Writers 
Every night, when the world fell silent,
Nadia closed her eyes—
and entered a place where sleep had teeth.
Someone was always waiting
beyond the far edge of her dreams.
A stranger.
She never knew his name.
Never heard him speak.
He only stood beneath the same dead tree,
its bare branches raking the sky,
watching her with eyes
that seemed to know every secret she had buried.
The first time she saw him,
she dreamed of a broken window.
The next morning,
the window in her room burst inward.
Glass glittered across the floor like ice.
She called it a coincidence.
The second time,
the stranger held a red flower,
its petals wet and dark.
That afternoon,
a woman she knew arrived
with terrible news.
Then it happened again.
And again.
Each dream left something behind:
a splintered lock,
a bloodstained coat,
a name breathed through an empty room.
Every dream became a warning.
Every warning came true.
Soon, Nadia stopped telling anyone.
Who would believe her
when even she had begun to wonder
whether the dreams came before the disasters—
or after?
Then came the dream
that changed everything.
The stranger stood much closer.
There was no tree this time.
No flower.
No darkness between them.
His face was almost hers.
He leaned toward her and whispered four words:
“Tonight, you will follow.”
Nadia woke choking on a scream.
She refused to sleep.
She turned on every light,
locked every door,
wedged a chair beneath the handle,
and sat beside the window,
watching the darkness thin by degrees.
The house groaned.
The lights flickered.
Something shifted beyond the glass.
Nadia did not look.
She kept her eyes open until they burned,
until dawn seemed close enough to touch.
Then her head dipped.
Her breath slowed.
And somewhere in the silence,
a familiar voice breathed beside her ear.
“Close your eyes, Nadia.”
She screamed and spun around.
The room was empty.
But the chair beneath the door
was no longer there.
For the first time,
she understood the truth—
The dreams had never been warnings.
They had been memories.
The broken window.
The red flower.
The bloodstained coat.
The voice calling from the empty room.
None of them had happened to someone else.
They had happened to Nadia.
And the stranger beneath the dead tree
had not been waiting for her to follow him.
He had been waiting for her to remember
that she had already followed him once.
As her bedroom door began to open,
Nadia saw the darkness beyond it
and recognized the shape standing there.
It was her own.
The stranger whispered from the hall:
“You’ve been following me all night.”
Nadia looked down.
Her bare feet were slick with mud.
Behind her, the bedroom window stood open,
though she had locked it.
On the floor beneath it,
a trail of footprints led inward—
and stopped beside her bed.
The figure in the doorway lifted its face.
Nadia felt herself smile.
Then, from somewhere deep inside the house,
another Nadia began to scream.
