I've been walking for three hours now, and I still don't know when I started.
The muscle memory is what scares me most. My legs know this rhythm—left foot, right foot, the slight adjustment for carpet that bunches underfoot, the unconscious navigation around corners that shouldn't exist. I've been sleepwalking since I was seven years old. My mother used to find me in the kitchen, standing in front of the refrigerator with the door open, bathed in that cold white light. But I've never walked into a place that doesn't have a kitchen to wake up in.
The fluorescent lights above me flicker in a pattern I'm starting to recognize. Three quick pulses, then steady light, then darkness for exactly four seconds. I've been counting. In the darkness, I can hear my breathing echo off walls that stretch further than the light can reach. Sometimes, in that four-second gap, I hear something else breathing too.
I remember going to bed. I remember the weight of the blanket, the familiar creak of my mattress springs, the distant hum of the refrigerator downstairs. I remember thinking about the presentation I had to give at work tomorrow—today?—about quarterly sales figures. Normal things. Real things. Things that belonged to a world where rooms have windows and hallways eventually lead somewhere.
The carpet beneath my feet is damp. Not wet enough to squelch, just that persistent moisture that makes each step feel slightly wrong. The pattern is geometric—beige diamonds on a darker beige background, the kind of industrial carpeting you'd find in an office building from the 1980s. Except this carpet goes on forever, and there are no offices here. Just room after room after room, each one identical to the last, each one exactly wrong in a way that makes my teeth ache.
I've tried to retrace my steps, but the rooms behind me look exactly like the rooms ahead of me. The fluorescent lights create a rhythm: walk forward during the light, freeze during the darkness, listen during the silence. That's when I hear it most clearly—that other breathing, somewhere in the dark between the walls.
My therapist always said my sleepwalking was my subconscious trying to solve problems my conscious mind couldn't handle. "Your body is looking for something," she'd say, "even when your mind is asleep." I wonder what my body was looking for when it walked me through whatever door brought me here. I wonder if it found it.
The walls are painted that particular shade of yellow that exists only in institutional buildings—schools, hospitals, government offices. The color of places where people wait. The paint is peeling in long strips near the floor, revealing patches of gray primer underneath. In some rooms, the peeling forms patterns that almost look deliberate. Almost look like letters. Almost spell words I don't want to read.
I've been walking for six hours now. My phone died somewhere around hour two, but not before I noticed there was no signal. No bars, no emergency calls, no GPS location. Just a black screen that reflected my face back at me, pale and strange under the fluorescent light.
The sound is getting closer.
It's not footsteps—I would recognize footsteps. This is something else. A wet sliding sound, like something large moving across the damp carpet. It stays just behind the edge of the light, just out of sight, matching my pace. When I walk, it moves. When I stop, it stops. When the lights flicker off for those four seconds, I can hear it breathing, slow and deliberate and far too close.
I've stopped trying to wake up. This isn't a dream—dreams don't have this much detail, this much consistency. Dreams don't make your feet ache or your mouth taste like copper pennies. Dreams don't have air that smells like old paper and electrical fires and something else, something organic and wrong that gets stronger every time the lights go out.
The breathing behind me has stopped.
I've been standing still for the first time since I woke up here, listening to the silence that isn't quite silent. The fluorescent lights continue their pattern above me—three pulses, steady light, four seconds of darkness. But now, in the darkness, I can hear something new. Not breathing. Something like whispering. Something like my name.
I think my sleeping mind found the door it was looking for. I think it found the place where all the sleepwalkers eventually go. And I think, when I start walking again, I won't be walking alone.
The lights are flickering faster now. The darkness between them is getting longer.
I should start walking again. My legs remember the rhythm. Left foot, right foot, adjust for the bunched carpet, navigate around corners that lead to more corners.
But I'm not sure which direction is forward anymore.
And I'm not sure it matters.
