THESE ARE THE CONSEQUENCES OF SLEEPING WITH THE CURSED JOURNAL
It began as an accident—or at least that’s what Mara told herself the first night she fell asleep with the journal on her chest. She had been reading late, the lamplight pooling softly across the pages as the wind pushed against the windows of her little apartment. The journal wasn’t even hers. She’d found it in a thrift shop between a stack of discarded cookbooks and a pile of romance paperbacks, its blackened leather cover cracked like parched earth. No spine title. No author. Just a thin silver clasp shaped like a serpent.
Something about it had pulled her in immediately.
That first night, she told herself she would read only a few entries.
But the entries were strange—descriptions of dreams that didn’t feel like dreams at all. They were too vivid, too detailed, too… aware. Each page read like a window into someone else’s mind. Someone who walked through darkened places where shadows whispered. Someone who could hear names spoken by voices that did not come from any living thing.
She hadn’t meant to fall asleep with it open across her heart.
But she did.
And everything that happened after began with that single moment.
The First Consequence: The Dream That Wasn’t Hers
That night, Mara dreamed of a forest she didn’t recognize. Moonlight filtered through branches that stretched unnaturally long, like fingers reaching down from the sky. The air was cold, wet, full of something that smelled metallic. She walked forward though she couldn’t feel her feet touching the ground.
Then she heard it:
A whisper.
Not a word. Not even a voice.
Just a sound—like breath drawn behind her ear.
She turned.
No one was there.
She woke with a jolt, the journal still resting on her chest, the silver clasp warm as if someone had been holding it.
The Second Consequence: The Wakeful Hours
By the next night, Mara couldn’t stop thinking about the dream. She told herself it was just her imagination, fueled by the eerie entries she had been reading. But the more she tried to push the thought away, the more insistent it became. When she lay down that evening, the journal sat on her nightstand, closed but humming in her awareness.
Around midnight, she woke suddenly—eyes wide, heart racing—as though someone had whispered her name.
“Mara…”
She shot upright, scanning the room.
No one.
But the journal lay open—even though she clearly remembered closing it.
The page it revealed held a new entry written in elegant black ink:
It watches. It waits. It wants someone new.
Her stomach tightened. Had she overlooked that line before? Had a previous reader written it? Or was she losing her grip on reality?
She didn’t sleep again that night.
The Third Consequence: The Shadow That Followed
Over the next week, Mara’s dreams escalated.
Every night she found herself in that moonlit forest. Every night she felt the presence lurking behind her. And every night she woke gasping, the journal somehow closer than she had left it.
Then came the day the dream followed her into waking life.
She was walking to work, coffee in hand, when she saw it reflected in a shop window: a tall, thin shadow standing inches behind her, stretching impossibly far across the sidewalk. Her heart slammed against her ribs. She spun around.
Nothing.
But the journal sat heavy in her bag, as though aware of her fear. As though feeding on it.
At her office, coworkers asked why she looked pale. Why she jumped whenever someone touched her shoulder. Why she flinched at the flicker of lights.
She laughed it off.
But deep inside, she felt something unraveling.
The Fourth Consequence: The Whisper at the Door
One evening, Mara arrived home to find her apartment door slightly ajar. She froze. The journal had been on her desk that morning.
She pushed the door open slowly.
Every light was off.
A cold draft slithered through the air.
She stepped inside, hand trembling as she reached for the switch.
Before she could touch it—
A whisper threaded through the dark.
“Mara…”
Her body stiffened. The voice wasn’t angry. It wasn’t threatening.
It sounded… hungry.
She backed toward the hallway, fumbling for her phone. The whisper came again, closer now, almost brushing against her ear.
“Don’t leave me.”
She dropped the phone. Ran. Didn’t stop until she reached a crowded street, shaking so violently her teeth chattered.
That night, she slept at a friend’s house.
The journal stayed behind.
But the dreams did not.
The Fifth Consequence: The Attempt to Destroy It
Mara returned the next morning with her friend, who insisted on walking her inside. Nothing appeared disturbed. The journal sat where she had left it, innocent, silent, closed.
She picked it up gingerly. The silver clasp was warm again.
Her friend suggested burning it. Mara agreed.
They drove to an empty patch of field and built a small fire. Mara tossed the journal into the flames, her breath catching as the leather blackened.
But instead of burning, the flames recoiled.
The fire shrank back, hissing violently, as though afraid to touch the book.
The journal lay untouched.
Her friend took a step back. “That shouldn’t be possible.”
Mara couldn’t speak.
She simply reached down, hand shaking, and lifted it again.
This time the clasp was hot—burning hot.
She dropped it with a cry.
The whisper came then, drifting from the grass like smoke.
“You can’t leave me…”
The Sixth Consequence: The Choice No One Should Make
That night, Mara sat in her apartment staring at the journal on the table. She hadn’t touched it since the field, but it had found its way back to her bag. She didn’t remember putting it there.
She didn’t remember bringing it home.
She didn’t remember unlocking her door.
Sleep tugged at her eyelids. Heavy, irresistible. She tried to stay awake, but her body betrayed her. She slumped forward.
When she woke, the journal was in her hands.
Open.
A blank page waited.
A quill lay beside it.
And she realized the entries she had been reading—vivid descriptions of dreams and forests and shadows—weren’t written by someone else.
They were written by people who had carried the journal before her. People who had slept with it. People who had tried to abandon it. People who had been claimed by the presence within.
The page beneath her quivering hand read:
Write your first dream.
The whisper slid across her skin like cold silk.
“It’s your turn now.”
The Final Consequence
The next morning, Mara didn’t show up for work.
She didn’t answer her phone.
She didn’t respond to knocks at her door.
Weeks later, her apartment was cleared out.
The journal was gone.
And somewhere, in some quiet corner of another thrift shop or dusty shelf, it would wait again—silent, patient, hungry—for the next person who fell asleep with it resting just a little too close to their heart.
