The fear hit before I was even fully awake. A sharp, alien pressure on my back in the dead quiet of the night. I was sure something was alive under the blanket, pressed against my skin. My thoughts spiraled fast—venom, fangs, infection, crawling legs. The silence around me felt hostile. Every second stretched, my heartbeat loud,
When the light finally broke the darkness, it didn’t calm me; it only exposed the mystery. That strange, rough object on my back seemed to belong to another world. My family crowded into the room, circling the bed as if we’d discovered evidence of something impossible. No one could name it. Screens lit up, fingers zoomed in, theories piled on top of unease. In those long minutes, the unknown felt more dangerous than anything actually visible.
The truth, when it finally arrived, was almost humiliating in its simplicity: a dried scrap of cooked chicken, nothing more. The terror dissolved into awkward laughter, but the feeling it left behind didn’t vanish so easily. What lingered was the realization of how eagerly the mind abandons reason in the dark, how quickly imagination sharpens into certainty. The object was meaningless; the fear, painfully real.
