The eater of hours

The hour arrives the way it always does — silently, like a held breath slipping into the room. But tonight, something wakes me. Not a sound. A pressure. reverberation. As if the air has thickened. Something has metaphorically shaken me awake. I blink into the dark. The clock on the bedside table reads 02:59, though I feel it should be later. Time behaves strangely around the night, I always think.

I lie still listening wondering what has woken me. Then I hear the odd sound of soft breathing. I am alone or should be! My heart hammers in my chest, I scan the pooled darkness and there against the wall under the window there seems to be a darker clotted shadow. I reach for the torch I keep beside my bed. Sit up as quietly as a I can and turn the torch beam across the room.And there kneeling on the floor hands pressed against a blanket pressed to the wall is a figure that looks like me. I am still in bed I tentatively touch myself, I feel real, i pinch myself to ascertain if I am me and awake. All seems to be in order but when I look I am kneeling on the floor. There may be subtle differences the figure is leaner and wearing a jumpsuit that definitely didn’t come out of my wardrobe.

A band of light runs along the skirting board — not warm light, not moonlight, but a sideways shimmer, like a crack in a photograph. The figure doesn’t turn, but their voice reaches me, low and tight.“Stay in the bed please dont get up.” I freeze. Their tone isn’t commanding. It’s pleading.The line of light pulses. The floorboards tremble under their hands.

“It’s wanting to feed early,” they whisper.Only then do they look back at me — my face, but drawn thinner, eyes shadowed with exhaustion and something like fear. A faint tremor runs through their arms as the light widens, a hair’s breadth at a time. I open my mouth to speak, but they shake their head sharply.“If you move now, it will notice.”The light flares as they speak. Something presses against the fracture from the other side — not a shape, not yet, but a presence, hungry and curious.The figure leans harder into the wall pressing the blanket over the joint between wall and floor, breath shuddering.

“I can’t hold it much longer.” And in that moment, the moment I see their hands slipping, the moment the light begins to spill into the room — I realise two things at once:

They must have been doing this every night.

And tonight, they’re losing.

I grip the edge of the blanket knuckles whitening, trying to stay still as they asked, but my body betrays me. A tremor runs through my legs, a tiny involuntary shiver that feels deafening in the charged air. The light along the skirting board responds a quick, hungry flicker, as if it has scented movement. My breath catches. The figure on the floor flinches, pressing harder, shoulders bowing under a pressure I can’t see. For a heartbeat the room seems to tilt, the air thickening again, and I feel something brush the edge of my awareness a cold, curious touch, like fingers trailing the inside of my skull. I clamp my teeth together to stop a gasp. The fracture pulses once, twice, widening by a fraction. My double’s voice breaks into a hoarse whisper. “Please… don’t let it notice you.”The air shifts again not a breeze, not movement, but a change in density, as if something enormous has leaned close on the other side of the wall. A faint vibration travels through the floorboards, up the bedframe, into my bones. It isn’t sound, not exactly, but my ears ring as though trying to interpret it. The light along the skirting board ripples, bending inward, as if drawn toward a mouth I can’t see. A cold pressure blooms behind my eyes, a slow, deliberate probing, like a fingertip pressing against the inside of my skull. My breath stutters. The presence feels curious, almost gentle the way a predator might nudge a sleeping animal before deciding whether to bite.The pressure behind my eyes sharpens, a cold probing that makes my vision blur at the edges. I bite down on a cry. The fracture pulses again, widening, and the air in the room seems to tilt toward it. My double’s voice cuts through the rising hum hoarse, urgent.“Picture a door,” they whisper. “A closed door. Hold it shut in your mind.”For a moment I don’t understand. A door? In my head? But the presence presses harder, curious, hungry, and instinct takes over. I drag the image into my mind — a plain wooden door, the kind from my childhood home, paint chipped at the bottom where the dog used to scratch.“Keep it closed,” they say, breath shuddering. “Don’t let it open. Not even a crack.”The pressure shifts, sliding along the inside of my skull like something sniffing for a way in. The door in my mind wavers. I force it solid again, gripping the image with both hands of my imagination. The presence pauses — a moment of stillness so sharp it feels like the room has stopped breathing.Then it pushes.A slow, deliberate weight against the door I’m holding shut.My heart slams against my ribs. The fracture brightens. My double’s hands slip on the blanket.“Hold it,” they gasp. “Please. Hold it the hour will soon be over.” The pressure vanishes so suddenly I gasp. One moment the weight is crushing against the door in my mind, the next it’s gone — pulled back like a tide retreating from the shore. The light along the skirting board flickers, then snaps shut, leaving only the faint afterimage burned into my vision.My double collapses forward, hands slipping from the blanket, forehead touching the floorboards. Their breath comes in ragged pulls, each one sounding like it hurts. For a moment I can’t move — not from fear now, but from the shock of the absence. The room feels too light, too thin, as if something enormous has just stepped away and left a hollow behind.The silence is wrong. It feels scraped clean.I lower the image of the door in my mind, but it doesn’t vanish. It hangs there, trembling, as if something on the other side is still listening.My double lifts their head. Their face — my face — is grey with exhaustion, sweat beading along the hairline. They try to speak, but the first attempt is only a rasp. When they manage words, they’re barely audible.“You held it,” they whisper. “Thank you.”I swallow, throat raw. “What was that?”A shadow crosses their expression — not fear this time, but something heavier. Resignation. Grief. The clock clicks 01.28 all goes still then it clicks again 02.29.

“It wasn’t supposed to find you yet its the eater of possibility.” They push themselves upright, swaying, one hand braced against the wall. The blanket they’d been using is scorched at the edges, the fabric brittle and blackened. I stare at it, then at them, and the truth settles like cold water down my spine.My double meets my eyes, and for the first time I see the depth of their exhaustion.“It will come back,” they say softly. “And next time… it will push harder.”

I look down at my own hands. They are trembling, mirroring hers, and I realize with a jolt of ice that the door in my mind hasn’t vanished. I can still feel the weight of the latch in my palm. I realize I can never let go. I am the new lock.

She looks at me, and for the first time, the exhaustion in her eyes is replaced by a terrifying flicker of relief. She stands, her jumpsuit shimmering like the fracture, and begins to fade.”Your turn,” she whispers.The room goes silent, and I am left alone in the dark, staring at the skirting board.