The clock’s cold heartbeat stills mid-chime,
And chills the air in spectral rhyme;
I feel my soul, drawn thread by thread,
Toward nameless thresholds of the dead.

A tremor stirs beneath the floor,
A knocking jaw without a door;
Its rhythm swells, deranged, malign—
The pulse of something not confined.

I watch the walls begin to bend,
Their veins of soot and sorrow blend;
The blackened corners twist and climb,
Till all dissolves through folds of time.

The ashes stir, the dust takes form,
A mind awakes within the storm;
It knows my name in vacant stare—
And breathes my sins, my life laid bare.

Its limbs unfold in angles wrong,
Each motion hums its eerie song;
It whispers things no mortal’s known,
Of worlds that predate flesh and bone.

It shows me all I’ve tried to flee—
The coward’s mask, hypocrisy;
Each kindness feigned, each love betrayed,
The hollow life that I have made.

I beg for mercy, cry for light,
But silence answers each lost fight;
Then something shifts—the vision clears,
I recognize these ancient fears.

The creature fades, the dawn breaks through,
I wake to find the horrors true:
No monsters dwell beneath my bed—
I am the thing I’ve always dreaded.