On my way home from work one day, I ended up witnessing a suicide scene.

I think it was past eleven at night on a deserted street. I was walking back to my apartment after a typical late shift, having grabbed dinner at a convenience store. Catching sight of flashing red lights cutting through the darkness and a small, strangely lively group of people, I knit my brows, wondering what was going on. At first, I wondered what so many people were doing out at such a late hour, but as I drew closer and realized a crowd had gathered around an emergency vehicle, my morbid curiosity got the best of me. I slipped into the back of the crowd and peeked into the center of the commotion.

It was on the ground floor of a weathered, old two-story apartment building. The basic front door was wide open, offering an unobstructed view into the small studio apartment. Hanging in a straight line between the entryway and the back window was a dangling mass of flesh.

With a bad feeling in my gut, I strained my eyes to see better. The second I realized it was a human body hanging by its neck, vomit welled up in the back of my throat.

"They're saying it's a suicide." "God, I've never actually seen one before."

Overhearing those callous remarks from the onlookers made me feel thoroughly sickened, so I decided to get out of there.

It was a grim sight—tough on a mind already exhausted by constant overtime, and truly unbearable on an empty stomach. Just as I thought about hurrying home to eat and go to bed, I suddenly felt eyes on me. I turned around, my gaze instinctively drawn back to the hanging corpse.

"...?!"

The paramedics were just about to lower the body, but its head turned toward me. For a split second, its eyes snapped wide open, locking right onto mine.

An indescribable terror sent a shudder through my body, but almost as if it had been a dream, the corpse's eyes were closed again. Neither the paramedics nor the bystanders around me seemed alarmed in the slightest.

Assuming I was just hallucinating from fatigue, I made a quick departure.

After getting home, I finished my food, took a shower, and collapsed into bed. I must have been utterly exhausted—despite seeing a corpse for the first time in my life, my consciousness faded instantly and I fell fast asleep.

Then, at some unknown hour in the middle of the night, I suddenly woke up. Oddly enough, I felt completely awake, filled with a strange, total lack of drowsiness.

I thought about sitting up, but my body wouldn't budge at all.

By the time I realized it was sleep paralysis, it was already too late.

Before I knew it, someone was standing in the corner of my room, and my eyes glued themselves to him. I wanted to look away, but I couldn't. Soon I could make out the figure: a filthy man wearing a basic shirt and sweatpants. Though I couldn't see his face, I knew he was staring at me the entire time.

As if sensing I was awake, the man glided over and wrapped his arms around his own head. He gripped his chin with one hand and the top of his skull with the other, awkwardly positioning his arms like a monkey imitating a human.

Stunned, I could do nothing but stare at the cryptic sight. Then, for reasons beyond comprehension, the man suddenly began twisting his own head clockwise.

A sickening crunch echoed through the room, followed by a muffled groan from the man.

As his bones kept grinding, he put even more force into his arms, twisting his head further. Staring down at me, his face rotated clockwise—90 degrees, 180 degrees—turning at the slow, steady speed of a ticking second hand. The awful sound of snapping bones and tearing flesh was overwhelming, and I fought desperately to close my eyes.

Unable to break free from the sleep paralysis, however, I couldn't tear my eyes away from him turning his own head.

"Ooooh...! Ngh... Hfff...!" His agonizing groans, sounding like a man's final death rattle, reverberated incessantly.

Crunch. Squelch. Snap.

When his face reached about 270 degrees, a dark red spray erupted from his mouth along with his thick tongue. It splattered across my futon, but the man didn't care, continuing to turn his head until it finally completed a full rotation.

While his silhouette was back in its original position, his face was unbearable to look at—eyes bulging out as if about to pop, and his tongue hanging limply. Worst of all, the skin on his neck had stretched, torn, and ripped apart from the full turn, oozing a gruesome mess of blood.

Noticeably on the verge of death, the man began muttering something. Though I didn't want to hear it, my ears naturally strained to decipher his words.

"Ah... h-hah... it h-hurts..."

Gasping for his last breaths, what he kept whimpering was a pitiful cry: "It hurts..."

Swallowed by an indescribable dread, I could only watch in silence as he writhed in agony, dripping blood from his mouth, until my consciousness eventually faded. When I came to, I was staring up at the familiar ceiling of my room illuminated by the morning sun.

Was that just a dream?

As I sat up with that thought, the nightmarish event replayed in my mind like a reel of film, and suddenly, the face of the man who twisted his own head clicked with the face of the hanging corpse I'd seen on my way home.

I gasped and looked up, only to find the man from my nightmare right in front of me, his face inches from mine.

"Come with me."

He spat the words at me, his eyes bulging as if they were about to burst out of his head.

"AAAAAAAAHHHHHH?!"

I violently hurled my comforter off me and bolted toward the front door. However, sitting up so fast gave me a severe head rush that warped my vision. The second I forced the front door open to burst outside, my legs tangled together and I tumbled straight down the stairs.

The loud crashing noise broke the early morning quiet. Several neighbors from the building poked their heads out, saw me lying at the bottom after my grand spill, and rushed over yelling, "A-Are you okay?!"

Fortunately, I hadn't hit my head, so I was still conscious and escaped major injury. Still, my dizziness lingered, making it hard to focus, and I squinted through my blurry, distorted vision at the people hurrying toward me.

"Are you alright?" "Should we call an ambulance?"

I was grateful that my kind neighbors were concerned about my condition, but it wasn't serious enough to warrant an ambulance. Enduring the throbbing pain from all the bruises, I replied with a slight blush, "I-I'm fine. I just got dizzy and slipped, that's all."

Seeing no blood, the neighbors let out sighs of relief before peering closer into my face. "Are you really sure you're okay?"

I found their intense concern a bit overwhelming, but just as I was about to politely brush it off—"R-Really, I'm okay, so..."—

"Does it hurt?"

The blurred figure right in front of me vividly shifted into the face of the man with his eyes half-popped out. My heart slammed violently against my chest, completely caught off guard, and my breathing turned rapid and panicked. The neighbors began murmuring nervously at my sudden shift in demeanor, but shaking like a newborn fawn, I managed to push myself up, bowed briefly, and retreated back into my apartment, forcing the group to disperse.

As soon as I was back inside, I collapsed in the hallway and slipped into unconsciousness as if falling asleep.

When I woke up next, the sky outside was already painted in sunset hues. I sat up on instinct and scanned the room. Setting aside the occasional crowing of birds outside, I checked my phone left on the table and went pale when I saw a long list of missed calls from my boss and coworkers.

I called my boss back right away and pitifully admitted the truth—that I had slipped down the stairs, dragged myself back inside, and lost consciousness until now. He blew his top at first, but once he calmed down, he worried about my health and ultimately told me to get checked out at a hospital to make sure I hadn't bumped my head. Whether it was my sincere apologies over the phone or my usual good standing, I got off remarkably lucky for no-showing an entire workday.

Ever since I woke up from fainting that day, neither the nightmare nor the hallucination of that man has appeared before me.

I got examined at the hospital, but they didn't find any abnormalities—in fact, they commended me for being in great health.

In the end, I still don't know who or what that man was, but I prefer to believe he was just a hallucination born from the horror of seeing a hanging corpse.

Though, if it really was a hallucination, there's one thing that's a little strange. Very rarely, when I'm walking past that apartment building late at night after working overtime, the door to the room where the suicide happened is open, and I see the body hanging inside.

That said, if I close my eyes, shake my head, and open them again, the front door is properly shut and it's back to being an ordinary, unremarkable apartment, so it must just be a trick of my mind.

It just goes to show how deeply traumatic seeing that body was. At least, that's what I want to believe.