John had been living a double life for nearly a year. To his wife Emma, he was a devoted husband, always attentive and charming. To his mistress, Claire, he was a passionate lover, escaping the mundanity of his married life. But maintaining this facade was becoming increasingly difficult, and John knew he had to be more careful. Therefore, on a particularly cool autumn evening, he concocted a plan he thought foolproof.
Emma had been feeling under the weather, so when John handed her the warm bowl of soup laced with sleeping pills, she didn’t suspect a thing. Within an hour, she was sound asleep in their bedroom. John quietly slipped out of the house, confident that his absence would go unnoticed until the morning.
At Claire’s apartment, time flew by in a haze of excitement and forbidden pleasure. Yet, as the clock struck midnight, John felt a strange unease gnawing at him. Dismissing it as guilt, he kissed Claire goodbye and began his drive home.
Pulling into his driveway, John noticed something odd. All the lights in the house were off, save for the surreal glow of the streetlamp filtering through the living room window. A chill ran down his spine, but he brushed it aside, attributing it to the cold night air.
As he entered the house, a heavy silence enveloped him. He tiptoed through the hallway, his heart pounding in his chest. When he reached the bedroom, he froze. The sight before him was hauntingly surreal.
Emma was not in bed. Instead, she was standing in the middle of the room, her eyes wide open, staring blankly at the wall. Her skin was pallid, and her features were twisted into an expression of sheer terror. But what truly made John’s hair turn gray was the message scrawled across the wall in what appeared to be blood: “I KNOW.”
Panic surged through him as he tried to make sense of the situation. Was this some kind of twisted joke? Had Emma found out about his affair, and this was her way of punishing him? The logical part of his brain told him that was impossible; she should have been asleep until morning.
“Emma,” he whispered, his voice trembling. “Emma, are you okay?”
She didn’t respond. Instead, she started to sway slightly, her eyes never leaving the wall. John approached her cautiously, his mind racing with dread and confusion. As he touched her shoulder, she blinked rapidly, as if waking from a trance, and looked at him with a mixture of fear and recognition.
“John?” she murmured, her voice hoarse. “What happened? I… I don’t remember anything.”
John swallowed hard, deciding to play along. “You must have been sleepwalking, sweetheart. Let’s get you back to bed.”
He guided her gently, avoiding her questioning gaze, and tucked her in. As she drifted back to sleep, John examined the message on the wall more closely. It wasn’t blood, but rather some kind of red paint, hastily applied and still wet to the touch.
Throughout the night, John sat in the living room, unable to sleep. The message haunted him, an ominous reminder that his secret life was catching up to him. As dawn broke, he realized that the double life he’d been juggling was unsustainable. He needed to come clean, not just to save his marriage, but to preserve his sanity.
With a heavy heart, John knew that the events of the night were a warning. Whether it was his own guilty conscience manifesting in his sleep-deprived mind or something more sinister at play, one thing was clear: secrets have a way of revealing themselves, no matter how deeply buried.