I do not wake up naturally anymore.

I surface—like something has finished using me.

My eyes open before my body is ready, heart already racing, breath shallow. My hands are clenched tight against my chest, fingers locked in a shape that feels practiced. Before I look, before I move, I already know.

There is dirt under my fingernails.

Not dust. Not something accidental. It’s packed in so deep it hurts to scrape out, as if each nail was pressed deliberately into the same place, again and again. When I drag my thumb beneath one, dark grains spill onto the sheet in a thin line, almost careful. Measured.

The smell follows.

It isn’t the smell of earth after rain. It’s stale. Trapped. Like air that has been sealed away and forgotten. It makes my stomach turn in a way I can’t explain.

I sit there listening.

The house is silent—too silent. No pipes. No distant traffic. No movement. The door is still locked. The windows haven’t been touched. My shoes are clean and exactly where I left them. Nothing suggests I ever left the bed.

Yet my hands say otherwise.

I wash them in the sink, scrubbing until my fingers burn and my nails turn pink. The dirt swirls down the drain and disappears. When I’m done, my hands look normal. Innocent. I stand there longer than necessary, staring at my reflection, half-expecting something to be wrong with it.

By midday, the ache starts.

Not pain. Fatigue. Deep in my fingers, like they’ve been overworked. Like they spent the night doing the same small motion repeatedly, with no room to stop. When I flex them, there’s a strange sense of resistance, as if my muscles remember something my mind doesn’t.

That evening, I notice fine grains of dirt in the sink again.

I don’t remember washing my hands.

That night, sleep takes me faster than it should.

I dream of being underground. Of darkness pressed close on all sides. Of a ceiling just inches from my face. I can’t move my legs. I can barely move my arms. Every breath feels counted, measured, precious.

Above me, something shifts.

I wake gasping, hands clenched, nails aching.

The dirt is back—packed deeper than before.

And for the first time, I understand a terrible certainty:

Whatever is digging doesn’t know it’s dead. the sound of breathing that isn’t mine.

Here is part 2:

I Keep Waking Up With Dirt Under My Fingernails — Part 2.