Triple-shot espresso was a terrible cure for a brain that had spent the night running a marathon in its sleep, but since society frowned on corporate designers napping under their desks, it was my only option for surviving the day.
The Daily Grind was a sensory overload at 8 AM on Tuesday. The place was crammed with over-caffeinated urbanites; the ambient noise felt like the guitarist from the indie folk ballad overhead was plucking the strings directly inside my sleep-deprived brain. My jaw-cracking yawn was lost in the screech of a milk-steamer, the wet sloshing of the espresso machine, and the aggressive shuffling of the morning rush crowding the counter.
My go-to coffee shop was usually a gloriously cozy sanctuary—a rare independent haven that successfully brought together both casual basic latte sippers and artisanal bean snobs under one roof. On any given day, you could watch a guy with a preened moustache aggressively debate the micro-climate of a single-origin Ethiopian roast right next to a grandmother peacefully knitting a neon cardigan. The air was a comforting fog of dark roasts, toasted hazelnuts, and steamed oat milk, punctuated by the rhythmic clinking of ceramic mugs and a low, buzzing hive-mind of conversation.
The café’s layout was just as eccentric as its clientele, packed with a mismatched assortment of furniture. Traditional booth seats lined one wall, facing a motley crew of bistro, wingback, and wishbone chairs, with one coveted pair of club chairs tucked into a corner, their scratched leather and sunken cushions worn from countless hours of deep thoughts and spilled lattes. Above the seating, the walls featured a rotating gallery of local artists, all for sale, creating a chaotic kaleidoscope of styles and subjects. Once, thoroughly peer-pressured by Heather, my supportive BFF, I had even submitted my own painting—a Neo-impressionistic piece inspired by a recurring dream. It hung there for an embarrassingly long time, serving as a glaring wall-bound reminder of my artistic hubris. For a solid month, finding a place to sit required a strategic game of musical chairs just so I wasn’t sitting face-to-face with it, turning my morning caffeine runs into a daily exercise in avoiding self-inflicted psychological trauma. Mercifully, it did leave one day—my first and only sale.
Normally, I played the role of a well-adjusted adult who pretended to care about over-caffeinating. But that fragile lie had been completely obliterated by a solid week of my subconscious using my brain as an experimental, late-night indie theatre.
My dreams had always been a bit of a disaster, but I’d endured a month-long spree of my sleepwalking alter-ego running an unauthorized, hyper-fixated midnight art studio. Whatever my hands found first, be it a stray charcoal pencil, an expensive tube of lipstick, or even a squeeze bottle of sriracha from the fridge, I’d spend my nocturnal hours obsessively sketching on any surface available.
Being a nighttime weirdo was nothing new, but it had gotten weirder in the last year, almost like turning 30 was a curse. So, six months ago I’d spent a few glamorous nights at a sleep clinic, hooked up to more wires than a Christmas tree at a tech convention.
Trying to catch some Z’s in a sterile room that smelled like a depressing cocktail of industrial bleach and a laundromat’s lost-sock bin was an art form. The doctors eventually presented me with video evidence of my nocturnal double life: there I was, in all my majestic, unicorn-pajamas-clad glory, frantically scratching at the walls, tearing my own fingernails down to the quick just to etch fragments of weirdly fantastical or oddly historical images into the drywall. Intricate, interlocking textile weaves that belonged in a medieval tapestry museum, the silhouettes of high-collared waistcoats, and barely humanoid creatures with claws, wings, or elfin ears. My least favourite scenes featured a hulking shape with a jagged-toothed grin, long claws, and ravenous eyes always sketched soulless black. It had all the charm of a low-budget, found-footage horror film. Thank God my condition was strictly a stationary art crisis rather than actual wandering or attempts at midnight escapes, but living a double life where my subconscious was a frustrated historical-fantasy illustrator was an exhausting way to exist.
To distract my eyes from crossing with sheer exhaustion, I whipped out my phone. Right on cue, a digital banner flashed across the top of the glass—a notification from the dating app that Heather, my lifelong best friend and self-appointed romantic warden, had practically held me at gunpoint to download.
New message from Mark.
I tapped it open, squinting through the glare at his perfectly polite, textbook-flirty greeting. On paper, Mark was a certified catch. Seriously. He was conventionally hot, possessed the holy grail of a stable job as an accountant, volunteered with rescue dogs, and—miracle of miracles—actually used correct punctuation and grammar in text messages. He was everything a rational, functional human being was supposed to want. Yet, staring down at his message, my emotional response was a resounding, cavernous nothing.
It was a depressing, recurring theme. Every guy I swiped right on, every match I tried to banter with, every poor soul I’d sat across from at a trendy cocktail bar or awkwardly mingled with on a double date left me completely numb. It was this persistent, echoing sense of absence, like walking into a room and knowing you forgot something crucial but having no idea what it was. My romantic life was a puzzle missing the exact piece that tied the whole picture together, leaving me staring at a blank canvas with no inspiration.
“Dani! Large maple latte, extra shot!”
The barista’s shout shattered my thousand-yard stare. Shaking off the drowsy disappointment, I shoved my phone into my bag and shuffled toward the wooden pickup counter, my hand automatically reaching for the steaming cardboard cup of life-saving fluids.
But just as my fingertips hovered an inch above the lid, a prickle needled down my spine. The fine hairs on both forearms stood up in a rush. A deep, insistent instinct begged for a look upward.
Exhaustion, unfortunately, overrode my hard-learned caution. A loud thunk against the window pulled my attention. Outside, a bird pecked at the glass frantically—a strange, ragged creature with feathers frayed and thinning in spots, its eyes caked with clumps of black goop. It hammered on the glass harder, a pointed splinter forming at the tip of its chipped beak, striking until its tiny head twisted sharply.
The sickening sight triggered an immediate flinch, my body reacting before my brain could by shifting backward with a desperate urge to run. But my feet didn’t get the memo. A heel caught on the strap of my laptop bag, sending everything tumbling off-balance, my spine careening directly into a solid chest.
My fingers lost their precarious grip, and the steaming latte slipped, tumbling away. Facial muscles flinched, and eyelids shut tight, bracing for the inevitable splash of third-degree burns and a very embarrassing trip to the ER.
But the scalding wave never hit. Out of nowhere, a hand swooped through the air with an impossible, liquid grace that completely defied physics. Long, elegant fingers clamped firmly around the cardboard sleeve, effortlessly plucking the cup out of its death-drop before a single drop could paint the tile floor.
“Careful there,” a voice murmured.
I turned around, an anxious apology already queuing up, but the words dried on my tongue the instant I saw him. Limbs locked. I forgot how to breathe.
He was a Grecian sculpture brought to life. Except marble was far too cold a medium to describe him. He seemed sculpted from sunlight and gold. High cheekbones and a flawlessly straight nose cast soft shadows across his warm, golden skin. His full lips were tipped into a slight half-smile, like he was this close to whispering a secret. Golden hair caught the coffee shop’s fluorescent lights like a literal halo. Like a magazine page from a summer spread, he was perfectly put together in a sand-striped linen button-down and high-waisted, pleated chocolate trousers. The lightweight fabrics did nothing to hide the lean contours of his muscled physique. With his sleeves rolled casually to his mid-forearms and a relaxed drawstring tied at his waist, even the sunglasses hanging from his open collar looked too perfectly posed. He was utterly, devastatingly gorgeous, standing out from the drab morning crowd like a masterpiece meant for the Louvre but hung from a middle-class living room wall.
But it wasn’t just his looks that paralyzed me. Time completely warped. The screech of the milk-steamer and the clatter of mugs dulled into a distant, muffled hum—like I’d suddenly been transported into a slow-motion music video. The light was too perfect. The moment too focused.
A wave of comfort, thick and intoxicatingly warm, rolled off him. My body responded before my conscious mind could even process it—a sudden pulling sensation.
I was staring. Scratch that, I was gaping. I had crossed the line from a standard social blunder straight into borderline creepy, but I couldn’t stop.
Blushing furiously, I finally forced my brain to reboot. “God, I’m so sorry! I just completely lost my balance, and—I… I’m sorry. Thanks—for the save.”
His low chuckle vibrated right through the air between us. “No harm done,” he said, stepping just a fraction closer to offer my cup back. His smile was smooth, charming, and heavy with a subtle, magnetic confidence. The unnatural amber vibrancy of his eyes locked onto mine.
As I reached out to take the maple latte from him, our fingers brushed. Even though it was a stifling September morning, he wore black leather gloves. Maybe that was why his hands were so warm. Heat bled through the leather, seeping into my skin with far more intensity than the steaming coffee cup between us.
With that heat came a staggering, breath-stealing déjà vu. A dizzying sensation whispered that something familiar was happening. I know you.
My brows furrowed, and I squinted up at him as the words spilled past my lips, completely unauthorized by my rational mind. “I’m sorry… You look so familiar. But my brain is running on three percent battery right now. We’ve met before, right?”
For a fleeting, beautiful second, his amber eyes softened. The small tug at the corners of his lips flashed a brief, radiant hint of profound relief. I felt it too. The relief of an exhale after holding my breath so long.
Like the flip of a switch, his brightness shut off, leaving him with a flash of panic. He stiffened, pulling his hand back as if my words had burned him. The open, hopeful stranger vanished, his gaze unnervingly blank.
A sudden turn cut off any chance to apologize or ask what I’d done wrong. The golden Adonis vanished into the sea of morning commuters on the sidewalk before the bell above the door had even stopped jingling.
A heavy silence followed, leaving me an amateur statue carved in the middle of The Daily Grind, holding the recovered latte while a hot flush of utter confusion and pure mortification burned my face. A quick glance back toward the corner window revealed an expected nothing—no bird, no crack in the glass—leaving only the nagging dread that a sleep-deprived brain had hallucinated every single minute of my soured meet-cute.
A few corporate types in line glanced over with weird, pitying looks. I took a slow sip of my coffee, letting the caffeine burn my tongue just to ground myself in the physical world.
Typical Dani. Can’t even accept a smooth save from a gorgeous stranger without completely ruining a human connection. Again.
***
As a natural introvert, a creature of solitude who viewed small talk as a form of low-grade torture, being assertive and talkative, even in the most benign of situations, drained my energy reserves like a vampire at a blood bank.
So, a morning meeting reviewing feedback from a fussy client was not a great way to start an exhausted day. Dislike wasn’t the issue—not toward the job or my coworkers. Most of my fellow graphic designers were fuelled by the same over-caffeinated blend of existential dread. The creative director and team leads were older, wiser, and mostly capable of encouraging without veering into the dreaded territory of micromanaging disguised as motivational speeches.
“That could’ve gone worse, I guess,” Asha, my desk-neighbour, murmured. Her heels clicked against the hallway linoleum. “But a monitor might get Hulk-smashed if another client asks for ‘more movement.’ Why does no one get loading speeds?”
“I’m rooting for smashing. We need new monitors,” I replied, forcing a smile that didn’t quite reach my eyes. I was an artist at heart—or at least, a wannabe professional one. The crushing weight of student loans and a lack of self-confidence had steered me into the corral of corporate graphic design, and I’d done little to escape since.
We rounded the corner near the reception desk just as a new client, Mr. Fulton, swept past us with the Account Director.
The air instantly turned to ash in my throat. For a terrible, panicked heartbeat, the corridor warped inward. The fluorescent lights didn’t hit Mr. Fulton quite right; his human features flickered like a glitchy screen. Black feathers erupted through his skin, pinning down his tie. His jawline stretched forward into a hooked, yellow beak that snapped at the empty air, and his eyes dilated until the iris was swallowed completely by pitch-black.
My knees threatened to buckle. I’d spent years in my childhood dragged to clinical, beige-walled offices because my parents were convinced my ‘vivid imagination’ was a cry for help. I’d learned the hard way that you don’t tell a therapist you see monsters in suits. You learn to smile, to look at your shoes, and to lie until they let you go home.
Sleep deprivation, I told myself, staring pointedly at the linoleum as I willed the vision to dissolve. You just need sleep. It’s an overactive imagination, that’s all. Look away.
A metallic vibration shattered the paralysis. The harsh glare of my phone screen provided a welcome return to reality.
It was a text from Heather, my lifelong BFF, illuminating the glass.
Heather: Did you reply to the guy from Hinge yet? You’re meeting him at 7:00. Don’t bail on me, Dani. You need to get out of your head!
With a deep breath in and out, I forced the horrific image of that avian nightmare into a mental box labelled ‘Insomnia-induced weirdness’ and slammed the lid shut. When my eyes drifted back up, Mr. Fulton was just an ordinary man with a very average nose, laughing politely at a joke the Account Director made. Dull, brown eyes with no monstrous glow. Short, greying hair combed neatly, with no feathers poking through his skin.
I typed back a noncommittal emoji, trying to ignore the dread lumped in my stomach. The Hinge guy was a corporate accountant who might be a catch for any other normal person. Another disappointing meet-up, however, sounded exhausting—an attempt to light a wet match where a spark should be.
My mind immediately betrayed me, drifting back to the stranger from the coffee shop collision. An Adonis with amber eyes of unexpected intensity, as if he’d witnessed the birth of stars. I didn’t even know his name, but there was a page in my sketchbook reserved for those curiously familiar eyes. If even one guy on the dating apps had half that energy, I’d already have a plus-one to Heather’s wedding next summer.
Heather’s next text bubbled up: I’m rooting for you! Don’t make me walk down the aisle while you’re sitting at the lonely hearts table.
The sigh reflected in the office window was an inspiring sight. Avoiding the awkwardness of being the ‘single friend’ was the only reason I willingly entered the gladiatorial arena of modern dating.
The heavy sigh reflected in the glaring glass of the office window wasn’t exactly an inspiring sight. Avoiding the awkwardness of being the token ‘single friend’ next summer was the only reason I had willingly entered the gladiatorial arena of modern dating.
I texted back: I’m not chickening out. Then, tossing the phone onto my desk, I buried myself back in the dull monotony of resizing vectors and tracking deadlines, letting the rest of the afternoon blur into a haze of screen-glare.
My mind wandered while my fingers went through the corporate motions. Heather’s fiancée, Arjan, had proposed in June. It was a development I was both genuinely happy for and slightly, irrationally resentful about. Long gone were the uni days of spontaneous movie nights, throwing popcorn at the TV, and complaining about the latest dating app horror stories. Now, everything was planned weeks in advance, meticulously scheduled around work trips, date nights, and group hangouts with his friends I barely knew. As much as I was seriously happy for Heather’s newfound domestic bliss, it left my own decidedly undomesticated life feeling a little… lonely. And messy. Heather was my only other real roommate experience—unless you counted the years I’d shared a bathroom with my sister, hoarding conditioner and fighting for the last makeup wipe.
No guy had ever felt right. Sure, I could fool myself for a month, tops, convincing myself that a guy who only communicated in memes was peak romance. Maybe I was picky. Maybe I was the problem. The blank space in my future was a flaw of my own design. The gut-punch of turning thirty hadn’t helped. How was I supposed to vibe with compatibility when I was still figuring out what the hell I wanted to be when I grew up? Other than being employed, of course.
By the time I finally escaped the office, endured the crowded transit ride home, and kicked off my work heels, the clock had ticked toward the evening hours of another dull day.
At 7:00 PM, the latest episode of my favourite space opera dropped, a sacred ritual in my Tuesday night schedule. Most Tuesdays, Heather and I had watch parties—a shared experience of intergalactic drama and questionable special effects. But with her out of town for the week, I was left to navigate space politics alone, forced to hold in my spoilers until she had a chance to catch up.
It turned into an uneventful, quiet evening. Just me, a plate of spaghetti bolognese, and the starship crew.
Lucky me, it was exactly this kind of solo evening—when stress-inducing deadlines were distant, and a rare burst of inspiration caught me feeling awake—that I dusted off my sketchbook. The friction of the pencil against the textured paper was instantly soothing. Immersed in the lines and shading, anxiety melted away, leaving me completely lost in the world of my own creation. I didn’t know what possessed me or how my brain had catalogued his features so flawlessly, but within an hour, a startlingly life-like sketch of my coffee shop crush stared back at me. The man with the amber eyes. Just for fun, I inked him into a starship uniform, imagining him offering to beam me up on an interstellar adventure. As I’d thought, he made a dashing starship captain. Leadership suited him.
The sudden itch to create a painted version struck—to capture the warmth of his gaze in vibrant, golden acrylics. A blank canvas practically begged from the corner of the room. But a glance at the stove clock warned it was already 9:30 PM, a dangerous hour to indulge impulses. Starting now would make tomorrow a day of bleary-eyed exhaustion and caffeine-fuelled regret. With a major morning meeting on the horizon, I needed to look presentable.
Tomorrow-Dani better be grateful. Away went the pencils and sketchpad, and I washed the smudges from my hands. I bid my muse goodnight.
The usual bedtime rituals followed. Beyond the standard brushing and washing, I double-checked all the locks, dead-bolted the front door, and secured the window latches tightly—a mandatory precaution in case my sleep-artistry ever progressed to full-on sleep-wandering. Finally slipping into my pyjamas, I clicked off the bedside lamp and cocooned myself under blankets.
After a brief, guilty scroll through my phone—violating yet one more rule my sleep doctor had prescribed—I toggled on the brown noise machine. A digital loop of heavy rainfall and distant thunderstorms drowned out the sirens and the city’s restless hum.
Sleep never came quickly; my mind was a relentless carousel of anxieties and phantoms. The tossing and turning settled with the growing exhaustion, the demands of a tired body finally crushing my aimless thoughts. And then, the dream came again.
It always started in a dry, barren field, an expanse of endless nothing beneath a bruised iron sky. Then came the pressure—a tickle of warm breath on the back of my neck, a touch shivering down my spine. Familiar voices I couldn’t remember whispered my name: Danielle.
Spinning in circles, I searched the void, but found no faces, no bodies to touch. Only another voice calling from just behind me. Only the weight of invisible hands tracing lines across my skin, dragging me toward a choice that materialized from the dust.
To my left, thick, vibrant vines crawled out of the cracked earth, weaving together to form a path that pulsed with a warm, radiant gold. It smelled of summer, crushed wildflowers, and a blinding, solar heat that promised safety. To my right, the earth split with a sharp crack, throwing up jagged, shimmering black stones that smoothed into a velvet-dark trail. Cool, quiet, patient, bittersweet with evening rain and rich autumn spices.
Every night the dream came, a choice tugged in my chest. Some nights, I’d step toward the gold. Other nights, my feet found the stones.
But I never arrived. Before I could discover where either path led, a devouring bitterness interrupted. The stench of wet earth, stagnant water, and a forgotten, crumbling rot. Haggard hands erupted from the dirt, sharp nails digging into my ankles with agonizing strength, dragging me down into a dark abyss that tasted like copper and dust.
In that moment of near-death, I woke up.
Sitting at my desk in the dark, my lungs finally expanded with real oxygen. It took a moment to realize I was out of bed. Like every night I had the dream, my subconscious had marched me straight to the nearest art supplies. At least this time it was a pencil instead of toothpaste.
Meagre moonlight bathed the desk, barely enough to illuminate my sketchpad. Dusty graphite smudges painted my fingers a deep charcoal, save for the stinging, thin line of crimson welling from a fresh paper-cut along my index finger—a casualty of a clumsy, asleep-at-the-page flip.
Groggily dragging feet to the kitchen sink, I washed my hands, wincing as the soap bit into the cut. The apartment was completely silent. Everything was exactly as I’d left it, undisturbed. My brain had only let me wander as far as my desk.
Returning to the desk, I flipped the lamp switch, blinking against the sudden, aggressive brightness. The fresh page I’d turned to was blank, save for the single droplet of my blood smeared near the margin. I flipped back a page to see what I’d drawn in my trance.
My heart leaped into my throat. Pounded. Nausea rolled through my stomach.
Staring back at me from the textured paper was a nightmare. It was a twisted parody of a jolly elf: bony, emaciated arms ending in talon-like claws, beady eyes glinted with eager malice, and a matted, filthy beard parted by a snarl of needle-like teeth. The creature wore a slouched, loose cap.
My stomach rolled in another nauseous wave as I realized my blood from the previous page had bled through the paper, staining the creature’s headwear. A red cap. The macabre detail made the accidental colour feel horribly deliberate.
Shuddering with a mix of disgust and a whole lot of panic, I ripped the page from the binding, crumpling the pencilled horror into a tight ball. Squeezed until the anxiety settled. Part of me wanted to tear it into a thousand pieces, maybe burn it, but a strange instinct told me to hold onto it. I shoved the paper ball into my desk drawer, slamming it shut.
After re-checking the deadbolts and window latches with unsteady hands, I practically sprinted back to bed, pulling the blanket over my head to hide from the dark.