Derek had never been one for small towns, but after a grueling breakup and an equally draining job change, he needed a fresh start. When he found the quaint, sun-dappled apartment on the outskirts of town, it felt like fate. The rent was cheap, the landlord non-intrusive, and the quiet neighborhood a welcome escape from the noise of the city.
The first few weeks passed uneventfully. Derek settled into his routine—work at the local tech company, quiet dinners by himself, late-night TV binges. It was a simple life, one he hadn’t had in years. But soon, the peace that had drawn him to the apartment began to fray at the edges. It started with small, almost imperceptible details. He’d come home from work and find his keys not on the kitchen counter where he always left them, but on the coffee table in the living room. Or the coffee mug he swore he’d placed on the bedside table would be in the sink, still wet, as if recently washed.
At first, he chalked it up to forgetfulness. “You’re still adjusting,” he’d mutter to himself, brushing off the strange occurrences. Maybe the stress of moving and his new job was making him scatterbrained. He wanted to believe that, needed to believe it. But as days turned into weeks, the unsettling changes only grew more pronounced.
One evening, Derek came home to find his couch pushed up against the far wall of the living room. He distinctly remembered it being in the center of the room that morning. His heart skipped a beat. No one else had access to his apartment, and there was no sign of forced entry. The landlord lived miles away and rarely visited, so who had been inside?
Shaken, Derek convinced himself it was some kind of odd lapse in memory. Perhaps he had moved it the night before while half-asleep, and it just hadn’t registered. Still, the creeping feeling of unease gnawed at the edges of his mind. He couldn’t shake the sensation that someone—or something—had been inside his home, touching his things.
A few nights later, it got worse. He woke up at 3 a.m. to the sound of shuffling. Groggy and disoriented, he squinted into the dark, but his bedroom was still, save for the soft hum of the ceiling fan. He dismissed the sound as a dream, a figment of his overactive imagination.
But when he stumbled into the living room the next morning, his stomach dropped. The chairs from his dining table were stacked in a precarious tower in the middle of the room. Derek froze, the hairs on his arms standing on end. No way could he have done this in his sleep. Someone had been here. Someone had to be inside his apartment.
Paranoia gripped him. He went through the apartment, checking every window, every door. Nothing was out of place. No signs of a break-in. But that didn’t mean anything. What if they were coming in while he was sleeping? He couldn’t bear the thought.
That day, he bought a set of security cameras, the kind that synced with his phone so he could monitor his apartment in real time. He installed them in every room—one in the living room, one in the kitchen, and one in his bedroom, pointing directly at his bed. He told himself this was the rational thing to do, that once he saw nothing out of the ordinary on the footage, his mind would be at ease.
But the first night he reviewed the footage, Derek’s world cracked open.
The video began like any other—him brushing his teeth, getting into bed, tossing and turning for a few minutes before finally falling asleep. He fast-forwarded through the night, eyes scanning for any movement, any sign of an intruder.
Then he saw it.
Around 2:45 a.m., the figure in his bed sat up. Derek froze. His breath hitched in his throat as he watched himself—his own sleeping body—slowly rise from the bed. The version of him on the screen stood, stretching leisurely, as if waking from a deep, restful sleep. But Derek knew that wasn’t true. He hadn’t woken up at all that night. He would’ve remembered.
He watched, heart pounding in his chest, as the figure—his figure—walked into the living room. The camera there caught him methodically rearranging the furniture, pulling chairs away from the table, stacking them in the center of the room like some bizarre art installation.
Derek felt bile rise in his throat. It was him. It was undeniably him. But he had no memory of doing any of it. As the figure finished, it walked calmly back to the bedroom, lying down in bed exactly as Derek had found himself the next morning.
The camera timestamp read 3:05 a.m. He had gone back to sleep, or whatever twisted version of himself had, as if nothing had happened.
Derek didn’t sleep at all that night. The footage played over and over in his head. What was happening to him? Was he sleepwalking? But no, this wasn’t sleepwalking. The version of himself on the footage moved with purpose, with intention. It was like watching a stranger wear his skin.
The following days were a blur of sleepless nights and paranoia. He tried staying awake, tried to catch himself in the act, but exhaustion always won out, pulling him into sleep despite his best efforts. And each morning, the footage would reveal more of the same—him, moving around in the dead of night, rearranging furniture, sometimes even leaving the apartment for hours at a time, only to return before sunrise.
Desperation clawed at his mind. Derek scoured the internet, looking for any explanation, any rational cause for what was happening. Sleep disorders, dissociative identity disorder—nothing quite fit. Then, on a dark corner of the web, he found something that chilled him to his core.
There were whispers of a cult, one that had been active for decades, operating in the shadows of small, unsuspecting towns. They were said to plant “sleeper selves” in their victims—altered personalities that would take over during sleep, doing the cult’s bidding without the host’s knowledge. It sounded ridiculous, like something out of a bad horror movie. But Derek couldn’t shake the feeling that this was it. This was what was happening to him.
The more he read, the more pieces began to fall into place. People who had been “activated” by the cult reported similar experiences—missing time, strange behaviors they couldn’t remember, and a growing sense of alienation from their own bodies. But the worst part? Once the sleeper self took full control, the original personality—the real person—would fade away, lost forever inside their own mind.
Derek’s blood ran cold. He was losing himself. The stranger inside him was growing stronger, more dominant. And if he didn’t stop it soon, he would cease to exist.
But how could he fight something that lived inside him? How could he confront a version of himself that operated in the dead of night, beyond his control?
One night, in a final act of desperation, Derek set his phone to record, hoping to catch himself in the act in real-time. His plan was to stay awake as long as possible, to confront whatever version of himself rose in the night.
As the clock ticked past midnight, the exhaustion weighed on him like a thick blanket, but he fought it, his eyes glued to the phone screen. 2:30 a.m. came and went. The apartment was silent. He allowed himself a moment of hope, maybe he had finally broken the cycle. Maybe, whatever was happening, it was over.
Then the lights flickered.
A sudden cold washed over the room, and Derek’s limbs felt heavy, as if his body was no longer his own. Panic surged through him as he tried to move, to fight, but he couldn’t. His arms and legs remained limp, as though someone had cut the strings on a puppet.
From the corner of his eye, Derek saw the reflection in the mirror—a figure standing behind him, grinning. It was him. But it wasn’t. The version of him from the footage, the stranger.
The reflection’s lips curled into a sinister smile. “It’s time,” the stranger whispered, though Derek’s own mouth hadn’t moved. Then, the world around him blurred, darkening as his consciousness slipped away.
When Derek awoke, he was no longer in his apartment. He was standing in the middle of a dark, cavernous space, the walls adorned with strange symbols and flickering candles. A group of hooded figures stood in a circle around him, their eyes glowing with an unnatural light.
“Welcome,” a voice echoed from the shadows, “to the beginning of your true self.”
Derek’s heart raced as he realized what they meant. He wasn’t alone in his mind anymore. The stranger had taken root, and soon, there would be no Derek left—only the sleeper self, the one the cult had planted long ago.
He had become a stranger inside his own body.
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