The Hour of 3:33

Nishan was just twenty years old. He had never experienced sleep before in nearly two months. His eyes were not even touched by a moment of rest. His mind alternated between fear and confusion at all times, and his bones were as heavy as stone. It felt as if some invisible force had chained his eyelids open—an unseen hand keeping him locked in wakefulness.
He initially attributed it to the usual suspects—exam pressure, academic anxiety, and possibly even the insidious ache of a long-lost love. He was aware of something else, though, deep down. Something more sinister. In Jessore, Nishan lived in an old flat that seemed to talk to itself when the wind blew. A science student by day, his world revolved around equations, graphs, and molecules. But by night, everything changed. The equations vanished, replaced by silence, shadows, and the weight of invisible eyes.
Each night, as the city slipped into slumber, Nishan sat at the window, staring at the empty street below. And then it began—at exactly 3:33 AM, he would see it.
A shadowy figure.
The first night, he dismissed it—a coincidence, perhaps a reflection or a sleepless passerby.
The second night, he doubted his own eyes—hallucinations from sleep deprivation, surely.
But the third night?
"Do you not see it?" Nishan whispered to his roommate, Shovon.
Shovon moved about, barely awake. “Go to sleep, man. He turned over and murmured, "You're overthinking." But Nishan couldn’t sleep.
Outside the window, the figure was back. A human-like form draped in white, standing perfectly still. Its head hung low, and though its face was unclear, Nishan could sense its eyes—foggy, cold, and endless.
It didn’t move.
It didn’t speak.
It only watched.
On the fourth night, everything changed.
At 3:33, Shovon rose silently from his bed, his eyes shut but body moving. He walked slowly, trance-like, toward the door. His hand reached out, turned the knob, and stepped outside.
“Shovon! Where are you going?!” Nishan cried, panic rising in his throat.
No reply.
He ran to the window, and his blood ran cold.
Shovon was outside—walking toward the mist—and behind him stood the same figure in white, motionless. The swirling fog thickened, and in seconds, both were gone.
By morning, Shovon’s bed was empty.
His shoes were still by the door.
His phone lay on the desk.
No one knew where he had gone.
Nishan lost all sense of normalcy. He stopped attending classes. He dug through old journals and notebooks, desperate to find something—anything. Days blurred. Time lost meaning.
Then he found it.
A torn page from an old diary. A half-burned address and a cryptic, hastily written phrase were written on it: "In the time of sleep, the gate of dreams will open. 3:33.”
Memories—fragmented and faded—began to surface.
As a child, Nishan had lived in a special home on the outskirts of the city. A place where children were taught to master lucid dreaming. The instructors would instruct, "Control your dreams." "Lean on them. Form them. Never be controlled by them.”
But one night, a fire broke out. The house burned to the ground. All the children perished.
Except Nishan.
He had made it. But in surviving, he had forgotten.
Until now.
The final night.
Nishan fought sleep like a drowning man fights water. He drank tea by the pot, splashed cold water on his face, even banged his head against the wall to stay awake.
But at some point… he slipped.
Suddenly, he saw himself—asleep on the bed, breathing slowly.
He also stood in white in the room's corner. The same white robes.
The same bowed head.
Same set of empty eyes. He looked at the clock.
3:33.
And it had stopped ticking.