Dead Silence

I didn’t choose the dead minute.

It chose me.The first time it happened, I was twelve, hiding in my bedroom while my parents screamed downstairs. Plates shattered. Something heavy hit the wall hard enough to shake dust from the ceiling. I remember staring at the clock, begging time to move faster.

It stopped instead.

2:17 a.m.

The yelling cut off mid-word, like someone had pressed mute on the world. The air thickened. My chest hurt when I breathed, like my lungs were filled with syrup. I thought I’d gone deaf.

Then my phone lit up.

No number. No name.

Did you feel that?

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. My fingers wouldn’t move.

You’re safe right now, it said. Nothing can reach you unless you let it.

Something stepped into my room anyway.

It wasn’t a monster. Not at first. It looked like a man folded wrong—joints bent where they shouldn’t, skin stretched thin like it had been borrowed and never returned.

His face kept slipping, features rearranging themselves every time I blinked.

“You can stay,” it told me. Its mouth didn’t move. The words pressed directly into my skull. “Or you can learn.”

The minute ended.

2:18.

Sound came back all at once—screaming, glass, my mother crying. The thing was gone.

But it left something inside me.

After that, I noticed the pause every night. Always 2:17. Always one minute long. Most people slept through it.

I didn’t.

I watched how walls softened. How locks forgot their purpose. How people became… unfinished when time stopped touching them.

When my parents finally killed each other—him with his fists, her with a knife—I didn’t cry. I sat on the stairs and waited for the minute to come back.That was the night I stepped through my first wall.

Now, years later, I don’t ask permission.Tonight’s subject is alone. They always are. The lonely ones notice the pause faster. Their phone lights up, and I feel the tug—like a hook sunk into my ribs.

Did you feel that?

They sit up. Fear blooms warm and sweet in their chest. I step closer, and the room forgets how big it’s supposed to be. The ceiling lowers. The corners bend inward.

You’re in the dead zone.

I stand behind them, close enough to smell their shampoo, the salt of their skin. My reflection crawls across their dark screen—wrong angles, too many teeth.

They look at the clock. Still 2:17.

I press my fingers into their shoulders. Flesh yields with a soft, ugly resistance, like fruit left out too long. They try to scream, but the minute keeps their mouth polite and quiet.

It wears you when you aren’t paying attention.

I show them what that means.

I take my time. Time doesn’t mind. I feel heat spill over my hands, feel their body struggle to remember how to be whole. Every movement pulls something loose inside them—something important.

Their pulse flutters against my wrist like a trapped insect.

How do I make it stop?

I guide their hand to the phone. Their thumb shakes as the screen unlocks.

You have to move before the minute ends.

The clock clicks.

2:18 a.m.

Sound crashes back. Their scream finally escapes—but it’s ruined, torn apart by what I’ve already done. I finish before anyone can hear. When I stand, my hands are slick and my reflection won’t settle into one shape.

I don’t clean. I never do.

I use their thumb one last time and type carefully.

It’s your turn now. Don’t fall asleep tonight.

Because I learned something that first night.

The dead minute doesn’t want blood.

It wants continuation.

And I’m very good at making sure it gets fed.

Credit: Rav3n