I haven’t slept properly in weeks. Maybe months. It feels like my body is caught in a permanent state of waiting, dreading, anticipating the precise moment when the peace shatters. Because it always does.It started subtly, as these things often do. A phantom vibration, a soft chime I almost convinced myself I’d imagined, jolting me awake from a shallow sleep. My eyes snapped open, instantly aware of the oppressive silence of the room, the deep, even breathing of the one sleeping beside me. I glanced at the clock. 3:33 A.M. My phone lay on the nightstand, screen dark. Just a dream, probably. I rolled over, trying to reclaim the fading tendrils of sleep.
The second night, it was undeniable. That same precise moment, 3:33 A.M., the vibration buzzed against the wooden nightstand, a soft, insistent whisper in the quiet dark. My heart lurched. I grabbed the phone, my fingers fumbling in the gloom. A single notification, stark and cold against the screen. Not a text, not an email. Just a push notification, from… what? I couldn’t tell. The message was simply: Him.
Members of law enforcement work the scene following a suspected shootin
My breath hitched. Him? Who was “Him”? My mind raced, trying to make sense of it. A wrong number? Some bizarre app notification? But “Him.” It was so personal, so ominous. I scrolled through my apps, checked my messages. Nothing. No sender. Just that single, unsettling word that had appeared and then vanished from the lock screen, leaving only the time stamp in my memory. I lay there, staring at the ceiling, my pulse hammering in my ears, until the first hint of dawn. It has to be a glitch, I told myself, clutching the rational explanation like a lifeline. A creepy glitch.
But the third night, it became a nightmare I couldn’t wake from.
The chime. The vibration. 3:33 A.M. My eyes were already open, staring at the phone, waiting for it. The dread had built all day, a cold knot in my stomach. And there it was again. Him. Same message. Same time. It felt like a direct accusation, a chilling whisper meant for my ears only.
Members of the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office look on as
Panic clawed at my throat. This wasn’t a glitch. This wasn’t a coincidence. Someone was doing this. Someone knew something. But who? And what did “Him” mean? My mind exploded with possibilities, each more terrifying than the last. Was it a prank? A threat? A ghost from my past reaching out? Had I done something so terrible, so long ago, that it was finally catching up to me?
The man next to me stirred, a soft groan. He rolled over, oblivious. I pulled the phone close, shielding its dim glow from him, my body tense. I felt utterly alone, trapped in this terrifying secret. What if he knew? What if “Him” was about him? No, that didn’t make sense. He was my rock, my safe harbor. Or was he? The thought, once unthinkable, now snaked its way into my mind. Paranoia was a poison, seeping into every corner.
Police tape lies on the ground at the scene of a suspected shooting
I spent the next few days a wreck. My coffee grew cold, my food tasted like ash. I scoured my phone. Checked call logs. Messages. Old emails. Even forgotten social media accounts. Nothing. No strange numbers. No blocked contacts that suddenly re-emerged. The push notification was unique; it appeared as an alert, then vanished without a trace, leaving no digital footprint beyond the memory of its presence. It felt like something otherworldly.
“You okay?” he asked, watching me pick at my dinner. “You look like you haven’t slept.”
“Just work stress,” I lied, forcing a smile. The guilt was a heavy blanket. How could I tell him? How could I explain that I was being terrorized by a mysterious, phantom message about a “Him” I couldn’t identify? He’d think I was losing my mind. Maybe I was.
The nights were the worst. I’d lie awake, staring at the clock, watching the minutes tick by, 3:00… 3:15… 3:30… each second amplifying the terror. My body would seize up, muscles rigid, breath shallow. But after the third night, the messages stopped. The silence at 3:33 A.M. was almost as deafening as the previous alerts. It was like the sender knew they’d gotten my attention, that they’d successfully lodged themselves deep inside my psyche.
ICE agents near Renee Nicole Good’s car on January 7, 2026
But the question remained, burning like a brand: Who is Him?
I began to dig into my past. Every secret. Every mistake. Every fleeting indiscretion. Was it that summer fling from college? Had he become obsessed? No, impossible. We lost touch decades ago. What about the argument with that old friend? The money I loaned that was never returned? The casual betrayals, the white lies, the moments of selfishness we all carry? None of them felt significant enough to warrant such a sinister, targeted message.
Then, a flicker. A memory, pushed so far back into the darkest corners of my mind I hadn’t realized it was still there. An old shoebox in the back of my closet, tucked beneath forgotten sweaters. I pulled it out, my hands trembling. Dust motes danced in the sliver of light from the hallway. Inside, a collection of faded photos, a tiny knitted blanket, a lock of soft, dark hair, and a small, worn, blue baby elephant plushie.
Toys found inside Renee Nicole Good’s car after her tragic death on January 7, 2026
My breath hitched. My vision blurred. I sat down hard on the floor, the box falling from my lap. The room spun. The silence was absolute, but the memories screamed.
“Him.”
My heart shattered, truly shattered, in that instant.
It wasn’t a threat from an outside force. It wasn’t a ghost, or an enemy, or a lover from the past. It wasn’t about him, my partner sleeping peacefully in our bed.
It was about my son.
My beautiful, vibrant, curious boy. The one I lost so many years ago, the one I had tried so desperately to forget, to push the pain away from. His laughter, his tiny hands, his bright, inquisitive eyes. The accident. The hospital. The flat line. The crushing, unbearable grief that had almost swallowed me whole. I had buried it all, every single memory, every shard of pain, so deep that I had forgotten Him. Forgotten the raw, screaming agony. Forgotten everything but the scar on my soul.
A look inside the vehicle where Renee Nicole Good was fatally shot by ICE agents during federal law enforcement operations on January 7, 2026
And then, I found it. Tucked inside the baby elephant, a tiny, crumpled piece of paper. My handwriting, shaky, from years ago. A single note: “Don’t forget. Him. 3:33 AM.”
I had set the alarms myself. Not on my phone, not on some app. But on his old tablet, his beloved device that I’d kept charged, kept hidden, as a cruel penance, a silent memorial. I had set a recurring alarm, a daily reminder. A punishment. A desperate attempt to never, EVER, forget the precise moment I lost him, the moment his heart stopped beating, the moment my world ended. 3:33 A.M.
I had been so deep in my grief, so consumed by the need to both remember and forget, that I had created my own tormentor. And when the battery on his tablet finally started to fail, only connecting sporadically, the alarms had become erratic. Three nights in a row, they had pierced the veil of my self-imposed amnesia. Three nights in a row, the tablet, hidden in that shoebox, had miraculously powered on just long enough to scream its silent reminder.
My own grief had been haunting me.
Renee Nicole Good’s vehicle keeps going after an ICE agent shot through the windshield on January 7, 2026
I haven’t slept properly since that realization. Now, when 3:33 A.M. approaches, I don’t dread a mysterious message. I dread the memory. I dread the knowledge that I had forgotten, that I had allowed myself to forget, even for a moment, the son I loved more than life itself. And the most heartbreaking part? My partner, who has held me through so much, still doesn’t know about Him. He doesn’t know I ever had a child. He doesn’t know about the gaping wound I carry, re-opened by my own hand, disguised as a chilling secret from a phantom sender.
Now I am truly awake. And I am utterly, irrevocably broken.
