The Town That Fell Asleep

In the heart of a forgotten valley—tucked away where GPS signals fade and no cell tower dares to reach—there lies a town called Somnera. From the outside, it looks like any other small town. Rows of timeworn red-brick houses line its narrow roads. A single church steeple watches over the town square. The air always seems to carry the scent of chimney smoke and pine. It’s quiet, unremarkable. Almost too quiet.

But Somnera harbors a secret. A strange, unexplained phenomenon that locals won’t speak of directly, at least not to strangers.

It’s the town that sleeps.

And I don’t mean in the poetic, restful way most towns do when night falls. I mean Somnera literally, entirely, and inexplicably falls asleep. Every single person. Every year. On one unpredictable day between the first frost and the last fallen leaf, Somnera shuts its eyes.

It begins with a thick fog that rolls in without warning. The fog is heavy—not just the kind that settles over roads, but the kind that muffles sound and blurs your thoughts. You feel it in your bones. By noon, eyelids grow heavy. Conversations trail off mid-sentence. Teachers forget the names of their students. Shopkeepers lock up early without realizing why. And then, like a shared yawn across generations, the town succumbs. Every home, every shop, every person—sleeping. Dreaming. Gone from the waking world.

And no one remembers it afterward.

I first heard about Somnera from my grandmother. She lived there in the 1960s. I was ten years old, curled on her lap in a rocking chair, when she told me the story.

“We slept for three days,” she whispered. “Woke up and it was like time had skipped ahead. No one spoke of it. Some didn’t even realize it had happened.”

My father told me not to listen. “Your grandmother’s stories belong in fairy tale books,” he’d scoff. “She was always too imaginative.”

But I believed her.

I never forgot about that sleepy little town. So, last fall, I decided to go see it for myself. Just for a few days, I told myself. Just to see.

I arrived in late October. The leaves were gold and dying. A chill clung to the early evenings, and the town looked exactly as she described it—quiet, still, almost suspended in time. I stayed at a small inn near the willow-lined river. The locals were kind but distant. They seemed to carry a secret behind their eyes, something heavy and unspoken.

When I asked about the sleep, most chuckled politely. A few changed the subject. “That’s just an old story,” said the mayor, smiling a little too quickly.

But then came the fog.

It arrived on the morning of November 2nd. I woke to a world of white and silence. The streets were empty. The shops were closed. The innkeeper never appeared at breakfast.

By mid-morning, the town had gone still.

I wandered the fog-draped streets, calling out names I didn’t know. People had fallen asleep in their homes, on porches, in cars. One man sat dozing on a park bench, a book still open on his lap. A dog lay curled at his feet. They didn’t stir.

I stayed for three days. No one woke. No one moved.

And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the fog lifted. The town came back to life. The people woke up and resumed their routines, unaware of the time lost.

But they looked at me differently.

As if I had crossed into a place I wasn’t supposed to go. The smiles felt thinner. The conversations more careful. That night, I packed my bags and left. I haven’t returned.

Sometimes I wonder what dreams they dream during the Sleep. Where their minds go. Why I remained awake.

Somewhere in the valley, Somnera still sleeps. And I—by some strange twist of fate—remained the only witness awake in a town of dreams.