The Sleeper

The hum of the fluorescent tube was the first thing that returned to me - a low, vibration-heavy drone that seemed to rattle the bones of my skull before my eyes even blinked open; sore, dry, and encrusted as they were.

I sat up. The movement was accompanied by the dry rustle of a paper gown and the sharp, hot pinch of an IV needle tearing from the back of my left hand. I stared at the bead of dark blood welling on my skin. I called it my hand, as it was the source of the pain, and moved when I commanded it to. But I didn't know whose hand it was. I could not recognize it.

I learned then that I didn't even know my name. I didn't know why I was in a hospital bed. Memory, I realized with a creeping spike of cold panic, was a blank slate, scrubbed clean with terrifying precision.

The room was aggressively sterile. Pale green tiles, a metal bedside tray, and a single window. I swung my legs over the edge of the mattress, and they ached as they pressed themselves against the ice-cold linoleum, forcing me to stand. I walked to the window and pressed my palms to the glass.

There was nothing outside.

It wasn't just fog. It was a thick, curdled, yellow-gray miasma that pressed directly against the glass like a physical knee, swirling in slow, non-Newtonian eddies. It looked heavy, almost turgid, blotting out the sky, the ground, and any semblance of a world beyond these walls. Except, I thought, there might be the faintest of outlines of an oak tree that seemed several yards away from the building. I backed away from the window and turned to the heavy wooden door that I assumed was to my restroom. I grabbed the metal handle, but it did not turn. Locked? I knocked on the door. “Hello?”

There was a sound I couldn’t quite make out on the other side. Pat-pat-pat-pat-pat. It sounded something like light, quick, rustling footsteps, though they felt misplaced – they had no rhythm. They were just frantic patting. Silence.

I stood there in quiet astonishment for several moments. Now, with a tremor in my voice, I asked again, “Hello?”

I tried the door handle once more; this time it turned. Slowly, I pushed the door open, peeking with resignation to see what had been making that tapping sound. First, I saw the mirror, and the sink below it. I noticed the cabinet doors beneath that. Then there was the toilet, wiped spotless with a calming sheen. I peeked at the wall across the toilet, then behind the door. I looked up at the ceiling tiles encasing these now familiar fluorescent lights. There was nothing to be found in this room. I closed the door and went to leave my room when I saw my chart at the edge of my bed. I picked it up with hopes of finding something to remind me who I am, and why I am here.

My face dropped in agitation when I saw that all pages of my chart had been ripped away, save for one, which read:

“October 3, 11:15 PM

Patient presents with acute, chronic insomnia, though outwardly healthy. Reports an inability to achieve REM sleep for the past three weeks. Vital signs are normal. Prescribed a low dose of zolpidem and advised to maintain a consistent sleep hygiene routine. Patient seemed hesitant to leave the office, staring intently at the floor beneath my desk. Nothing clinically alarming yet, but the exhaustion is clearly taking a toll on their affect.”

That was that, then. I still don’t know who I am, but I am here simply because I cannot sleep. I looked around this aseptic room for a call button to summon a nurse, but could not find one. I assumed those were for patients who had more pressing demands than one who could not sleep. It was time to leave this room and find somebody. A doctor, a nurse, a medical assistant, or even the janitor if that’s what it took to remember who I am.

I found the door to the hallway and left the safety of my room.

"Hello?" My voice sounded thin, swallowed instantly by the vast, dead air.

No. The air wasn’t dead. It was… empty. There wasn’t a breeze, no thickness or lack thereof. I smelled nothing and heard nothing. My skin broke out in bumps as the hair on the back of my neck stood on end at the distress of this realization. Something wasn’t right in this hospital.

The hallway stretched in both directions, a perspective-bending illusion of infinite retreat. Doors, identical and shut, lined the walls beneath a ceiling of flickering white lights. There were no exit signs. No red-glowing arrows. Only the endless, monotonous green tiling.

The silence was total, save for the hum of the lights and, beneath it, I realized as I paled, a rhythmic, bass-heavy thrum. It sounded like the beating of a massive, wet heart far below the building’s bottom floor, and it seemed to radiate from the walls. I gulped, and my throat closed for a moment as my mouth went dry when I realized I didn’t just hear it – I could feel it.

I began to walk. The feeling of in-betweenness, of liminality, was suffocating; every turn looked exactly like the last.

How long had passed, I could not say, until I came to a waiting area, which felt displaced among this labyrinth of identical hallways. Vinyl chairs sat arranged around a coffee table, but there were no magazines, no trash, no signs of life save for one singular coffee cup at the reception desk. When I reached for it, the cup was cold as ice – this drink had been here for quite some time. Behind this cup, closer to the monitor a receptionist would use, I found the first anomaly.

A leather-bound ledger lay open, and a loose sheet of paper sat atop it that was not alike the other pages in this book. In contrast to the old coffee, the ink was fresh, glistening under the artificial lights. I leaned over and read the elegant yet spidery handwriting that seemed to be the same as what was on my chart.

“October 10, 2:00 AM

Second follow-up. The zolpidem had no effect; neither did the heavier clonazepam regimen I switched them to on Monday. Patient’s eyes are bloodshot, rimmed in deep purple. They claim they can sleep, but refuse to do so in their bed. When pressed, they muttered something about "the architecture of the drywall being unstitched" when they close their eyes. Not sure what that means—likely early-stage sleep-deprivation psychosis. Increased dosage and referred them for a nocturnal polysomnography.”

There were two other pages along with it.

“October 17, 4:30 AM

The lab results are baffling. We strapped them to the EEG, ECG, and pulse oximeter. The moment they drift into stage one sleep, their brain activity flatlines completely, yet their motor functions remain active. They sat straight up on the cot, perfectly rigid, and whispered, "It’s breathing through the grout." The nurses are spooked. I tried to review the telemetry data, but every digital file from last night's session is corrupted with massive blocks of static. The analog backup just has a low, rhythmic thumping sound, like wet heavy masonry shifting in the dark.”

And,

“October 24, 5:45 AM

They haven’t left the clinic. They refuse to go home. They say their house "widened its throat" while they were at work. I tried to discharge them today, but they grabbed my wrist. The grip was entirely too strong for a person who hasn't eaten in a week; their skin felt… porous, almost wet to the touch. They begged me to drill holes in their skull to "let the draft out." I locked them in the observation ward. I am cancelling my patients for the day. I keep hearing a sound in the ceiling tiles, like someone scraping fingernails across wet slate, keeping time with a heartbeat that isn't mine.”

A cold sweat broke out across my collarbone. A vacant temple. Devoid of identity. I touched my temple. My skin felt clammy. Why is my chart seemingly scattered around the building for anyone to see? Why am I the only one with any information about them? Why am I the only one here? AM I the only one here?

I pushed deeper into the labyrinth. The hospital's geometry was beginning to feel wrong. Hallways seemed to slope downward at angles that should have been impossible, yet my feet remained flat. I passed a window that looked out onto an inner courtyard, barely visible through the choking yellow mist. Something dark and impossibly vast shifted within the fog – a silhouette of segmented, writhing limbs that defied biological sense.

I looked away, my stomach turning with a sudden, violent wave of nausea. To look at it was to invite a headache that felt like a drill spinning into my prefrontal cortex. As if I had thought such a pain into existence, I collapsed hard to the rough green below, though the pain was in the back of my head. It did feel like a drill, digging its way through my skin, my skull, deeper and deeper. I went fetal as I clutched the back of my head, and I screamed.

I felt warm liquid on the back of my head. I managed to pull myself to my knees and look at my hands, which were covered in blood. I screamed again, just as the drilling stopped. But the source of my pain had only been replaced by another, as now it felt like a slab of my skull was being removed from its place by an unseen hand. My eyes were blurred and watery, while my throat was so dry I thought I might suffocate.

Finally, that feeling receded as well. What came next wasn’t painful, yet was the most unnerving part of this experience thus far. I shakily stood to my feet as I felt a numb scraping in the back of my head. It didn’t hurt, but it was deep. Too deep. I knew that this careful scratching was against the folds of my brain itself. Such an experience made me rapidly nauseous, and I leaned forward to puke, though nothing came out of me. Through this disturbing sensation I became increasingly aware of the emptiness around me. I could feel it in my heart; this nothingness was alive, and it wanted me to be empty as well. I cannot rightfully explain this through words, but all I know is that this wholesome nothingness had sensed me in this hospital and was fast approaching. I could feel it rushing through the empty corridors. It came faster and faster, moving at pace with my rapidly beating heart. Sweat began to pool at my feet from my sheer terror. What choices did I have?

I ran.

I ran down the endless green corridor, past closed doors, past empty gurneys, until I found a pair of metal doors, unlike the endless line of singular wooden doors that spread for miles ahead. They were marked NEUROLOGY – PRIVATE LAB. I pushed against them, expecting resistance, but they flung open as I stumbled ahead of them. I landed with a pained groan as the doors swung shut behind me. 

Inside, the sterile atmosphere gave way to something far more archaic and grotesque.

The room was a clash of eras. Modern surgical monitors and steel prep tables sat alongside towering bookshelves filled with crumbling, vellum-bound tomes. The walls were covered not in medical charts, but in sweeping, hand-drawn diagrams of non-Euclidean angles and celestial maps that did not depict our solar system. At the center of the room sat a massive copper cylinder, connected to a dialysis machine by tubes filled with a thick, iridescent black fluid. There was a small radio on the main desk which turned on and began to play as I approached. I did not recognize the song or the musicians, but it sounded like two young women singing in discordant harmony with a cheery piano tune, though their voices sounded less cheery and more… taunting. “I know you belong to somebody new, but tonight you belong to me. Although we're apart, you're a part of my heart. And tonight you belong to me.”

I attempted to turn off the radio, pushing every button I could find. I even ripped the cord out of the wall, yet still they sang. They sang and sang until they hit their final line, “With the dawn that you will be gone. But tonight you belong to me - just to little old me.” With that, a solid red light on the radio faded away. The device was off again, leaving me in complete silence. I stood frozen in terror for what felt like ten minutes, shuddering quietly, until I finally found the courage to explore the contents of the desk.

In the one unlocked drawer, I found a brass dictaphone sitting next to an open medical file. I pressed the play button on the machine.

A voice, dry and raspy like dry leaves scraping over stone, filled the dark room.

"This is Dr. Silas Thorne, on October 31, at 6:00 AM.

The door to the observation ward was unlocked this morning, though I distinctly remember throwing the deadbolt. The bed is empty. The sheets are soaked in a thick, translucent fluid that smells faintly of brackish ocean water and old copper. They left their chart on the pillow. The final pages aren't written in ink. They look like they were carved into the paper with a blunt instrument, deep and jagged, tearing through the pulp. I can’t stop looking at them. The shapes almost make sense if I tilt my head and let my eyes go out of focus.

Ph’nglui mglw’nafh... hrii’zn y-mgah’nah llll... Ia! Ia! Ny-gha’ghaa shoggoth-n’ghft... K’lv r’lyeh nnn-ah... zzzah... ka-al’th...”

There was a sigh, then a long pause. I thought perhaps the doctor had forgotten to turn the device off when the device let off a whirring screech, and the doctor yelled, “BLESSED ARE THE BLIND FOR THEY SHALL NOT SEE THE TIDE COMING UP THROUGH THE FLOORBOARDS.”

He then began to sob, and through chokes and rasps he whispered. “The Great Dreamer begins a new cycle, and his vessel is nearly ready.”

The recording clicked off.

With trembling hands, I picked up the medical file on the desk. My fingers fumbled with the clasp. I opened it.

There was a photograph paper-clipped to the first page.

It was some time before I realized it had to be a picture of me. Now I at least knew what I looked like.

Beneath the photo, written in that same spidery, elegant handwriting, was a single medical note:

Subject: The Vessel.

 Status: Memory purged. Ready for descension.

 Note: If the subject wakes before the integration, do not panic. The geometry of the ward is locked. There are no exits. They are trapped in the Threshold. The mist will seep in eventually. It always does.

A sudden, sharp hiss cut through the silence of the lab.

I spun around. The ceiling vents were spewing plumes of the yellow-gray fog from outside. It poured down like heavy dry ice, pooling on the floor and rising rapidly. The smell hit me - a suffocating mixture of ancient brine, ozone, and rotting lilies.

I ran to the double doors, but when I pushed them open, the corridor was gone. In its place was a sheer, dizzying drop into a yawning abyss of spiraling stone steps that stretched down into an infinite, dark sea. The yellow mist rose from the depths, carrying with it a sound like a thousand wet voices whispering a word to me – that word was my name, I came to remember.

I backed away from the abyss while feeling myself being pulled in by the same powerful emptiness that pursued me in the hallways.

A new pain sprang to life in the back of my head. It felt like staples, very large staples, clipping into my skull over and over, forming a strange square shape with exaggerated points. I struggled to remain on my feet as the sensation changed to that of tugging – thread was pulling the skin of my head taut around where I had felt the staples. All the while I fumbled, the cold grip of the deep pulled harder and harder as I screamed and scurried to the far end of the office. The walls of the office changed from dull steel to molded wooden boards. I spun around, and the hospital was gone – I was in the hull of a sinking ship. The black waters of the abyss rose to swallow me whole, the light from my lamps fading in the icy dark while my head burned with pain, then began to numb. My whole head was numb. I opened my mouth to scream, but was swallowed before I could make a sound, and all was the nothingness; that dreaded emptiness.

"Ah," Dr. Thorne’s voice echoed, "You are awake."

I am awake in a hospital bed. My doctor explains that the procedure was a success, and I am soon discharged from the hospital, finally ready to expect a good night's sleep. I shake his hand and thank him before my neighbor kindly drives me home for the day. I remember nothing of the procedure, and the pain of the operation is a quiet one.

I lay down in my bed, more welcoming than ever, ready to finally sleep.

There was no hospital. There was no doctor.

There was only the Threshold, the endless fog, and the terrible, beautiful realization that I was finally, completely, empty.