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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/PatLBates96 on 2025-10-25 03:59:07+00:00.

I’m sure we’ve all had a day where nothing seems to go right. I slept in late this morning, I stepped in a puddle of water from the leaky sink in my bathroom with my socks on, the stereo in my car is broken and keeps making that buzzing noise, I was late to work, I was ripped a new one by my manager, I received a notice that if I delay paying the rent another week, I’ll be kicked out, and my shithead dog decided to chew open a random package I don’t remember signing for and unleashing hell in my apartment.

Okay, that last part may not be as common, but I swear I’ve seen other Reddit threads about this type of situation, so don’t come for me. I’m kind of trying to get this out as quickly as possible because I’m not sure how much longer the internet is going to last.

I’m keeping my eye on the corner of my screen because the battery is depleting by the minute, and the Wi-Fi keeps getting worse.

The time has completely disappeared on my phone, my laptop, my grandmother’s clock, the microwave; anywhere the time would normally be, it’s gone. My calendar app is gone too, not like I ever used it anyway, but my real calendar is totally blank. Even the numbers and hands on my Walmart wrist-watch that’s been collecting dust on my nightstand are gone as well.

I stepped out onto the tiny balcony on the side of my apartment building to look up and see if I could tell time the old-fashioned way, but neither the sun or the moon was there. The sky is completely pitch black, so I have no idea what time of day it could be.

I tried to keep track in my mind, but I can barely remember what I ate on my way to work. I know I got back sometime around 10:00 PM, and that’s when I saw Rudy, my dog.

He is the cutest border collie, but ever since I picked him up from the shelter a few years ago, he has done nothing but make mess after mess. I suppose because I’m gone so much, he doesn’t really get the chance to be very active and gets bored. Probably why, when a mysterious package that turned out to be Pandora’s box showed up, he ripped it open and had a heyday.

He was jumping up and pawing at me, barking excitedly as normal as I entered my apartment. But immediately upon stepping inside, I noticed several dirty red paw marks covering my floors, walls, and furniture; they looked like some weird, occult symbols smeared and scratched all over the place.

“RUDY NOOOOO!!” I yelled, looking around. “What- what did you do!!?? For what reason??!!” Suddenly, I tripped over something on the floor and fell on my face. Bloody nose.

Sniffling, I looked to see what I had tripped on and saw a black wooden board. I went to pick it up, and taped beneath it, I found a small, folded slip of paper with a symbol on the front, similar to the ones covering my walls and floor.

“To summon this deity, smear its ancient symbols and speak its demonic tongue.”

I flipped the paper over, and on the back, I saw a bunch of letters hap-hazardly scribbled in dark ink. I couldn’t make out a single cohesive word. It looked as if someone tried to put the growls in the Korn song Twist into words.

I wondered if someone had sent me this as a prank, and judging from the three other black boards I saw around the room, my little doggie really did a number on the box it came in. I assume it had some red ink balloon or something that was supposed to burst when opened, but that wouldn’t explain why Rudy’s paw marks and smears look almost exactly like the symbol on paper. Did someone break into my apartment? Why go through all this trouble just for a prank? I hardly know anybody around here, let alone someone who is this dedicated to something so stupid.

I picked myself back up, holding my nose and tilting my head back while Rudy watched me, sitting obediently and looking pleasantly confused. I pointed at him. “We will discuss this in a second. You STAY THERE,” I said firmly as I turned to go to the bathroom.

That’s when I noticed my calendar hanging by the small fridge in my kitchen. The little square divisions were still there, but the numbers for the days were missing. I went over and began flipping through it. This raised further suspicion in me that someone had broken in, because all of the pages were blank. It’s possible the person who left the package for me also replaced my calendar and messed with the clocks and appliances around my apartment as part of the gag.

At least, that was the most reasonable conclusion I had, until I went to check the time on my phone, and it too was gone.

I heard my dog barking, so I shoved some toilet paper up my nose and went to check on him. I quite literally turned my back for a moment, and when I returned, I heard him growling and barking in a way I’ve never heard before.

“Rudy?”

I saw my dog sitting, wagging his tail. He started jumping up and pawing at something in the dark corner by the door.

I couldn’t make out its shape right away, but it was massive. I could hear what sounded like thick, sharp objects scraping against the ceiling, and little cracking of joints as if it were hunching itself over. I saw a single arm reach out to Rudy, and not wanting to draw attention to myself, I stifled a scream.

It was thick, and the flesh appeared rough. Rigid wooden spikes stuck out of its knuckles, and its nails were long, boxy, and brown. Although it was blending in with the dark, there were visible smears of that dirty red color all over the arm. I could hear it breathing, low and guttural.

I stood there, frozen, when suddenly I could feel its terrifying gaze now focusing on me. Panicked, I called to Rudy, and luckily, he came to me. We ran, and I didn’t hear that thing following, which was somehow worse as I couldn’t tell if it was silently coming after us.

We ducked into the bedroom, and I pulled my phone out of my pocket before stopping. I realized I didn’t have anyone I could call. My parents live in another state, and all of my friends I met online. 911 wouldn’t be helpful either. What would I say? “Hello, yes, this is an emergency. You see, while I was at work, someone broke into my apartment and left a wooden box which my dog ripped apart, smearing ancient symbols all over the place with mysterious red ink, and growling the words of some demonic language, so now there’s an evil deity, demon-thing blocking the only exit. Also, I can’t tell the time. No, I don’t have a history of poor mental health.”

We were sitting there for a while. It felt like hours. My back was killing me, and I was exhausted. I didn’t hear that thing outside my bedroom door, so I stood up to get some air. I had no idea how long Rudy and I had been curled up between my bed and the wall. This is when I crept through the sliding doors of my balcony and stepped out to see if I could read the sky. Unfortunately, the moon was gone, and the sun wasn’t anywhere in sight either.

Note that because of the already smaller size of my apartment building, my balcony has no stairs attached to it, so Rudy and I were wholly trapped.

I went back inside and tried looking up information online about mysterious black wooden boxes, dirty red ink, time going missing, stuff like that. I even put in a full description of the arm I saw reaching for Rudy in the search bar, but it was all to no avail. The only results I got were a bunch of shock sites, satirical articles, and corny short-form horror content.

Of course, Reddit was my last resort. I have Discord too, but it was being all buggy due to the WI-FI, and I don’t have anything like Twitter (“X”) or Facebook.

I don’t have any better ideas right now, and time is of the essence.

Rudy crawled out from under my arm, and I watched as he began jumping up and pawing at the bedroom door. He was wagging his tail and barking loudly. I get the feeling there’s going to be a full blackout soon.

So, can anybody tell me what day it is?