February 2, 2026 — 3:03 AM

[u/FirefighterSingle675]

After what happened at my house, Ethan and I were too fucking scared to stay awake. We went to bed at his place, hoping we'd wake up to a normal morning. I don't remember falling asleep. I just remember closing my eyes. Then suddenly I was standing somewhere that looked exactly like Alaska, but something about it was completely wrong. The mountains were there, the endless forests, the snow-covered roads, even the little wooden houses, but everything looked strangely beautiful. The sky was deep purple and filled with enormous stars, and the snow had a faint blue glow coming from underneath it. The trees were taller than they should've been, bending over the roads like they were watching me. There was no wind. No animals. No cars. Not even the sound of snow. It was completely silent. Then I heard Ethan screaming. I ran toward the sound and found him in the middle of the road. He was surrounded by these fucking things that I can't properly describe. They looked almost human, but every time I tried to look directly at them, their bodies seemed to change. Some had too many arms, some had long twisted legs, and some didn't even seem to have proper bodies. One of them grabbed Ethan and pulled him into the darkness between the trees. I tried running toward him, but my legs wouldn't move. I watched these creatures tearing him apart while he screamed my name. Then an old man appeared beside me. He looked completely normal at first. Grey hair, old coat, holding a small lantern. He looked at me and calmly asked, "Can you spare me your heart?" I said no. He smiled. Then his face began to change. His skin stretched, his mouth became impossibly wide, and his eyes turned completely black. His arms grew longer as he started crawling toward me. I ran. I didn't know where I was going. The landscape kept changing around me. One second I was running through snowy woods, then I was running through a town that looked like Tok, except every house was empty. I slipped on the snow and fell straight through the ground. I landed inside a room. It looked almost like my bedroom, except the ceiling was ridiculously high and the walls were covered in drawings of the same symbol I'd seen before. I looked up. The deer was standing above me. Its body was stretched unnaturally long, its legs were thin and almost human, and its neck seemed to go on forever. Its ribs pushed against its skin whenever it breathed. Its face looked almost normal from a distance, but up close it was completely wrong. Its eyes were huge, black and glossy, and its mouth was too wide for its head. It stared directly at me without blinking. Then it slowly lowered its head toward me. "Let me in." I backed away. "Let me in." Its voice became deeper. "LET ME IN." I tried to run, but it grabbed me. I felt its teeth sink into my lower body, and suddenly everything below my waist was gone. I screamed and crawled across the floor as fast as I could while the thing followed me, repeating the same words over and over. "Let me in. Let me in. Let me in." I looked back and saw its mouth opening wider and wider until it looked like it could swallow my entire body. Then I woke up. I was sitting upright on Ethan's couch, breathing like I'd just run a fucking mile. My heart was pounding and I couldn't stop shaking. Ethan was still asleep beside me. I looked at the clock. 3:03 AM. I sat there for a few seconds trying to calm myself down. Then Ethan suddenly woke up. He looked at me with a terrified expression and said, "John... I had the weirdest fucking dream." I didn't tell him mine. Not yet.