A man lived an ordinary life, working from day to night. His hectic schedule deprived him of sleep, leading to severe sleep deprivation and, eventually, sleep paralysis—a terrifying condition where one is awake but unable to move or speak.
As his condition worsened, he began seeing a dark, menacing figure lurking in the corner of his room. Unable to react, this presence filled him with dread, triggering adrenaline rushes that plunged him into deep, unsettling hallucinations. These hallucinations trapped him in a world eerily similar to his own but cold, dark, and foggy—a limbo between reality and nightmare.
Many people suffer from sleep disorders, but for him, these episodes pushed him to the brink of madness. He believed his mind was unraveling, and death seemed inevitable. But after countless terrifying encounters, he discovered a twisted opportunity: in the depths of his hallucinations, he was alone, wandering through places conjured by his memories. This solitude allowed him to search for a way out.
One day, in a hallucination, he stumbled upon an abandoned house containing a painting. To his shock, the same painting existed in the real world. It depicted the creature haunting his sleep—a terrifying figure that had become the source of his panic attacks.
Desperate, he sought help from doctors, but none of their treatments worked. His sleep patterns grew more erratic, and his brain began to lose its ability to distinguish between waking and dreaming. Diagnosed with severe sleep deprivation, he realized he was spiraling towards death.
During another hallucination, he found the real-world version of the abandoned house and retrieved the painting. On the back, he discovered a message, which translated to "The Curse of the Pharaoh." Further investigation led him to the former owner of the house—an elderly woman who turned out to be his grandmother. She revealed that the creature in the painting was an ancient Egyptian entity, a figure from the bedtime stories she told him as a child. This entity, she warned, would haunt him.
Suddenly, he found himself waking up in the middle of a street, unable to tell if he was in the real world or still trapped in the limbo.
When he inquired about his grandmother, he learned she had passed away years before. He also uncovered his Egyptian heritage and realized that his cultural lineage, steeped in beliefs about ghosts and the afterlife, made him more susceptible to sleep disorders. The entity haunted him because of the terrifying stories his grandmother had told him as a child.
Days later, he received a call from a hospital, informing him that the file he requested was ready. Confused, he told them he already had the file, but they insisted it was for another patient with his surname. At the hospital, he discovered that the file described symptoms identical to his own. When he met the doctor, she revealed that the file was indeed his. She explained that his condition was genetic, passed down through his Egyptian ancestors. His rising responsibilities and stress had exacerbated his unique and extreme case of sleep paralysis.
The doctor then delivered a shocking truth: he had been a long-term patient at the hospital. Because there was no cure for his condition, the doctors had used hypnosis to make him forget everything and return to his life as normal. His wandering in the limbo was the only thing keeping him alive—without the adrenaline rushes, his brain would deteriorate, leading to brain death.
In a state of disbelief, he destroyed the doctor’s office, demanding a cure. The doctor calmly asked why he believed in a cure when there was no evidence it existed. She explained that the belief in a cure had been implanted through hypnosis to keep him searching, thereby keeping his brain active until a solution could be found. As the doctor notified her colleagues that "Sequence 129" was complete, she prepared to start the hypnosis process once again.
Realizing he was about to be trapped in this endless loop for the 130th time, he decided to end his torment by jumping off a building. But instead of finding peace, he woke up in his bed, sleep-paralyzed, with the same dark creature lurking in the shadows. He had been successfully hypnotized again, doomed to repeat the cycle.
