Sleep Tracker
Here’s to slow reading and soft worlds
Dear Gentle Reader, let’s read today’s story: Sleep Tracker📖
Every morning, before she made coffee, Maahi checked her smartwatch.
Sleep Score. Heart Rate. Steps. It had become a ritual.
On Monday, the ritual broke.
Sleep Score: 85. Steps: 7000
She frowned. Seven thousand steps? She hadn’t even left her apartment.
The sleep graph showed uninterrupted rest from 11:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m.
No interruptions. No signs of sleepwalking.
Assuming it was a bug, she restarted the watch.
The number remained. Curious, she opened the health app.
A small map appeared. A blue line traced her movements between 3:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m.
Bedroom. Hallway. Living room. Back again. Over and over. As if she’d been pacing in perfect circles.
She laughed uneasily and called customer support.
“Sometimes sensor errors happen,” the representative said. “Do you have security cameras?”
“I do.”
“Then you can confirm whether you sleepwalk.”
That evening, Maahi opened the footage.
At exactly 3:00 a.m., her bedroom door creaked open.
She stepped out. Barefoot. Expressionless. Her head tilted slightly downward. She walked exactly as the map had shown.
Slow. Precise. Mechanical.
By 3:55 a.m., she reached the hallway.
Maahi leaned closer to the screen, waiting to see herself return to bed.
Instead…she walked past her bedroom.
Past the front door.
Straight toward the camera.
She stopped inches from the lens.
Then, very slowly…she looked up.
Not at the hallway.
At her.
At the woman watching the recording.
Maahi’s breath caught.
The figure smiled.
Then reached toward the camera.
The footage ended.
Her smartwatch vibrated.
A notification appeared.
Congratulations! You’ve completed today’s activity goal.
See you again tonight.
If you made it this far, thank you!
If you’d like to share any thoughts/feedback, please feel free to reply to this email or message me on Substack. I’d love to hear your thoughts!💛
Very nice. Creepy.
the notification popping up right after that is the part that got me, a horror beat wrapped in something as boring as an activity goal. the smartwatch detail did so much work too, it made the whole thing feel plausible before it turned. how did you land on that pacing, did the twist come first or did the story build toward it.