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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/RohanRedfang on 2026-05-30 20:16:10+00:00.

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Have you ever wondered what happens when your days last for 25 hours instead of 24? When you’re born with a broken internal clock? Not metaphorically – your brain actually doesn’t know how long a day is. You still need eight hours of sleep like anybody else… but you get them an hour later than yesterday. The problem is that your brain works on a longer schedule than the Earth’s rotation. One night you manage to fall asleep at 11 p.m. The next night, you lie awake staring at the ceiling until midnight. The next, until one a.m. Then two and three. You keep pushing forward, trying to live in a society that demands you show up to classes at eight in the morning regardless of your internal clock.

My name’s Kevin. I’m 16, and I’ve been blind since birth. And for the last few weeks, my life has been falling apart.

People usually assume being blind means seeing a pitch-black void, but the closest I can describe my reality is if the world was a picture printed on some damp paper and left to dry; everything is blurry, faded, and the edges bleed into each other. I couldn’t read a street sign if my life depended on it. To make out details (and write) I need to hold objects about two inches from my nose. Currently, I survive high school with a cane and thick glasses. It’s exhausting and it drains most of my energy. My free time is mostly retreating to my bedroom and listening to music or audiobooks, or hanging out with my cat Yoruichi. She sleeps on my bed every night – well, actually, it’s her bed now and she lets me sleep on it.

Living with limited vision did make my other senses better, mostly my hearing. I can tell who is walking down the hallway by the specific tone of their footsteps, or when someone is coming from the squeak of our front gate. And I also know my neighbours are selfish pricks who leave their two huge German Shepherds chained outside all day and all night. They bark at everything. Cars, other animals, insects, the wind, and their own smell. So, I have this constant barking soundtrack in my life, making an already awful sleeping situation even worse.

The sleep thing, yes. That’s the story I was telling.

Non-24-Hour Sleep-Wake Disorder. I know, the name sounds like something a kid makes up as an excuse for not finishing their homework. It happens mostly to visually impaired people because our eyes can’t process the sunlight and properly reset our circadian rhythms. I rely on melatonin gummies and terrible herbal teas, which can help for a while. But eventually, my cycle gets fucked up again. Working out during the day used to help to get me tired, enough so I would collapse on the bed, but it’s not something I can do every day.

So, this was my life so far. I lived a 25-hour day, meaning my sleep time shifted forward one hour every night. It sucked, but I could predict and somehow plan around it. Until a few weeks ago, when the shift started stretching out.

I would find myself turning in my bed for ten more minutes past my “planned” schedule. Then half an hour. Just last Monday, I hit the 45-minute mark. Right now, my brain demands a full 26-hour cycle before it finally decides to let me sleep. And I still need to be at school by 8. The math is brutal, as you can imagine. When you have to add two hours to your bedtime every single day, you end up living most of the week in complete opposition to the rest of the world. I tried taking afternoon naps after school, but that just ruins the nighttime. The exhaustion never leaves my face. My school life narrowed to managing not to fall asleep during classes and barely retaining anything the teachers say.

This brings me to last night, when my real story begins. The peak of my desync.

The night before, I had fallen asleep at one a.m. So my brain wasn’t scheduled to shut down until at least three a.m. I was on my back, staring at the dark ceiling, trapped in my miserable state of being too tired to get up but not enough to pass out.

Yoruichi curled up in her usual spot, right next to my chest. Her purring vibrated, travelling through my skin and bones like a tiny bit of comfort. It intensified every time I ran my fingers through her fur. And the night was loud as always. The fridge in our kitchen hummed with a low note through the floor. Outside my window, crickets sang their usual songs against the damp dirt of the garden. Somewhere in the distance, a car rumbled down the main road. And, of course, the neighbour’s dogs played their night concert, barking at their own shadows.

I was almost asleep. That state where you’re not gone yet but your thoughts don’t make sense. I was right on the edge of it. Until I became aware, very suddenly, that things had just changed. Like waking up without having fallen asleep. I don’t know how to explain it.

First, the dogs had stopped. I held still for a moment, because sometimes they did that for a minute, before starting again. This felt completely different. The noise had cut off mid-bark. I listened and there was just nothing to listen to. The fridge was no longer humming, but there had been no power cut. It was like it… ceased to exist.

The crickets’ songs were also gone. And I don’t mean just gone quiet. They were absent, like when you mute the audio on your phone. I couldn’t hear Yoruichi’s purring anymore.

For a second there, I thought I had fallen asleep without noticing, because that happens. But my eyes were open, and I could see the blurred shapes of my room in the dark, normal and still, like every night. Even the ambient rush of air moving through the vents disappeared and everything felt stagnant; it almost crushed my eardrums, heavier than the chaos of just a minute earlier. Like a sudden vacuum that should have made my ears ring but didn’t.

I blinked and rolled onto my side, careful not to disturb Yoruichi. I reached for the digital alarm clock on my nightstand. I pulled it right up to my face until the bright red lines stopped being blurred spots and settled into sharp lines. It should have read 3:00. Instead, the first digit was a 3, but the other ones were… broken?

They each looked like a capital backwards ‘E’, mashed together with a ‘7’. As I squinted at the display, the shape flickered and the last digit morphed into an upside-down ‘A’ with missing lines.

I set the clock down on the mattress and sat up. A chill ran down my spine, and I didn’t understand why. Okay, the clock was broken. Fine. So? It happens; clocks can break. Nothing wrong with that, right?

I fumbled around the blankets until my hands found my phone. Bringing the screen an inch from my nose, I checked the time on the lock screen and gasped. It showed the exact same nonsensical symbols. Two unreadable, glitched characters where the minutes should have been. My breathing picked up speed as I lowered the phone. My ears wanted to catch anything – a single sound, a passing car or the wind, the stupid neighbour’s dogs or the crickets, or my cat’s purring.

Nothing.

Where was she? Yoruichi. I reached back to the mattress where she had been sleeping, seeking her familiar warmth. I found her. My finger touched her side. But it was wrong; she wasn’t moving, her chest wasn’t rising or falling. I slid my hand over her back to shake her awake, but I stopped.

Her fur was soft and warm like always, but her body underneath was completely rigid. Not the stiffness of a dead body, no. It felt more like a… living statue. I wrapped my hands around her torso and tried to lift her. Nothing moved. She didn’t budge. I tried again, first gently and then harder, putting all my strength into trying to pick her up.

Nope. Yoruichi remained there, in her curled-up position, like she had been part of the bed herself. Fixed in space with a terrifying density, a completely immovable object. Bolted into the air above the mattress. My cat was glued to the fabric of the universe, but my phone lifted without resistance when I grabbed it off the bed.

I reached for my cane – it lives on its hook against the nightstand, always, the only rule about it. My fingers found it and I stood up. It moved; that was the first thing that reassured me. Then I grabbed the bottle of water from the nightstand and tilted it. The water moved inside it, normally. I looked at Yoruichi’s shape on the bed once more and didn’t touch her again.

I crept out of my bedroom. The dark grey blur of the hallway felt so strangely hostile in the silence. My parents’ room was just next to mine, so I dragged my free hand along the wall to keep myself oriented. When I reached their door, I knocked against the wood. The knock didn’t make the normal thud. Instead, what came out was a noise that stretched out, warping into a sickening vibration that distorted the pitch like a broken guitar string. Slow, as though it was… lagging. I pushed the door open.

“Mom? Dad?” I said.

My voice came out with the same distortion, and this time it made me feel sick. The vacuum that had taken over the house swallowed the noise the moment it left my mouth. I walked over to my mother’s side of the bed and touched her shoulder. Her joints were rigid. I shook her – or at least I tried to – but my fingers just slipped off her nightshirt. Like I wasn’t touching her real shape, but just a picture of her. So weird and surreal, like a dream. Was I actually dreaming or what?

“Mom?” I screamed this time.

No answer. The silence just devoured my voice. They were both immobile, just like Yoruichi.

I scram...

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