No Peeking

The game started innocently enough.

We were in bed on a Saturday morning, the kind where the city hadn't fully woken up yet. Maya had her head on my chest, my fingers tracing lazy circles on her shoulder. The light was soft, golden, filtered through the old curtains of my Chandigarh apartment. Outside, the mist clung to the streets. Inside, there was just us and the quiet comfort of skin against skin.

"Close your eyes," she whispered.

I smiled. "Why?"

"Just do it. Trust me."

There was something playful in her voice, that edge of mischief I'd fallen in love with three months ago when she spilt coffee on my shirt at a bookstore and laughed instead of apologising. I closed my eyes.

I heard her move. Felt the bed shift as she got up. The sound of her bare feet on the floor. The soft rustle of fabric. She was doing something. Planning something. My heart did that stupid thing it does when she's near. That quickening.

"Don't peek," she said from somewhere across the room.

"I won't."

"I mean it. Not even a tiny look."

"I promise."

I heard her rummaging through my closet. The clink of something metallic. Her soft laugh, the kind that sounds like she knows a secret. The bed dipped as she came back. I kept my eyes shut, playing along, feeling like a kid on his birthday.

"Okay," she said. Her voice was close now. Intimate. "Open."

I opened my eyes.

She was straddling me, and she was wearing my old denim jacket over nothing else. Her dark hair fell across one shoulder. Her eyes were bright, challenging, full of that look that made me forget how to form complete sentences. On her wrist, around the old leather bracelet I'd given her, was something new. Something that caught the light.

A key.

"What's this?" I asked, reaching for her wrist.

She pulled away, smiling. A real smile. Not the kind of people who give to strangers. The kind that belongs to one person, and she was giving it to me.

"My apartment key," she said. "I'm moving in. If you want me to."

The world stopped for a second. Actually stopped. Like all the noise outside the window had been muted.

"Maya..."

"No peeking at the future," she interrupted, placing a finger on my lips. "No, trying to see how this ends. We just do this. We just live it. Day by day. No planning. No fear. Just us."

I kissed her finger, then her mouth. She tasted like tea and that honey Chapstick she always wore. Like home, somehow, in a way I didn't understand yet but felt deeply.

For the next six months, it was perfect in that way where you don't realise it's perfect because you're too busy living it. She moved her things in gradually. Her books are mixed with mine on the shelf. Her smell in my pillows. Her laugh bounced off my walls at 2 AM when we'd stay up talking about things that didn't matter, the best way to make chai, whether cats could love, if we'd ever go to Jaipur.

She had one rule. One thing she'd ask me again and again: "No peeking."

"At what?" I'd ask.

"In the future. At where this go? Just stay with me. In this moment. Don't jump ahead."

I didn't understand it fully, but I respected it. I tried not to think about next year or the year after. I tried to stay present. With her. In the now.

But we're human. We plan. We dream. We imagine futures.

One night, I found myself scrolling through Ring websites. Nothing serious. Just looking. A white gold band with small diamonds. She'd said she liked understated things. I imagined proposing to her somewhere quiet. Maybe by the lake in Shimla. Maybe just here, in bed, like this.

The next morning, she was different.

Not cold. Never cold. But distant in a way that felt intentional. She made breakfast but didn't eat. She sat on the couch with her book, but didn't turn the pages. When I tried to touch her, she moved away gently. Not rejecting me. Just absent.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"Nothing," she said. But she wouldn't meet my eyes.

That night, she didn't come to bed. I found her on the balcony, wrapped in my sweater, staring out at the street below. The mist was thick. I could barely see the houses across the way.

"Talk to me," I said.

She was quiet for so long, I thought she wouldn't answer.

"Did you look?" she finally asked.

"Look at what?"

"In the future. Did you let yourself imagine it?"

My chest tightened. I knew I was about to lie, and I also knew she'd know I was lying.

"I... yes. I did. I'm sorry. I was just thinking about;"

"Don't," she said. Not angry. Sad. "Don't tell me. It's too late anyway."

"What do you mean it's too late? Maya, you're scaring me."

She turned to face me, and in the darkness, I couldn't read her expression. But I could feel something shifting. Like a door closing.

"When you looked ahead," she said quietly, "what did you see?"

"I saw us. Together. I saw a future with you. Maya, I love you. I want to marry you. I want;"

She held up her hand. "That's the problem."

"What's the problem? That I love you?"

"No. That you've already decided what this is. What will be. You've written the story, and now you're living it, waiting for me to show up in your version of events instead of being present in this one."

I didn't understand. I still don't, not completely. But I felt something break in me then.

"I'm present," I said. "I'm here. Every day, I'm here."

"Are you?" she asked. "Or are you already somewhere else? Already wondering if I'll say yes. Already planning the wedding. Already thinking about the apartment you'll buy, the kids you'll have, the life you've imagined."

"So what? That's normal. That's what people do when they love each other."

She looked away again, back at the mist.

"Not for me," she whispered. "I can't do this if you're already gone."

The next day, she left.

Not dramatically. No fights, no screaming, no tears, though I cried enough for both of us. She packed her things quietly. Took her books from the shelf. Her toiletries from the bathroom. Her clothes are from my closet. The key she'd given me, she asked for back.

I asked her if we could work through it. Get counselling. Try again.

"It's not about trying again," she said, standing by the door with one suitcase. "It's about understanding. And I don't think you can. I don't think anyone can. They always look ahead. They always imagine the ending. And the moment they do, they stop living the story. They start waiting for it to match their imagination. And when it doesn't, they're disappointed."

"So what? Do we just live moment to moment forever? Never think about the future?"

"I don't know," she said. And she looked so tired. So heartbroken. "I just know that the moment you looked ahead, you stopped being with me. You started being with the idea of me. And it's not the same thing."

She left on a Tuesday afternoon. The apartment felt too big without her. The shelves looked wrong with empty spaces where her books had been. I smelled her on my pillow for two weeks before I washed the sheets.

I tried to move on. Dated other people. They were fine. Nice. But there was always this distance I maintained. Some part of me was always looking ahead, already imagining how it would end, already thinking about escape routes.

It wasn't until a year later, lying in bed at 3 AM, unable to sleep, that I understood what she meant.

I understood that I had killed something beautiful the moment I tried to own it. The moment I tried to see the ending. Because the ending I imagined was never the real ending. Real life doesn't work like that. Real love doesn't work like that. The moment you peek, you break the magic. The moment you decide what the story is, the story stops being what it could have been and starts being only what you thought it would be.

And that's a much smaller thing.

I never saw Maya again. But sometimes, late at night, I think about that morning in bed. The way she smiled. The key on her wrist. The simple, desperate plea: "No peeking."

I understand now that it wasn't about not thinking about the future.

It was about not poisoning the present with it.

It was about staying in the moment so completely that the moment becomes infinite. It was about not writing the ending before you've lived the middle. It was about accepting that the best love stories are the ones you don't plan. The ones that surprise you. The ones that don't match your imagination because reality is always richer, stranger, more complicated than anything you could have invented.

The ones where you finally let someone be exactly who they are, moment by moment, without trying to fit them into the future you've already written.

I think about that game sometimes. "No peeking."

I think she was teaching me something I was too in love to understand.

And by the time I finally got it, she was gone.

Some stories don't have happy endings. Some love stories end because one person can stay in the present and the other can't. Some of the greatest loves of your life are the ones that break you open enough to understand something true, and then they leave you alone with that truth.

I peek now. All the time. At everything. It's a habit I can't break.

But I think if I ever loved someone again, I would try. I would try so hard to stay in that moment with them. To not write the ending. To not imagine the wedding or the apartment or the children or any of it.

I would try to understand what Maya was really asking.

Which was this: Don't love the idea of me. Love me. Just me. Just now. Just this.

And I would try. God, I would try.

But I'm not sure I could.

Some people are born with the gift of presence. Some people understand that the future is a thief that steals your today.

Maya was one of those people.

And I loved her exactly the wrong way. I loved her while looking past her. While already imagining the next chapter. While refusing to accept that some things are only beautiful because they don't last forever.

That their magic is in their impermanence.

That the moment you try to make them permanent, you've already lost them.

"No peeking," she said.

I peeked.

And she was right. By the time I looked back, she was gone.

Always at 2:15

 I don't remember falling asleep.

That's the first thing you need to understand. I went to bed at 11:30 PM. I remember the weight of the quilt, the cold seeping through the window, my body curling on its right side. The way I always sleep. The last thing I was aware of was the mist outside pressing against the glass like it wanted in.

Then nothing.

The next thing I knew, I was awake. Or at least, I thought I was awake.

The room looked right. My bed, my wall, the window with the mist still clinging to it. But there was a thickness to the darkness. A heaviness that didn't belong. It was like the air itself had weight.

I tried to move.

Nothing.

Not nothing like you're thinking. Not like "oh, I'm groggy." I mean nothing. My body was a corpse. Complete, absolute paralysis. I couldn't shift my weight. I couldn't lift my head. I couldn't even feel my fingers. They were there—I knew they were there—but they belonged to someone else. Some other person's hands that had been stitched onto my wrists.

I tried to breathe deeper, to shake it off. Sleep paralysis. I knew what it was. I'd read about it. Your brain wakes up but your body is still in REM sleep, still dreaming. Muscles locked. Temporary. Nothing to worry about.

That's what I told myself.

The footsteps started then.

Slow. Deliberate. From somewhere in the house. They weren't in my room yet, but they were coming closer. Down the hallway. Toward my door. I couldn't see anything—my eyes were open, I was staring at the ceiling, but my vision was wrong. Everything was in shades of grey and black. The world looked like it was drowning.

The footsteps reached my door.

Stop, I thought. Just stop. Go away.

The door didn't creak. It just opened. Silent. Like the hinges had been oiled the night before, waiting for this moment. Waiting for this exact night.

I heard breathing.

Not my breathing. Someone else's. Heavy. Wet. Like they'd been running. Or crying. Or both.

I tried to scream.

My mouth opened—I could feel that much—but no sound came out. It was like my vocal cords had been cut. Like someone had reached down my throat and severed the strings that made sound possible. I was screaming so loud inside my head that my brain felt like it was vibrating, but outside, the room remained dead silent.

The breathing got closer.

Now it was at the foot of my bed. I could hear it more clearly now. In and out. In and out. Rhythmic. Patient. It wasn't panicked or angry. It was calm. It was waiting.

I tried to move my hand. Just my pinky finger. Just one small motion to prove I could still control my own body.

Nothing.

The thing at the foot of my bed began to walk around it. Slowly. Deliberately. Like someone inspecting a piece of meat at the market. The breathing never stopped. In and out. In and out.

It was at my left side now. I could feel it there. Not see it—my peripheral vision was just as dark and drowning as everything else—but feel it. The way you feel someone watching you. That prickling at the back of your neck that says: something is here.

Something is wrong.

The breathing was directly above my face now.

I could smell it. Not a pleasant smell. Not a human smell. It was like wet dog mixed with rotting fruit and something else, something chemical and wrong. The smell of things that shouldn't exist. My stomach convulsed—or tried to. Even that was locked away from me.

"Hello," it said.

The voice wasn't a voice. It was the sound of wet fabric tearing. It was the sound of branches snapping in a forest at midnight. It was the sound of something that had learned to make words but didn't understand what they meant.

I tried to close my eyes.

I couldn't close my eyes.

They were pinned open, staring at something, and the thing above me leaned down closer. I still couldn't see it. The darkness was too complete. But I could feel its breath on my face. I could feel something touching my forehead. Something cold. Something wet.

My mind was screaming. This isn't real. This is sleep paralysis. Your body is still dreaming. Wake up. WAKE UP.

But I was awake.

I knew I was awake because the fear was real. Not dream-fear, which always has that soft quality to it. That knowledge that none of it matters. This was crystalline, sharp, absolute terror. The kind of fear that rewires your brain. The kind that leaves scars.

The thing's hand moved down my face. Slowly. Tenderly. Like a lover's touch. The nails dragged across my cheek, drawing something wet. I could feel it breaking skin.

"Why are you awake?" it whispered. Not in English. In something else. A sound like wind through a collapsed building. Something my primitive brain understood without translation: Stay still.

It moved to my chest. Its hand pressed against my heart, and I understood in that moment that it could feel every terror in my head, every desperate prayer. It was feeding on them.

And it was still hungry.

"Please," I tried to say. No sound came out.

The paralysis was complete now. Not just my body. My mind was starting to lock down too. I could feel my thoughts getting slower, thicker, harder to form. Like syrup. Like I was being pulled down into somewhere dark and deep.

The thing began to change.

I could feel it more than see it. Its shape was shifting against my body. The hand on my chest became multiple hands. The breathing fractured into overlapping rhythms, layering on top of each other like an obscene choir. The smell multiplied, became almost solid—I was breathing it in, ingesting it, and I realized in that moment there wasn't just one of them.

There were many. All of them here. All pressing down into my chest, my throat, my skull.

"When will you sleep again?" they asked. All of them at once, their voices overlapping into a single distorted phrase that came from inside my skull: "Whenyouwillsleepagainwhenyouwillsleep."

The words synchronized, fractured, reassembled into something rhythmic. Something patient.

"Always at 2:15. The moment your eyes close. The moment your body surrenders. That is when we come."

One voice. Many voices. The same voice spoken by something with too many mouths.

---

The paralysis broke.

It didn't break gradually. It shattered. One second I was locked in that terrible stillness, the next I was thrashing, gasping, clawing at my sheets. I fell out of bed, my legs tangled in the quilt, and I hit the floor hard. The pain was real. Good. Real.

I looked at the bed.

It was empty. The room was empty. Just me and the darkness and the mist pressing against the window.

I looked at my phone.

2:15 AM.

---

I didn't go back to sleep that night. I went to the kitchen and turned on every light in the house. My mother found me there at 4 AM, sitting at the table, staring at nothing.

"What happened?" she asked, frightened. She could see something was wrong.

"Just a nightmare," I said. "Really bad nightmare."

She made me tea. We sat together in the kitchen until the sun came up. I didn't tell her what I'd seen. How could I? It sounded insane. It was insane. Sleep paralysis. That's all it was. My brain misfiring. My body locked while my mind created monsters.

But that night, I couldn't sleep.

The next night, I tried. I was exhausted. My eyes kept closing. But every time I started to drift, I'd feel it. That heaviness. That thickness in the air. That sense of something gathering at the edges of my consciousness, waiting for me to fully surrender to sleep.

I'd jolt awake.

The clock would always show different times, but sometimes—sometimes it was 2:15 again.

On the third night, I saw something that I shouldn't have seen.

I was lying in bed, forcing myself to stay conscious, when I caught movement in my peripheral vision. Just for a second. Just a shadow that moved wrong. Too fast. Too fluid. I turned my head—thank God I could still move—and there was nothing there.

But there was a wet mark on my pillow. The shape of a hand.

On the fourth night, I didn't sleep in my room. I slept on the couch with all the lights on. My mother didn't ask questions anymore. She just looked at me with this expression of deep concern, like I was slipping away from her.

Maybe I was.

On the fifth night, I felt it again.

I was on the couch, under the bright overhead light, and I felt the paralysis creeping in. Not all at once. Gradually. Like something cold moving up my legs. Starting at my feet. Spreading upward. My legs went first. Then my stomach. Then my arms.

No. No no no no.

I tried to move. I jumped off the couch before it could take me completely. I stood up, my heart hammering, and I looked around the room.

Empty.

But the temperature had dropped. I could see my breath now, even with the lights on. Even though the heater was running.

"Not now," I whispered. "Please, not here."

Something laughed. It was a sound like glass breaking very slowly. Very deliberately.

---

I haven't slept in 47 hours.

My mother wants to take me to a doctor. I told her no. I know what they'd say. Stress. Anxiety. Sleep deprivation hallucinations. Pills would make me sleep, and that's when it would come.

Because I understand now: it doesn't just come at 2:15. It comes whenever I'm vulnerable. Whenever my mind slips between consciousness and dreams. That's where it lives. In that crack in reality where your body goes numb and your mind is still screaming.

I can feel it all the time. Even now. A pressure at the back of my head. A coldness in my chest. Something patient. Something eternal.

Two nights ago, I actually slept. Just four hours. Deep, dreamless, almost merciful. I woke up thinking maybe it was over. Maybe the cycle had broken. For half a day, I let myself believe that.

It was a lie I needed to tell myself.

Last night, my eyes closed for just one second while I was drinking coffee at 3 AM. In that blink, I was back in my bed, paralyzed, with its weight crushing down. Its synchronized voice inside my skull, all of them speaking as one: "We told you we'd be waiting."

When I opened my eyes, I was back in the kitchen.

But my nails were broken. My fingers were bleeding. And on the wall behind me, in letters I couldn't have written myself, was a wet smear.

It looked like a handprint. Except the hand had too many fingers.

Sleep is coming for me tonight. Like gravity. Like something inevitable. My body is shutting down whether I want it to or not.

When my eyes finally close, it will come. This time it won't let me wake up.

---

If you're reading this, and if you've ever experienced sleep paralysis, don't fight it. Don't try to scream. Don't try to move. Close your eyes and surrender. Maybe it will be merciful. Maybe it will just be a dream.

If you feel something cold on your face.

If you smell that wrong smell.

If you hear it breathing in the dark.

Then you're not dreaming.

And it's not sleep paralysis.

It's 2:15.

And it's been waiting for you.

Mandakini's Haveli

The haveli stood at the edge of the village, ancient and majestic, with towering walls and sprawling courtyards. Temples were scattered throughout, each housing a different deity, but all paths led to the grand temple of Lord Krishna in the west. It had been home to the Verma family for generations. Living in the haveli were the grandparents, the parents, and an 18-year-old boy, Arjun.

Though the haveli seemed peaceful on the surface, an eerie presence lingered within its walls. The family rarely spoke of it, but the whispers were always there—the basement was forbidden, and no one dared to go near it. Arjun had always wondered why, but no one would tell him.

One evening, Arjun, out of youthful curiosity, stumbled upon an old lock on a heavy wooden door that led to the basement. Without thinking, he forced it open. The musty air from the basement crept up, sending shivers down his spine. He stepped in, only to feel a cold, malevolent presence awaken from its slumber.

From that moment, strange things began to happen. At first, they were subtle—shadows moving in the corner of the eye, the sensation of someone watching from the floor. But soon, everyone in the family noticed a haunting figure—a woman, crawling along the floor, her face twisted in rage. She moved slowly, her eyes never lifting from the ground, as if bound to the floor itself. Her only goal was clear: she wanted Arjun.

The family was terrified. They stayed out of her way, climbing onto high furniture like almirahs whenever she appeared, praying she would pass them by. The house was no longer safe.

One night, in desperation, Arjun's grandfather revealed the truth.

“Her name was Mandakini,” he began, voice heavy with regret. “Many years ago, she was my love, but my mother didn’t approve of our relationship. She saw it as a disgrace to the family, and one day... she had Mandakini killed.”

Arjun’s eyes widened. His grandmother, sitting beside him, looked away.

The grandfather continued. “After Mandakini’s death, I couldn’t bear the guilt. I placed her ashes in a kalash and hid it under the temple of Lord Krishna in the basement. I thought I could lock her spirit away, along with the past, by sealing the basement. But now... now she’s come for you.”

Arjun’s father spoke up, anger and fear in his voice. “This is your doing, Father! If you hadn’t hidden her away, she wouldn’t be haunting us now. You have to fix this.”

The grandfather’s eyes darkened. “I did it for you. I forgot her because I had to marry your mother and have you. I buried my love so that you could be born.”

The father looked away, guilt-ridden but unable to argue.

That night, the family made a decision. Together, they would confront the ghost in the basement. Armed with nothing but their prayers, they descended into the cold, damp chambers below the haveli, the haunting whispers of the past echoing around them.

As they reached the temple of Lord Krishna, Mandakini’s ghost appeared. She was furious, her long black hair matted, her hands and face pressed to the ground, crawling toward Arjun. The family huddled around him in fear.

“Pray,” the grandfather said, voice trembling. “Pray to Lord Krishna, the one who taught love to all. Only he can help us now.”

The family began to chant, pleading with the god who had loved Radha but married Rukmini. They explained that just as Krishna’s love for Radha had been eternal, so too had the grandfather’s love for Mandakini. But like Krishna, the grandfather had been forced to marry someone else.

Mandakini’s form wavered, her fury still evident but lessened. The air around them felt heavy as the grandfather stepped forward, calling her name softly.

“Mandakini,” he whispered, his voice full of sorrow and love. “I never wanted to leave you. I never wanted to forget you. But I had no choice. They made me marry someone else, and for the sake of my family, I buried my love for you. Forgive me.”

The ghost paused. She slowly raised her head, her face etched with the pain of betrayal and longing. Her eyes, now full of sadness, locked onto the grandfather’s.

“I waited for you,” she whispered in a hollow voice. “For seven years, I waited. But you forgot me.”

The family held their breath as the grandfather knelt before her. “I never forgot you. I tried to bury the past, but it never left me. Let me make it right. I couldn’t be with you in life... but we can be together in death.”

For a moment, it seemed as though Mandakini would relent. But her expression darkened once more. “No,” she hissed. “Not yet. I will wait for you... on the other side.”

With that, she began to fade, her form dissipating like smoke. But not before her anger lashed out one final time. The walls of the temple trembled, cracks forming in the floor, dust falling from the ceiling. The family was knocked to the ground, bruised and battered, but alive.

As Mandakini’s ghost vanished into the darkness, the house fell silent once more. The curse was not fully lifted, but for now, they were safe. And the grandfather knew, deep in his heart, that when his time came, Mandakini would be waiting for him—on the other side.