Moose at Midnight – A Man’s Nightly Encounters with a Silent Visitor During Insomnia
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The clock struck midnight, and I was awake again.
I used to sleep through the night well, that’s what people told me. Now, the hours stretch like a rubber band pulled too tight, each tick of the clock a reminder that I’m still here, wide-eyed and restless, while the world sleeps around me.
I used to dream. But now, I only see the shadows of what I’ve forgotten.
The First Encounter
It started innocently enough. I thought I saw a shadow move outside my window, something large, something too dark to make sense of in the moonlight. But I dismissed it, blaming the half-sleep fog in my mind.
The next night, I was awake again. Same time. Same restless thoughts. And there it was again, this time, clearer, closer. A moose. Standing in the middle of my yard.
Not moving, just standing, its massive frame illuminated by the moon, as if it had wandered out of a dream and into the night.
I blinked. It stayed. I rubbed my eyes. It stayed.
And for the first time in months, I felt… something. I didn’t know what, but it wasn’t the usual emptiness that accompanied my sleeplessness.
The Unseen Connection
Each night after that, the moose appeared. Not always in the same spot, but always at midnight, always silent. Sometimes I’d stand at the window and watch, waiting for it to move, to do something, anything, but it never did. It simply stood, massive and still, as if waiting for me to understand something I couldn’t name. Somehow, in its silence, it felt like it was speaking.
And on the nights when I felt particularly alone, or lost in the blur of my sleepless mind, I couldn’t help but wonder: Was the moose a dream? A manifestation of my own desperate search for rest, for meaning, for a sign that I was still connected to something?
Or was it real, an animal of the earth, wandering into my life at the very moment I used to fall asleep, when my dreams had once begun?
A Dream That Never Comes
I had spent so many nights seeking sleep, fighting against my mind that refused to settle. The moose was never a solution. It didn’t give me answers. But somehow, its presence made me feel less alone in the silence. It reminded me of something I had lost: the ability to simply be without expectation.
The nights continued, the moose always showing up, always silent, and I began to wonder whether this animal had become my bridge between the waking world and the one I no longer knew, the world of dreams. Perhaps the moose didn’t belong in the waking world at all. Perhaps it was an offering from the realm I used to visit so easily, a reminder of the dreams that once came without effort, at midnight, in the soft grasp of sleep.
Letting Go
On the night I finally let go of the fight against sleep, something shifted. The moose appeared again, as it always did. But this time, I didn’t stare, waiting for it to move, waiting for some deep meaning to materialise. I simply watched. And for the first time in months, I let the world fade.
The moose remained, solid and eternal, and the darkness around it became a blanket that wrapped me in comfort, not fear.
I woke in the morning, and I didn’t remember the moment I fell asleep. But it didn’t matter. For the first time in a long time, I felt rested.
Nadeera Nilupamali
Nadeera Nilupamali
. 300 Stories
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