The House That Sleeps

At the edge of the forgotten woods stands a mansion unlike any other-a place locals refuse to speak of after dusk. It is not abandoned. It is asleep.

The walls rise and fall with a slow, rhythmic breath, making the wooden floors swell softly like the chest of a slumbering creature. Dust drifts through the air in time with its dreaming pulses. Doors remain half-open, as if the whole structure is caught between inhale and exhale.

Inside, the ceilings murmur faint sounds: the creak of settling beams, the sigh of shifting plaster-yet none of it is random. The house whispers in its sleep.

Some nights, visitors report hearing laughter from rooms that no longer exist, or footsteps pacing inside the walls like restless dreamers trapped beneath the floorboards. Portraits change position whenever the house "rolls over," and cold patches bloom on the walls like nightmares pressing their faces through.

The house dreams of every person who has ever stepped inside it.
And once you enter, a version of you lives on in its dream-walking, speaking, reliving moments you never had. The longer you stay, the more your dream-self grows in detail, until eventually the house cannot tell which one is real.

That is why no one enters anymore.
Because when the house finally wakes... it will want to keep the people it has dreamed.