It started with dreams. Not the garden-variety ‘forgot to wear pants’ or ‘driving up a vertical hill in a gas-less car’ kind of dream. No, these were the ‘wake up standing, somewhere completely random’ kind of dreams. My years of dedicated side-sleeping officially ended at 23. I’d find myself in the elevator, mid-descent, in January, wearing nothing but my unicorn pyjamas. Or, my personal favourite, standing outside my favourite coffee shop at 3 AM, long before they’d even considered brewing their first pot. That’s when I decided a doctor’s appointment wasn’t a suggestion; it was a sanity intervention.
So, I spent a few nights hooked up to more wires than a Christmas tree at a tech convention, trying to relax in a room that smelled like a hospital mixed with a laundromat’s lost sock bin. They even showed me a video of myself, in all my unicorn-pajama-clad glory, morphing into a glassy-eyed, door-jiggling escape artist. A few times, I attempted to scratch fragments of nonsense images on the wall. It was like a found-footage horror film, except the monster was me. At least my pyjamas were cute.
My nocturnal adventures were infrequent, and—so far—my sleepwalking alter ego hadn’t tried anything too dramatic, like, say, setting the kitchen on fire or re-enacting a Mission Impossible stunt from a high-rise window. Mostly, it was travelling unwillingly and wasting art supplies. Still, I wasn’t taking any chances.
I transformed my apartment into a maximum-security fortress: locks on everything, bolted doors, child locks on the drawers (because apparently, I’m a threat to my own cutlery). Dry February became dry forever—not that I was exactly a party animal before—not since my freshman university days. I tried the whole sleep mask and noise machine thing—cycling through white and pink noise—before finally settling on the rumbling thunder and heavy rainfalls of brown noise, which mostly just made me feel like I was camping during a hurricane. But none of it stopped the dreams.
In my head, I’d find myself standing in a dry, empty field. It was a wasteland of brown dirt and a darkened, yellow sky. Then, my hands would start prickling. I looked down to see red drops. Then, the rain would come, painting my hands crimson. A hand on the back of my neck would send a shiver down my spine, followed by a low voice whispering my name. Morgan. But when I turned, nothing. Then, another voice, another touch, another whisper. I’d spin in circles, searching for faces, but I was always alone.
Where the red droplets had fallen, vines would crawl out of the earth, twisting into a golden path to my left. And to my right, shimmering black stones would crack through the soil, forming a stony trail. Some nights, I’d follow the vines. On other nights, the stones. But before I could figure out where either path led, something would always grab me, dragging me into the suffocating abyss of complete darkness. And that’s when I’d wake up—standing in the real world, wondering if Amazon Prime offered express delivery on exorcists.
My waking hours, blessedly, remained stubbornly mundane. I still clocked in roughly 9 to 5—ish. The actual hours varied wildly, depending on deadline crunches and the day’s allowance for meetings. Some days, I’d squeeze into one of the shared cubicles in the office, another muted brushstroke in a maze of beige. On other days, I’d retreat to the cozy The Daily Grind coffee shop, a scenic twenty-minute walk from my apartment—a sacred caffeine pilgrimage for my poor, introverted soul.
I’d always worked best with a background buzz, a disturbingly sugary coffee, and a playlist that blended indie folk and acoustic pop. The days of remote work were a godsend, a refuge from the draining slump of team meetings and campaign planning sessions. Not that I disliked my coworkers. Most of my fellow graphic designers were my age, fueled 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.
But I was 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. The relative anonymity of coffee shop workdays was a treasure, a chance to recharge before the inevitable onslaught of human interaction.
And today, blessed Thursday, a remote workday, I had claimed the corner seat at The Daily Grind, transforming it into my temporary hobbit hole. The Daily Grind was a gloriously cozy mishmash, one of the few independent coffee shops that managed to appeal to everyone from casual sippers to artisanal bean snobs. It was the kind of place where you could find a hipster arguing about the merits of single-origin beans next to a grandma knitting a sweater.
It was a space overcrowded with mismatched furniture—traditional booth seats lined one wall, facing a motley crew of bistro, wingback, and wishbone chairs, with one coveted pair of club chairs in a corner, their scratched leather and sunken cushions worn from countless hours of deep thoughts and spilled lattes. The walls featured a rotating gallery of local artists, all for sale, creating a chaotic kaleidoscope of styles and subjects. Once, peer-pressured by my supportive BFF, I submitted my own painting, depicting a dream inspired by neo-impressionism, composed of hundreds of deliberate, precise marks. It hung there for an embarrassingly long time—a reminder of my artistic hubris. I had to strategically find a spot where I wasn’t face-to-face with it for a month, turning it into a daily exercise to avoid self-inflicted trauma. Mercifully, it did leave one day—my first and only sale.
The air was thick with the aroma of bold roasts, subtle florals, and earthy notes, punctuated by the clinking of mugs and the gentle hum of conversation— a comforting backdrop to my work. By 1 PM, I’d switched from sipping a mocha to cradling an Earl Grey latte. I tried to limit myself to no more than two coffees a day and never after noon, a suggestion to curb my sleepwalking—but that self-imposed rule didn’t apply to black tea. Usually, tea left me with less of a backlash, but still with all the comforts.
Yet, for some reason, the steeped tea in my hand wasn’t providing its usual calming effect. An unsettling prickle crawled up my neck, creating a sensation that someone was watching me. It wasn’t just the usual coffee shop buzz; it was a focused, predatory gaze. I tried to dismiss it, blaming a daydreamer staring into space. But the pressure intensified.
I attempted nonchalance, a series of subtle stretches designed to casually scan the room. I reached up, adjusted the claw clip that loosely pinned my rosy-blonde hair, turned towards the window, twisted my spine in a way that burned my muscles pleasantly, and then, finally, risked a glance to my right.
And there he was. All pretense of cool evaporated.
He looked like a Grecian sculpture come to life, sculpted from marble and sunlight. His amber eyes, impossibly bright, were fixed on me. His full lips curved into a half-smile like he was this close to whispering a secret. High cheekbones and a straight nose cast shadows across his golden skin. He leaned back in his chair, one leg crossed lazily at the ankle, a picture of effortless grace. He wore black leather gloves, even in the warmth of the shop. A beige mock-neck sweater peeked out from beneath the camel-brown overcoat draped over his shoulders, but even that couldn’t conceal the subtle lines of his slim, muscled physique.
He must have caught me staring, though I couldn’t tear my gaze away. Time seemed to warp, the coffee shop noise fading into a distant, muffled hum—like I’d suddenly been transported into a slow-motion music video. I know you.
Someone bumped my table, shattering the illusion, and I snapped back to reality, my cheeks burning as if I’d just run a marathon in a sauna. I turned to my laptop, pulling up emails, pretending to be utterly engrossed in the intricacies of font selection. But my eyes skimmed the words, my mind a blank slate. I couldn’t even decipher my own layout notes. I couldn’t shake the feeling that his gaze was still on me.
When I was sure I could maintain a semblance of composure, I risked another glance.
He was still there, his attention seemingly focused on something outside the window. But I could’ve sworn his smile deepened when I looked his way. It was as if he’d been waiting for me to look again, a silent game played across the crowded room. Or maybe that was just my over-caffeinated imagination running wild.
It didn’t matter. The weird flash of feeling that I recognized him was just butterflies. And I wasn’t the type to approach a stranger, to flirt, to offer my number. But…for the first time in my life, I felt a desperate urge to break my own rules, to step outside my carefully constructed comfort zone, to see if he was as dangerous as he looked. Because something about him, something in the way his eyes held mine, told me I needed to talk to him.
I cupped my now lukewarm Earl Grey, trying to conjure up a witty opening line. Just say, ‘Hey, looks like I caught your eye.’ No, that was less ‘flirty’ and more ‘creepy stalker.’ Just say, ‘Hi.’
My stomach churned like I’d swallowed a prickly pineapple whole. I’d never asked anyone out. I’d been asked—but making the first move? Impossible. I debated my strategy—or lack thereof—until my cup was dry, then took a sip from the empty cup twice, all while avoiding the inevitable moment of decision.
I had finally decided to give up when a loud thunk against the window drew my attention. Outside, a bird was pecking at the glass frantically. It was a strange bird, its feathers frayed and thinning in spots, its eyes caked with clumps of black goop. It banged harder on the glass, a pointed splinter forming at the tip of its chipped beak. I flinched, jerking away from the window.
To my right, chair legs scraped across the floor, a sound that snapped me out of my bewildered trance. I turned, eyes glued to the living Renaissance portrait as he stood, abandoning an untouched mug of coffee. He moved soundlessly to the door, his movements fluid and graceful. As he opened it, he looked at me, a flicker of something unreadable in his eyes. He hesitated, a moment of indecision that made him seem almost…like he knew me too. Like recognizing the face of an old classmate on transit but blanking on their name, so you wait with syllables on the tip of your tongue, but nothing comes.
The pausing thought passed. He brushed back his golden waves and left without another glance. It was hard to imagine someone that gorgeous and at ease hesitating, but maybe he’d been hoping that I’d brave the first move.
Whatever he’d thought of me—whatever reason he’d looked at me again—he was gone, leaving a void in the coffee shop that felt strangely significant. I’d missed my chance, a missed opportunity that felt heavier than it should. I tapped the ceramic lip of my empty mug and looked back to the window. The strange bird was gone, vanished into thin air. And so was the crack in the window glass, as if it had never existed.
⧫⧫⧫
I left The Daily Grind half an hour later, the smell of espresso clinging to my clothes, and returned to my apartment to benefit from the second screen at home. I messaged my BFF Heather about the almost-encounter. Annoyingly, instead of telling me the stars would align somehow, she told me that’s what I got for not shooting my shot.
Heather had gotten increasingly more practical since moving in with her boyfriend, Arjan. It was a development I was both genuinely happy for and slightly, irrationally resentful about. Gone were the days of spontaneous, last-minute movie nights that involved 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 (and whose names I still couldn’t quite remember). As much as I was happy for her newfound domestic bliss, it left my own decidedly undomesticated life feeling a little… lonely. And messy. Heather was my only other real experience with a roommate—unless you counted the years I’d shared a bathroom with my sister, hoarding conditioner and fighting for the last makeup wipe.
I’d never had a long-term boyfriend, let alone a live-in one. I’d never met anyone who felt right. Sure, I could fool myself for a month, tops, convincing myself that a guy who only communicated in memes was peak romance. But I certainly couldn’t picture a shared future. Hell, at twenty-five, I was still figuring out what the hell I wanted to be when I grew up—other than employed, of course.
At 7 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 she was out of town for the week, leaving me to navigate the space politics alone. I’d have to hold in my spoilers until she had a chance to watch it.
It was an uneventful evening, just me, a plate of spaghetti bolognese, and the starship crew. It was exactly this kind of solo evening—when I felt awake and inspired, a rare occurrence—that I dusted off my sketchbook. The feeling of a pencil on a sketchpad was a soothing sensation. It was like I wasn’t me—in a good way—just completely consumed in the lines and shading, lost in the world I was creating. I didn’t know what possessed me or how I remembered him well enough, but in an hour, I had a very life-like sketch of my coffee shop crush, the man with the amber eyes. Just for fun, I dressed him in a starship uniform, imagining him offering to beam me up on an interstellar adventure. As I thought, he made a dashing starship captain. Leadership suited him.
I had the itch to create a painted version—to capture his image in vibrant golden colours. I even had a blank canvas. But it was 9:30 PM, a dangerous hour for creative impulses. Starting now would make tomorrow dreadful, a day of bleary-eyed exhaustion and caffeine-fueled regret. And I had a morning meeting to attend, so I had to look presentable. So I put my pencils and sketchpad away, reluctantly biding my muse goodnight, and washed my hands.
I completed my usual bedtime rituals. Besides doing what every normal person does—brushing teeth, washing face, and the like—I also checked all the locks. I had the front door bolted and locked, the windows double-locked, and I put a baby gate a foot away from the door in the narrow hall. I put on my pyjamas, turned off the bedside lamp, and cocooned myself under the cozy layers of blankets. I did a quick phone scroll, a guilty pleasure—another thing I wasn’t supposed to do before bed—and then turned on my brown noise machine, a loop of heavy rainfall and thunderstorms.
I never fell asleep quickly, my mind a relentless carousel of thoughts and anxieties. But I tossed and turned less than usual, the exhaustion finally winning over my aimless thoughts. It seemed like an ordinary night until I felt a sharp slice along my fingertip. The sudden sting woke me.
I was sitting at my desk, bathed in the pale moonlight, my sketchpad and a pencil laid out. My hands were covered in graphite, smudged and dark, except for the thin line of red on my index finger, a crimson streak against the grey. It was a papercut caused by a clumsy attempt to turn the page in my sleep. I went to the kitchen sink immediately to wash my hands. The last thing I wanted was an infected paper cut. I looked around at the front door, the window, and the baby gate, searching for any sign of other slumbering misadventures. Everything was exactly as I’d left it, undisturbed. Apparently, whatever I’d drawn was really important to my subconscious.
I turned on the light, blinking at the sudden brightness. The fresh page I’d turned to was blank, marked only by the tiniest droplet of red from my cut, so I flipped back a page. My heart leapt into my throat. It was horrifying, a grotesque image that sent a wave of nausea through me. It was some humanoid creature, a twisted parody of a jolly elf: needle-like teeth snarling from a matted beard, bony arms ending in talon-like claws, beady eyes glinting with malice, a hooked nose, and a loose cap. I pushed the sketchbook away, feeling nauseous. The red droplet stuck the pages together, bleeding through and giving the creature’s slouched hat a rosy tone—a red cap. The macabre detail amplified the horror.
I groaned, a sound of disgust and fear, and ripped the two pages out, crumpling them into tight balls. I was about to toss the penciled nightmare into the trash, but decided to hang onto it just in case. I shoved it in the desk drawer, a temporary hiding place, re-checked all the safety measures, and then went back to bed, pulling the blankets over my head.