man. Mistakes happen.’ Behind him, Poppy sighed. ‘We all ...

10 likes 4 comments 4
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A Life Unlived

Weekly Contest #372

A sound wakes her. Isabella opens her eyes halfway, sleep still weighing down her eyelids. Beyond the skylight, stars puncture the darkness. She rolls onto her side, searching for the comfortable position she has lost. With her forehead resting against the bare skin of her husband’s back, she exhales and settles beneath the covers. “Mama?” Her eyes fly open. Isabella lies still, holding her breath. Sometimes the children next door wake in the middle of the night and scream for their mother, but this voice is different. It is quiet and close....

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