This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Super-Distance-2457 on 2024-10-31 13:29:49+00:00.

It started as a prank.

Three friends and I were hanging out one night, bored and restless, when someone brought up an old urban legend—a game where you could see your “final five seconds.” The legend said if you closed your eyes at exactly midnight, held your breath, and counted to five, you’d get a flash of your last five seconds alive. Just five seconds. A small glimpse into your end.

None of us believed it. But when midnight hit, we decided to try it for a laugh. I remember rolling my eyes and thinking how ridiculous it was. We closed our eyes, took a deep breath, and counted down in unison: five… four… three… two… one.

Nothing happened. We laughed it off and went on with our night. But then… we started seeing things.

The first time it happened, I was brushing my teeth. Out of nowhere, I was somewhere else—standing on a desolate road under a blackened sky. An overwhelming dread filled me, but I couldn’t move. Something was coming toward me, something fast and heavy, and then—

I was back in my bathroom, shaking. My heart pounded, and I could feel the taste of copper in my mouth. I tried to laugh it off as a daydream, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it had been real.

The next morning, my friend Dave looked like he hadn’t slept. His skin was pale, eyes wide and darting. When I asked him what was wrong, he just muttered, “I saw it.” When I pressed him, he said he’d had a vision too: standing in a pitch-black room, a sense of suffocating dread pressing in on him, and something slowly scraping along the walls, drawing closer with each second.

It didn’t stop. Over the next few days, the visions became more intense. Each time, they lasted exactly five seconds, and each time, the terror grew. We saw flashes of different places—abandoned rooms, darkened hallways, empty roads—places we’d never been. And each time, there was something horrifyingly close. I’d hear footsteps or feel a presence I couldn’t see, breathing on the back of my neck, lingering at the edge of my vision.

One by one, we all became wrecks. Sleepless, jumpy, always looking over our shoulders. We’d call each other late at night, desperate to understand what was happening. Dave was the first to say it: “I think we saw our deaths.”

It sounded absurd, but deep down, I knew he was right. We’d caught glimpses of our last moments, and now they were creeping closer, coming to claim us. The visions became more frequent, and every time, they’d change, like they were updating, getting closer to where we were in real life.

Two weeks in, Dave stopped answering his phone. I went to his place to check on him, and his roommate said he hadn’t come home the night before. They found him two days later, his car abandoned on a lonely road, the exact spot I’d seen in my first vision. His cause of death? A hit-and-run, on an empty stretch with no witnesses.

One by one, my friends vanished after that. Each of them was found in a place that had appeared in their visions. They’d seen it coming, just as I had, and they couldn’t stop it. They couldn’t run from their final five seconds.

Now, I’m the last one left. Every night, the visions come stronger, clearer. I know exactly where it’s going to happen—a place I’ve never been, but a place I feel drawn to every time I close my eyes. And I can’t fight the pull. Every night, the urge to go there grows stronger, and I know that one day soon, I won’t be able to resist.

So, if you ever hear about the game where you can see your last five seconds, I beg you: don’t play it. Those five seconds aren’t a warning; they’re a promise. And when you’ve seen them, they’ll come for you.

Because in the end, you can’t outrun what’s already written.