Brynne hadn’t slept in three days.

It started with a school flyer posted near the dorm elevators: EXTRA CREDIT OPPORTUNITY – Sleep Study Participants Needed. Psychology Dept. Room 207. All she had to do was sleep on a cot while they monitored her brainwaves. Easy A.

Or so she thought.

That first night, she lay down under the buzz of fluorescent lights and felt the room hum. A warm voice spoke through a speaker overhead: “Just relax. You’re safe.” Then nothing but the sound of her own breath and the distant hum of air vents.

Then came the dreams.

Not ordinary dreams. These bled into her thoughts, coated her mouth with the taste of rust. In the first one, she saw a woman—half-shrouded in shadow, lips moving but silent. Her eyes glowed like the blue static of dead channels, and her fingernails scratched symbols into the walls. When Brynne woke up, her arms were covered in faint red lines.

“Probably scratched yourself in your sleep,” said Dr. Lorre, the grad student running the study. But he didn’t look convinced. Brynne didn’t say anything about the voice she’d started hearing in class. It spoke from behind her teeth, whispering things she couldn’t remember after.

The second night, the woman from the dream was closer. Brynne could feel her breath now. It smelled like sleep paralysis and cold iron.

“Why are you resisting?” the voice asked. “Aren’t you tired?”

She woke up gasping. Dr. Lorre didn’t ask questions that morning. He looked pale. Shaky. The other participants were gone.

“Where’s Emma and Josh?” Brynne asked.

“Dropped out,” he said too quickly. “Didn’t handle the sensory deprivation well.”

Sensory deprivation? Brynne remembered the hum of machines. The buzz of overhead lights. But not much else. Even now, hours later, she felt… muffled. Like her thoughts were running through syrup.

By the third night, she was afraid to sleep.

She begged off, claiming cramps, but Dr. Lorre practically begged. “Please,” he said, rubbing his temples. “We just need one more round of data. One more night.”

She lay on the cot again. The lights dimmed. The voice over the intercom didn’t come. Only silence. Then darkness. Then…

The woman stood at the foot of the bed.

No longer hazy or distant—she was all sharp teeth and velvet skin, with hair like cigarette smoke and hands that stretched too far. She smiled.

“You invited me,” she said.

Brynne tried to scream but her voice stayed inside her head.

“I feed on exhaustion,” the woman whispered. “And you, darling, are so very tired.”

Her hand reached out. Brynne felt her soul curl inwards, like burning paper. All she could do was blink.

Then she remembered something Dr. Lorre had said on the first day: “REM sleep is when the brain clears toxins. Think of dreams as psychic detox.”

If REM cleared toxins… then maybe the creature was a toxin.

With every ounce of will, Brynne focused—not on the woman, but on waking. She forced herself to remember facts. Flashcards. Psychology notes. Names of neurotransmitters.

“Dopamine,” she muttered. “Serotonin. Acetylcholine.”

The woman hissed.

“Stop thinking,” she growled. “Sleep.”

But Brynne refused. She reached deep into herself, found the name of the gland that regulates dreams: “Pineal gland!” she shouted.

The room shattered like glass. The woman screamed and fractured into tendrils of shadow, each recoiling from the words.

She woke up gasping on the lab floor. Dr. Lorre was gone. The machines were fried. Burn marks blackened the outlets.

Campus security found her wandering the quad at dawn, barefoot, clutching her notes.

She never saw Dr. Lorre again. The psych department denied running a sleep study. Room 207 was now a supply closet.

Brynne passed the class with an A+ and stopped needing coffee. But she never slept more than four hours again. And some nights, when she dared to close her eyes too long, she could hear the softest whisper:

“Tired yet, darling?”