Darkness descends, not gently but with weight—a suffocating shroud. The click of the light switch, the thud of the closing door. Sounds that, in the daylight, are small, meaningless. But at night, they grow loud, like the ticking of a clock running out of time.

Parental abandonment
The nightly ritual
Leaving little Evan
To face the shadows’ revival

The nightlight flickers, its glow pale and inconsistent, the kind that hides more than it reveals. The soft yellow light twists the room’s familiar shapes into sinister figures—elongated, contorted, twitching as if ready to leap off the walls.

Shadows stretch and swell
A puppet show of terror
Hinting at horrors
Lurking beyond the veil

Evan pulls the covers to his chin, eyes darting to every shifting corner. He tries to pretend it’s just his imagination, but he knows better. The flickering of the nightlight is more than a malfunction. It’s a signal, a summoning. The witching hour approaches, when the boundary between worlds grows thin, and what hides in the dark comes forth.

The witching hour strikes
Whispers, scratches
Nightmares stir
In the waking world’s cracks

The first sound is always the scuttling—tiny legs, hundreds of them. Evan presses his hands over his ears, but it’s no use. He feels them first, their brittle bodies brushing against his skin beneath the covers. Cockroaches. Feral. Their exoskeletons scrape like nails on glass, filling the air with a cacophony of insectile chatter.

Chitinous swarms
A living tide
Engulfing innocence
In their crawling pride

But they aren’t the worst of it. Not by far. The rats come next, skeletal things with gaping sockets where eyes should be, noses twitching as they search, search for something to devour. Evan’s breath hitches as he feels the cold, wet slap of a rat’s tail against his ankle. He stifles a scream.

Eye-less vermin
Scavengers of sanity
Gnawing at the fragile edges
Of reality

The air grows colder. Evan’s breath fogs in front of him, though the window remains shut. From the ceiling, something moves, a shape more felt than seen—spectral, weightless, like a wisp of mist that curls down toward his bed. The bedsheet-wraiths, as Evan calls them. They glide silently, their touch icy and wrong, as if they feed off warmth and leave only cold despair in their wake.

Soul-sucking specters
Hungry for life’s heat
Draining vitality
Leaving hollow defeat

A shadow flickers to his left. Evan turns his head just in time to see them—the toys. His toys. The plastic dinosaurs he once played with, now standing on twisted legs, their eyes glowing red. They stalk forward with slow, deliberate steps, jaws snapping, eager to taste his skin.

Childhood whimsy, perverted
A Jurassic nightmare
Toys turned predators
In their colorful, carnivorous snare

And then, the sound that undoes him. The rapid, chattering clack of the windup teeth. They move faster than they should, crossing the floor in mechanical bursts. They leap onto the bed, gnashing with mechanical hunger, a mindless frenzy.

Grinning monstrosities
Gears grinding in delight
Seeking to strip identity
To devour his fight

Evan wants to scream. His mouth opens, but no sound escapes. His heart pounds in his throat, tightening like a noose. He reaches for the nightlight. Maybe if he shakes it, the glow will strengthen, will hold them back. But as his fingers brush its plastic surface, the light flickers again—once, twice, before dimming to nearly nothing.

That’s when he hears it. Not a noise, but a voice. It slithers into his mind, oily and cold.

“You brought us here.”

Evan’s hand jerks back. His breath is ragged now, eyes wide as the realization dawns.

The nightlight wasn’t protection. It never was. Its flickering was an invitation. He turns, wide-eyed, as the shadows close in around him, their voices growing louder, their forms more solid, more real.

A cold touch grazes his cheek. A windup tooth clatters onto his pillow.

His hand trembles as he reaches to switch the nightlight off. His last hope—darkness, silence, anything to stop the nightmare. But his fingers hover over the switch, frozen.

Because in the dark, they would still be there. And in the dark, he wouldn’t see them coming.

The light flickers once more, and the last thing Evan hears is the low, cruel laughter from the shadows.

The nightlight’s glow—
A cruel trick
Not safety, but the key
To the Nightmare Realm’s thick