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11/11


A young girl suffered from insomnia, and throughout the night she’d often wake up for no reason. One night she awoke, and in the daze of half-sleep, she blinked in the darkness. Just for a second, she thought she saw a pair of reptilian eyes, gazing at her and glowing red. She sat up and stared at them, quickly realizing that it was only her clock. It was 11:11. She sighed and tried to go back to sleep.

The next night, she awoke and instantly looked at the clock. It was exactly 11:11. This began to repeat itself night after night. Sometimes even during the day, for no reason whatsoever, she would stop whatever she happened to be doing, and spin around to look at the nearest clock; always at 11 minutes past 11 o’clock.

As her insomnia got worse, she thought she’d try some white noise to help her sleep. She turned on her clock radio to play music softly. It worked well, so she kept doing it for the next few nights.

One night, she awoke with a terrible start, covered in cold sweat. Rather than being in a sleepy daze, she was completely awake now. The radio was still on, but instead of music she heard static, and a lot of erratic clicking noises. Breathing heavily, she stared at the glowing numbers. You know what time it was.

BANG. Her heart nearly jumped out of her chest. A door had just slammed to her right, outside of the room. She heard a pair of inhumanly rapid footsteps running from the sound of the door slam, all the way around her, behind her head, and to her left. Another BANG as a door was slammed shut.

Her blood ran cold. Her bedroom was on the second story, and the wall behind her faced outside; there were no doors or floor there. Suddenly she felt an urge to run. She didn’t care where. She leaped from her bed and ran faster than she’d ever run in her life. In what felt like less than the blink of an eye, she’d run through the hall, down the stairs, out the door and to the end of the street.

She doubled over, panting. After a moment she looked back at her house, at her dark bedroom window. She stared at it for a long, long time.

When at last she began to feel calm again, she carefully walked back to the house. She’d left the front door ajar, and a lot of cold air had gotten in. She closed it behind her and turned on all the lights as she made her way back to her bedroom. She hesitated the most as she turned on her own light. The room looked perfectly normal, but as soon as she heard the static coming from the radio, she rushed over and switched it off.

After that night, she never listened to that radio again. The girl didn’t sleep a wink for many, many nights.

She told only a handful of people what had happened. Her parents, a few of her friends. The responses were all more or less the same.

“It was just a dream, it only -felt- real.”

“You were so tired, maybe you just imagined it?”

“I believe YOU believe it happened, [name removed]…”

What you need to know is that this story is very true. To this day, the girl (well, she’s a woman now) has never slept soundly. None of us know for sure what is so special about 11:11. But she did tell me this: whenever that moment strikes the clock, she feels the same strange sensation. She says it’s just like that feeling you get when you know you’re being watched.

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