Author: Louee

The first knock came as Clara Mendell was halfway through her third cup of Earl Grey, curled up by the fire in her creaking old farmhouse. Outside, the snow piled up in thick, impenetrable drifts, and the wind howled faintly, like a distant animal calling for something it had lost.

She glanced at the clock on the mantle—11:57 PM. Who would knock at such an hour? And out here, in the middle of nowhere?

She waited a moment, hoping she’d imagined it. It wasn’t impossible. Since James had died last year, the old house seemed louder—groans in the floorboards, strange pops in the walls. The loneliness made her mind play tricks.

Then it came again. A deliberate, solid rap at the door.

Clara set her cup down and stood slowly. The firelight cast her long shadow against the peeling wallpaper, and as she moved toward the foyer, she was suddenly aware of every creak beneath her feet. There was no car in the driveway—she could see that much through the window. Just snow and fog swallowing the world whole. Her hand hovered over the doorknob.

“Hello?” she called, her voice trembling slightly.

No answer. Just the sound of the wind.

Clara felt a chill creep up her spine, but she was no shrinking violet. She’d been through worse—widowhood had a way of hardening a person. She pulled the curtain aside, peering out through the frosted glass panel in the door.

Nothing.

“Kids,” she muttered. That had to be it. Some bored teenagers trying to spook the old widow on a snowy night. She let the curtain fall and turned back to the fire.

The knock came again, louder this time. And somehow closer.

She froze. That was impossible—it had come from inside the house.

A lifetime of small-town living and a husband who used to work nights for the county sheriff had taught her not to ignore instincts like this. She grabbed the iron poker from the hearth and spun around, heart hammering.

The house was silent. Oppressively so.

“Who’s there?” she demanded, poker raised like a sword. “I’m armed.”

No answer. Just the steady crackle of the fire behind her and the faint whistle of the wind through the windowpanes. She took a cautious step toward the kitchen, where the shadows seemed thicker, blacker. She flicked the light switch. Nothing.

The power was still on; the living room lamps glowed cheerfully behind her. But the kitchen light refused to respond, as if the room itself had rejected illumination.

And then came the whisper. Low, wet, and guttural. It wasn’t words, not exactly, but it was something—a sound that didn’t belong in her house, or maybe even in this world.

Clara’s breath came in sharp gasps now. She clutched the poker tightly, her knuckles whitening. “I don’t know what kind of game this is, but you picked the wrong woman,” she said, more to convince herself than to warn whatever was lurking in the dark.

The whisper grew louder, sliding up and down in pitch, filling her ears until it was unbearable. It seemed to come from everywhere at once—the walls, the floor, even the very air around her.

And then it stopped. Just like that. Gone, as if it had never been there.

Clara stood frozen for a long moment, waiting for something to happen. When nothing did, she let out a shaky breath and lowered the poker. Maybe she was finally losing it. James had always said—

The knock came again. From behind her. From the front door.

Her stomach dropped. She turned, slowly, dreading what she might see. The door stood closed, just as she’d left it. But something was different. A faint sound—scraping, like fingernails dragging against the wood.

Clara stepped closer. Her breath fogged in the frigid air; the fire had gone out. She reached the door, hesitated for just a second, then yanked it open.

Nothing. Just the fog, thicker than ever, curling against her skin like icy fingers.

And then she saw it. A single muddy handprint, smeared across the wood just below her peephole. But it wasn’t the size of an adult’s hand. It was small, childlike, and impossibly thin.

She slammed the door and locked it, her heart racing. The house seemed to breathe around her now, the walls almost…pulsing.

Then she heard it: the soft pad of footsteps on the stairs leading to the second floor. Slow. Deliberate. Heading up to the empty rooms where no one had lived for years.

Clara didn’t think. She ran to the kitchen, grabbed her phone, and dialed the police. As the operator answered, she babbled everything—about the knocking, the whispers, the footsteps. She was still talking when the footsteps stopped, and she heard a door creak open upstairs.

The operator was asking her to calm down, to stay on the line. Clara barely heard her. She stared at the staircase, waiting for something to come down.

But nothing did. The house was silent again. Dead silent.

The police arrived twenty minutes later. They found no footprints in the snow outside, no signs of forced entry. But they did find something else.

Upstairs, in the room where Clara had once kept her son’s old toys, the officers discovered a single muddy handprint on the window.

On the inside.

And when Clara looked closer, she recognized it. It matched the handprint her son had left on the wall the day before he disappeared twenty-five years ago.

Soren stood before the mirror, his hands trembling as he read the words, the ones etched in the ancient wood of the cabinet beneath it: 

1. Offer rice. 
2. Burn incense. 
3. Do not forget the ritual.

It was a rule, a sacred one, though Soren had never quite understood why.

The mirror had always been an eerie fixture in his life, like a thing that didn’t belong to the world he knew.  Not that he believed in superstition—not at first. 

But over the years, he had grown accustomed to the whispering unease that always followed when he forgot the ritual.

It wasn’t a hard thing to do. The ritual was simple: a handful of rice. A stick of incense. A quiet moment to offer them up, as if in gratitude. 

And then, only then, could the mirror be cleaned. A small price to pay, he thought. But a price nonetheless.

And tonight, of all nights, he had forgotten, again. He never really took the ritual seriously since he knew he always gets away with it. 

Soren stood, staring at it. The old mirror had always been an odd thing—hardly noticeable to anyone but him. Yet he could never shake the feeling that it watched him, patiently, like an old friend with too many secrets. 

Sometimes it felt as though the reflection didn’t quite match the room, as though the glass had its own agenda, its own world that didn’t overlap with the one on the other side.

He reached for the cloth, wiping away the dust from the frame, his mind fogged by the pressing need to finish the task. He’d been cleaning mirrors all his life, and surely this one—this mere relic—was no different.

But as he rubbed the cloth over the glass, the air seemed to thicken. A hum, built and swelled like a storm waiting to break. His fingers froze. Something wasn’t right.

A shape flickered in the mirror—no, not a shape. 

A door. A door that hadn’t been there before, its dark wood framed by shadows that bled into the room. The space beyond it was—wrong. Hollow. Twisted. It wasn’t a hallway he knew. It wasn’t even a place he could name.

Soren blinked, his heart pounding. When he turned, the room behind him remained still, the soft creak of the old house settling in the silence. But in the mirror—the mirror’s reflection was different. It had drawn him in, like a thing that understood him better than he understood himself.

Before he could take a step back, something stirred within the glass. The door inside the reflection creaked open.

“Don’t,” he whispered, the words barely escaping his lips, but it was too late. The pull was unbearable now. It was as if the mirror itself had extended an invitation, one that was too dangerous to decline.

Soren reached out, fingers trembling, and touched the frame. The moment his skin made contact, the world around him shifted violently. 

The room blurred, its edges dissolving like mist in the wind. He felt himself falling—no, floating—down that hallway. 

The walls seemed to pulse, each door groaning in protest as it slowly opened. Some of them revealed nothing but darkness, others hinted at glimpses of rooms long forgotten.

There was no escape. The air felt like it was pressing him further into the depths of the mirror.

Time—if time even existed—passed in a disjointed manner. He couldn’t say whether he had been floating for hours, days, or minutes. 

His mind began to fray, every moment stretching too thin, every sound echoing louder than the last. At long last, Soren stumbled through a door. And then—nothing.

He found himself back in the room where it had all begun. The cabinet. The mirror. Everything as it should have been.

Except for one thing. He realized that the everything that should have been is now on the other side of the reflection.

He’s now inside the reflection that he saw before he cleaned the mirror, a small, silver hairpin lay on the floor before him. The delicate metal gleaming softly in the candlelight. He bent down to pick it up, his hand trembling. 

It was familiar to him, too familiar. He knew that hairpin—knew it as the one his mother had worn the day she disappeared.

The realization hit him like a blow to the chest.

The rice. The incense. The ritual.

It wasn’t a protection. It wasn’t a warning. It was a binding.

The mirror, he realized had taken far more than Soren could ever have imagined.

That rice?

It had killed much more due to a simple neglect. It had claimed memories. It had claimed lives.

And Soren—Soren would never leave this time —this time Soren wasn’t able to get away with it.    

There are places that are not meant to be remembered. Places that exist just on the edge of memory and forgotten dreams, hanging there like a mist you can never touch, even though it clings to you. 

It’s a path, hidden in plain sight, just beyond the reach of your mind. 

People who’ve walked it don’t speak about it, and the few who do, you stop listening to. They say it’s nothing—and that’s all they remember.

I remember it like this: a day too quiet, like the air was waiting for something, and the world itself held its breath. I was with her, my sister, Lila, on a walk. 

We’d taken that route dozens of times before, past the same street signs, the same groaning old oak, the same narrow alley that never seemed to lead anywhere. 

But this time was different. This time, the alley wasn’t empty.

We had always joked that if you looked hard enough, the alley would open up, like a door to somewhere else, and we’d laugh and turn back, dismissing it as a trick of the light or our overactive imaginations. 

But today, it was different. The shadows in that alley were… wrong. 

They were deeper, colder, like they didn’t belong to the trees or the buildings, like they belonged to something else. Something older. Something that had never walked this earth.

“You’re not thinking of going down there, are you?” Lila said, standing at the entrance, staring into the darkness.

“I don’t know,” I said. My heart was racing, but not because I was scared. It was more like… curiosity. An invitation, maybe, from the unseen. “It feels… like we’re supposed to.”

Lila laughed nervously, her voice cutting through the silence. “Supposed to? Who says that?”

But there was something about the alley that day. The air felt thick, like it had been waiting for years, holding its breath until it was ready to burst. Something was calling us. I didn’t know what it was, but I felt it, tugging at my skin, urging me to step closer. And so, I did.

Lila followed. Her footsteps echoing in the narrow space as we ventured deeper. The walls seemed to close in. I looked back, but the entrance had vanished. Not like it had been blocked, but like it was… no longer there. 

We were trapped in a place that wasn’t supposed to exist. Not in the world we knew.

“Where’s the way out?” she whispered, her voice trembling.

I didn’t have an answer. I didn’t even know what was real anymore. The alley stretched on, endless and twisting. Every time we looked forward, it seemed different, like it was shifting under our feet. 

The air was thick, impossibly so, and it tasted of dust and something older—like the kind of forgotten things that only live in the cracks between dreams.

Then, we saw it.

At the end of the alley, there was a door. I hadn’t noticed it before, not in all the years we’d passed by. It was small and covered in ivy, almost hidden from view. 

It wasn’t the sort of door anyone would think to open—it had that feeling, you know, the one that makes your gut twist with unease. But we were drawn to it. Slowly, without speaking, we both reached for the handle.

Turn it, whispered a voice from deep within the shadows.

It was a voice we both recognized, even though we hadn’t heard it in years. It was our mother’s voice. But she had been dead for a long time, hadn’t she? No, no. She hadn’t been. Not here, not now. We both knew what we had to do, even though it didn’t make sense.

The door creaked open. Beyond it, a small, dim room awaited. The walls were covered in clocks, all ticking in perfect harmony, all showing different times, none of them matching. And in the center of the room, there was a chair. 

Old, dusty, but the kind of chair you see in nightmares.

And there she was. Our mother. Sitting in that chair, her hands folded in her lap. 

Her eyes were open but empty, staring at nothing, seeing everything. And she smiled at us—slowly, just a twitch of the lips. “You found it, didn’t you?” she asked.

I wanted to scream, to run, but my legs were frozen in place.

“You’ve been waiting for the path to call you,” she continued, her voice no longer comforting, but a chilling reminder of something that should have been left forgotten. “Now that you’ve walked it, you’ll never be the same.”

The clocks stopped ticking.

And then, with a jolt, the room changed. It wasn’t a room anymore. The walls were gone, replaced by an endless expanse of mist, stretching as far as the eye could see.

The ground beneath us trembled, the sky above us turning to an impossible shade of green, and the world—our world—vanished.

I reached for Lila’s hand, but she wasn’t there.

A distant, hollow laugh echoed in the emptiness.

And I understood. 

The path had never led us out. It had led us somewhere else. Somewhere far worse.

And now, we would never be able to leave. Not now. Not ever.

In the end, we all find the paths we’re meant to walk—though, a warning to you… some paths are best left unseen.

There’s a property on the corner of Gusto and Tosben street, the kind of place you can’t help but notice when you’re walking by. Not because it’s flashy—no, nothing about it screams look at me, but there’s something about it. Something in the way the light catches the windows, in the gentle sway of the “For Lease” sign that never seems to fall down. It beckons, almost like it’s waiting for someone to come along and breathe life into it. And yet… no one ever does.

People call it “the corner lot.”

It’s been a bakery, a boutique, an art gallery. 

Once, it was even a record store. 

Every time someone new moves in, there’s a brief glimmer of hope. Maybe this time, someone will make it work. And for a while, they do. The windows get cleaned, the doorbell rings with the jingle of new customers. There’s always a fresh coat of paint on the walls, a new sign out front. You can almost hear the buzz of possibility in the air, like the place is alive with promise.

But then—always, without fail—something shifts.

It starts small. A jar of jam that was on the counter suddenly isn’t. A piece of art you swear you hung on the wall one way, but now it’s turned slightly to the left. Small changes, things that could be explained away.

But then the customers stop coming.

It’s not that they don’t want to—no, it’s more like they can’t. Something holds them back. The people who used to walk in with curiosity now linger by the door, glancing over their shoulders as though the place might be watching them. They look at the shelves, the racks, the displays, but they don’t touch anything. It’s like they don’t know how to enter, how to settle into the space that’s meant to be a haven.

You can see it in their eyes.

And then they leave.

The first time it happened, the new owners—an eager couple with stars in their eyes—set up a charming little café, all warm wood and homemade pastries. They brought in live music on weekends and held workshops, and for a while, it felt like the corner lot was finally going to turn a corner. But after a few months, things started to feel off.

It wasn’t anything obvious at first. It was the way the light seemed to dim in the afternoons, the way shadows stretched a little too long across the floor, like the sun didn’t want to set there. It was the way the floor creaked in the quietest moments, as though someone—or something—was walking just out of view.

They didn’t last.

And the corner lot sat empty again.

It wasn’t long before someone else came along, a man with a dream of opening a vintage clothing store. He was so sure, so certain that this would be the one that worked. His voice was full of hope as he spoke to the landlord, a small, nervous man who always seemed to be looking over his shoulder.

The landlord didn’t say much. He never did. Just slid the papers across the table, his small eyes flicking briefly to the door before looking away.

“You’ll see,” he said, his voice quiet but firm. “You’ll see what it’s like to try.”

I didn’t understand what he meant then.

It didn’t take long for the man to start acting strange. He began to avoid his own shop, showing up later and later each day, until eventually, the door was locked, the lights off, the windows covered in dust. People said they saw him walking the streets at night, his head low, his eyes wide and unblinking.

Then came the plants.

I’m not talking about just any plants—these were rare, exotic species. The kind you’d need special permission to sell, the kind that would turn the place into a tropical wonderland if they thrived. 

But they didn’t. They withered and died, no matter what the man did. He watered them, fertilized them, moved them around to catch the light. But day after day, they shriveled, their leaves turning black and brittle.

The strange part? No one could figure out why. There was nothing wrong with the air, the temperature, the humidity. It was like the plants were being drained—as if the space itself refused to let them grow.

The man left after six months.

And the cycle began again. A bookstore came next.

A woman who’d dreamed of opening a cozy little nook for years. She painted the walls a soft lavender, filled the shelves with hand-picked novels, and lit the place with warm lights. It looked perfect, the kind of place you could lose yourself in for hours. And for a while, it was.

But slowly, the books started to move. Not when people were around, but when the shop was closed. They’d shift to different places on the shelf, as if someone was carefully picking them up, flipping through them, and then putting them back where they didn’t belong. People would walk in, run their fingers along the spines, and suddenly feel unwelcome—like the books were judging them for being there.

The woman left after three months.

And still, the corner lot remained.

It’s been years since anyone lasted more than a season there. The “For Lease” sign comes down and goes up again. New faces come and go, and each time, there’s a strange feeling that fills the space—something warm, something inviting, but underneath it all, something that feels wrong.

Sometimes, I’ll pass by and catch a glimpse of the windows. The shelves are always neatly stocked, the door open, like it’s waiting for the next dreamer to come along. And I can’t help but wonder: What happens to all those who try?

Maybe they leave. Maybe they stay too long and never quite leave at all. Maybe the corner lot is like a hungry thing that feeds off ambition, that swallows dreams whole.

Or maybe it’s just a place that can’t be tamed, no matter how inviting it looks.

But I know one thing for sure: It’s always waiting.

Evelyn had never believed in omens or signs. She was practical to a fault, the kind of person who scoffed at ghost stories and saw black cats as nothing more than stray animals. That changed the night one appeared at her doorstep.

It was cold, one of those October evenings where the wind howled through the trees, tugging at the last brittle leaves. She was sitting in her rocking chair, lost in the rhythm of its creaks, when a soft thump came at the door. Then the scratching—a slow, deliberate sound.

When she opened it, the cat was there. Black as night, sleek as oil, with eyes like burning embers, with three stripes on its tail. It didn’t meow or beg to come in. It simply stared, unblinking. 

Evelyn should’ve closed the door, but something about its gaze rooted her to the spot. Without thinking, she stepped aside, and the cat padded in as though it had been waiting all along.

From that night, the cat became a fixture in her home. It wasn’t affectionate, didn’t curl in her lap or paw at her for food. Instead, it kept its distance, watching her from the shadows.  She should’ve found it unnerving, but instead, she felt… comforted. Protected, even.

At first, it was little things. She’d forget where she’d left her keys or why she’d walked into a room. Then bigger things: birthdays, names, places she’d been. 

The mirrors were the worst.

One day, she glanced into the bathroom mirror and swore her reflection wasn’t quite right. The face staring back felt unfamiliar, blurred at the edges.

She stopped looking after that. Avoiding mirrors became second nature, like forgetting had become second nature. She told herself it was nothing—stress, age, the weather. But the cat’s eyes followed her wherever she went, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that it was keeping track of something she wasn’t.

One night, she woke to find the cat sitting at the foot of her bed, its eyes glowing faintly in the moonlight. There was something different about it. 

As the days passed, her memories felt like grains of sand slipping through her fingers. The cat grew bolder, closer to her. Does she perhaps has a sickness that only the cat can detect?

Then, one morning, Evelyn woke up and knew something had changed. Her senses were sharper—too sharp. The light filtering through the curtains was almost blinding, the creak of her bed too loud. She stretched instinctively, but her body moved in a way that wasn’t hers.

She padded to the mirror, hesitating before looking.  When she did, she saw it: the sleek, black cat staring back. 

Her.

Her breath caught—not that she could call it breath anymore. She raised a paw, watching as the reflection mirrored her. The three distinct stripes on her tail gleamed faintly in the light. It hit her then, like a thunderclap. She hadn’t been losing herself.

She had been becoming.

Evelyn—if she could even call herself that anymore—flicked her tail and hopped from the bed. Her mind, once human, felt distant now, a fading memory swallowed by instincts far older. She didn’t feel sorrow or panic. Only a calm certainty.

She moved to the door, her movements silent and fluid, and slipped out into the cool morning air. The world smelled different—sharper, richer. She didn’t think of the life she’d left behind. It no longer mattered.

As she padded down the empty street, Evelyn caught sight of someone standing beneath a streetlight. A young woman, staring upward, her eyes wide as if following something no one else could see. 

Evelyn’s three-striped tail flicked lazily behind her. The woman noticed the cat and gasped softly, whispering something about how beautiful it was.

But Evelyn didn’t care. The woman wasn’t hers to choose. Evelyn had already made her choice. Her gaze flicked to a darkened house just ahead, where a single light burned in an upstairs window. 

She slipped into the shadows, her movements seamless, her purpose clear. The cycle would continue, just as it always had. Evelyn—no, the cat—she was waiting out.

For the next becoming in the cycle.

A cycle that would go on without anyone knowing…

…unless they were chosen. 

He had always loved her, though he never said it. She was an idea, a presence that lingered just beyond reach, more dream than person. He would catch glimpses of her in the crowd, in the reflection of a passing window, in the laughter that echoed in his mind. She was someone he never fully knew, and yet someone who lived so deeply in him, like an unanswered question he had always carried.

He lived in these moments – treasured them in ways that kept him suspended, as if his entire existence hinged on them.  He built a life around her—the shape of her smile, the sound of her voice, the softness of her touch—constructing her from the fragments of his own longing, his own need for something more.

But the years passed, and the world moved on, leaving him behind, standing still, unable to let go. He couldn’t forget her.  He couldn’t stop chasing the ghost of something he never had. The woman who had once felt like she could be everything to him—if only they had dared to step into something more.

One day, he walked through an unfamiliar part of the city, his feet moving with a will of their own. The fog clung to the streets, softening the world, making it feel like a half-remembered dream. The streetlights were weak, their light struggling to cut through the darkness. It felt like the city was holding its breath.

And then, he saw her.

She stood in a shop window, her figure illuminated by a cold, flickering light. It was her, but not quite. Her face, once alive with warmth, was pale and unreadable. 

Her eyes, once full of promise, were hollow—voids where memories went to die. His heart began to race, and for the first time in years, he felt alive—alive with the hope that maybe, just maybe, she was real, that the moments he had built around her weren’t just fantasies. 

He stepped closer, his breath shallow, his legs trembling as he reached for the door of the shop. But when he pulled the handle, it wouldn’t budge.

And then she vanished. She couldn’t be gone again. He turned, stepping back into the street, but when he looked at the shop again, it was gone. The window, the light, the figure of the woman—all of it had disappeared. 

The street was empty now, the fog rolling in thicker, swallowing everything around him. He stood there, his breath visible in the cold air, his thoughts tangled in a web of confusion and longing. 

Had he imagined it? Was it all just a trick of the light, a figment of his own imagination?

He didn’t know, but as he walked back through the city, a strange feeling gnawed at him. It was as though everything he had built—everything he had believed in—was slipping through his fingers. The moments with her, the love he had carried in silence, all of it felt like it was fading away. He reached for it, tried to hold onto it, but it was already gone.

Later that night, as he sat alone in his apartment, the silence pressing in on him, he saw something on the table in front of him. A small hairpin. Silver and simple, like something he had seen before. He picked it up, turning it over in his fingers, but it didn’t feel familiar. 

It wasn’t his. It wasn’t hers.

He felt a strange sense of recognition, though. The air around him grew thick, as if the room itself was breathing, shifting. His mind spun, his thoughts fracturing into pieces. Something was wrong, but he couldn’t place it.

And then the door creaked open.

He looked up, expecting nothing but the darkness of the empty apartment. But there, standing in the doorway, was a man in an old bucket hat. His features were strange—sharp, angular, with deep lines etched into his face. His eyes were too bright, like they could see everything, like they were older than the world itself.

“I’m sorry,” the man said, his voice gravelly, distant. “Didn’t mean to startle you. But it’s about time you knew.”

The man stepped forward, his movements slow, deliberate. He didn’t seem to belong there, not in the way the room did. His presence felt out of place, like an artifact in a forgotten museum.

“What—who are you?”

The words felt wrong coming out of his mouth, as though they weren’t his to speak. The man smiled—a strange, knowing smile. “Who I am isn’t important. What matters is that you’re finally seeing it.  You’ve been chasing something, haven’t you? Her. The woman. “

The words felt like a slap, even though there was no malice in it—just an overwhelming sense of truth that he couldn’t escape.

“Why did I see her? Why… why did she vanish? Was she chasing me too?”

“She was never really there,” he said quietly. “She was part of you. A piece of you that you couldn’t let go of. And in chasing her, you’ve been chasing your own memory. A memory that wasn’t even yours.”

The hairpin in his hand felt heavier suddenly, as though it had taken on a life of its own. The man’s eyes glimmered with something beyond human comprehension.

“You think the world works in the way you see it. You think it’s all about time and choices and fate. But it isn’t. You’re just another part of a moment, just another echo in the vastness.”

“Truth is, you are a Mirage,” the man whispered, his voice reverberating in the space.  “Sure it felt like years but you are a fleeting thought. An impression of what could’ve been. And you, just like her, are nothing but a passing moment. A memory in someone else’s dream.”

He tried to speak, but the words died in his throat. His chest tightened as if the air itself was suffocating him. The man smiled again, the smile of someone who had seen too much. “You’re not the one who’s been chasing her. 

You’ve been the one being chased all along… you are being chased by Time because you’re a Mirage in a moment in time that’s slipping away. Time supposed to reclaim you, but I stepped in because you’re almost slipping away. Now, you have to go.”

And then, with a sudden, overwhelming clarity, it hit him. He finally understood.

There had never been any “him.”

Everything he had thought he was, had been nothing but the fading outline of someone else’s forgotten thought. He had never existed in the way he had imagined, and now, he accepted that he was nothing but the echo of what could have been.

And as the man faded into the cracks of oblivion, leaving only a hint of something that felt wrong in the air, he looked down at the hairpin one last time. Everything he had chased, everything he had believed in, was gone. And before he vanished, he wondered—

Was there ever anything real to begin with?

Derek Marshall woke up in the coffin.

It was not with the sharp gasp of a person who’d survived a nightmare. It was not with the abrupt shock of a body rushing to life after the void. He woke with an eerie calm, his mind slowly sifting through the murky remnants of sleep, coming to rest on the truth far too late: he had died.

He was supposed to be dead.

The air was thick and heavy around him, like breathing in thick velvet. His arms were pressed too tightly to his sides, his legs stiff and bound by the narrow confines of the box. The space was too small. Too dark.

Derek reached up, his fingers scraping over something rough—wood.

He stopped. He should have known. The thought rose in his mind with clarity. He wasn’t supposed to be able to feel anything. He should have been cold, numb, lifeless.

But his chest was tight, his heart drumming in his ribs as though it still had a right to beat.

His thoughts were frantic, scurrying like rats trapped in a corner. He had been at the hospital. He had heard the beeping slow down. He had seen the way the doctors spoke over him, their faces drawn and pitying. He had heard them whisper about his time of death as though it was already decided. No struggle. No fight.

But here he was. Here he still was.

And then—the scratches.

Derek’s fingers twitched against the wooden lid again, feeling the deep grooves, the way they seemed to claw in desperation. Some were shallow and jagged, others long and deliberate, as though someone had been trying to break out—or, perhaps worse, waiting to break out. The thought made his blood run cold.

His hand traced the grooves, fingers brushing against the letters carved into the wood, slowly spelling out the truth of the space he was trapped in.

“NOT ALONE.”

The words—those words—settled into Derek’s mind like poison, slow and insidious. The silence in the coffin deepened, pressing on him from all sides. But it wasn’t the darkness that made his pulse race. It was the unsettling, impossible thought that there had been others. Others who had scratched, clawed, and begged for their freedom—and never had it.

But the thought didn’t stop there.

How many?

How many had died too soon, like him? How many had woken up in the suffocating dark, too late to escape the earth that covered them? How many had reached out, trying to grasp at air, at life, before they suffocated in their own panic?

And then—something shifted.

Not in the air. Not in the dirt.

But inside the coffin.

Derek’s breath hitched. His chest constricted. It was as if the wood around him had become… alive. There was a pressure, a weight that grew heavier with every breath he took. And then, from the suffocating darkness, a voice—low and cold, not from the lid or the walls, but from deep inside the earth itself.

“You shouldn’t have woken up.”

Derek’s blood ran cold. It was the kind of voice that made the air feel wrong. A presence that seemed to reach past the world of the living. And then, another thought crept into his mind—sliding past his terror like oil over water:

There were others here. Not just the dead. Something else. Something that wanted him to stay buried.

How long had he been down here?

Derek didn’t know. Days? Hours? Time didn’t make sense in the earth, in the suffocating weight of his own grave. How could it? How could anything make sense when death was a whisper in your ear, and the cold fingers of the soil were the last thing you’d ever feel?

He tried to scream.

His throat burned. The sound was muffled—swallowed—by the suffocating dirt above him. The ground was so thick, so alive with pressure. The suffocating silence seemed to mock him, the weight of the earth pressing harder, pulling him further into the dark.

And then, a sound.

A scrape.

Not from the outside. Not from the dirt above him.

But from beneath.

A soft scratching. A dragging of something—someone—moving closer.

The earth above shifted slightly, and Derek’s pulse thudded in his ears. Was it coming for him? Was it something in the earth?

He couldn’t breathe fast enough.

And then, with the cold clarity of someone who has faced their death already, the voice whispered again, closer this time, as if it had always been near, waiting for him to hear:

“He’s asking for you.”

Derek froze.

He’s asking for you.

The voice wasn’t just a whisper now. It had substance. Like it had always been there, like it had always been a part of the earth. It had roots. It had hands.

He tried to understand, tried to force sense from the madness curling around his mind. Who?

And then he heard it—beneath the suffocating soil, beneath the layers of earth—something soft, but unmistakable: the sound of chains dragging over stone.

“He collects us.” The voice continued, smooth like oil, thick and gnarled, like the roots of an old tree breaking through the soil. “He finds the ones who woke too soon. He has need of them.”

The chains rattled.

Need of them.

Derek’s stomach turned, his body trembling in panic. This wasn’t just a grave. It wasn’t just death. It was a place, a space, an abode for something ancient and terrible. A being that didn’t belong in the realm of the living or the dead—a being that watched over those who were buried too soon, who had been overlooked by death.

He had been forgotten.

But not for long.

In that moment, Derek realized what the voice had meant: There were others. But they were not alive. Not really. The dead, the forgotten, the ones who had slipped through death’s fingers, had become something else entirely. They were not just buried.

They were collected.

By the one who had always watched. The one who had always waited.

The chains rattled again, louder this time, as if something—someone—was reaching through the soil.

And then the lid of the coffin cracked open.

Derek’s breath came too quickly. His chest ached.

The chains were close now.

He could hear them.

And, deep in the dark, he could feel the touch of something—cold and alive—grabbing at his feet.

It was time to be claimed.

David barely noticed it, at first. A single black speck crawling across his kitchen counter, weaving through the crumbs of his morning toast. Then another. And another.

By the time he crouched down, he saw the full line—thin, perfect, stretching from the crack beneath the fridge all the way to a tiny hole near the window. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands, moving in perfect formation.

He didn’t think much about it. Ants happened.

So he swiped a paper towel across the counter, breaking the line.

The effect was immediate.

The ants stopped. All at once, their tiny bodies stiffened, their paths cut short by his careless motion. They didn’t scatter. They didn’t resume their journey. They just…waited.

David frowned.

He expected them to reform, to reroute, to do what ants were supposed to do. But instead, they remained frozen in place.

Like they were listening.

The air in the kitchen felt suddenly heavier. The hum of the fridge, the ticking of the clock—everything sounded wrong.

David shook off the unease, grabbed a sponge, and wiped away the rest. When he looked down again, the ants were gone.

That night, he dreamed of patterns.

Endless, shifting threads, weaving in and out of one another, pulsing with something alive.

Somewhere in the distance, something moved. Not a person. Not an animal. Something greater.

And it was watching him.

The next morning, the ants were back.

But this time, they weren’t moving.

David found them on the kitchen floor, a perfect, unbroken line of black dots stretching from the fridge to the window. Unmoving. Lifeless.

They were dead.

Dozens of tiny corpses, frozen mid-step.

A cold shiver ran through him. He grabbed a dustpan, sweeping them up quickly, trying not to let the sight bother him.

It was just ants. That was all.

Still, he hesitated before wiping the counter again.

He left their line alone.

But the lines didn’t stop.

Over the next few days, he started noticing them everywhere.

The way the cracks in the sidewalk stretched in impossibly straight formations. The way the cars on the highway moved in eerie synchronization. The way the books on his shelf had arranged themselves into a sloping pattern, one that he knew he hadn’t organized.

It was all lines. Lines running through everything. Lines woven into the world.

And when he tried to disrupt them—knocking over a book, stepping deliberately on a sidewalk crack—something changed.

The world hiccupped.

Just for a second.

The cars on the street stuttered, pausing mid-motion before continuing as if nothing had happened. The wind halted, the leaves hanging motionless in the air before resuming their rustling.

And David felt it.

Something shifting just beneath reality. Something massive and aware.

A presence just beyond his comprehension, adjusting, correcting what he had disturbed.

He barely slept that night.

By the next morning, the ants had returned.

Alive this time, but different.

They moved in a pattern more intricate than before, looping and twisting in a deliberate, unfathomable rhythm. Not a simple line, but a design.

A warning.

David didn’t touch them.

But as he stood there, staring, a realization settled into his bones.

It wasn’t just ants. It never had been.

He had interrupted something bigger.

Something ancient.

Something that had been weaving the world together in lines, unseen, since the beginning of time.

And now, it knew he had noticed.

David backed away, careful not to step on a single one.

Some things were meant to be left undisturbed.

Some lines were never meant to be broken.

It began with a sock.

Not a pair, not two, not even three. Just one. A sock, gray and worn, its fabric soft with age, as though it had lived through every storm, every cold morning, every monotonous shuffle from one day to the next. There were faint blue stripes once, but they had faded so long ago, it was impossible to know what color they had been. It was the sort of sock you didn’t think about. You didn’t need to. It belonged.

For a while, that’s all it was. Just one sock, tucked into a drawer. Nothing to see here.

But then, one day, it wasn’t there.

Not gone. Not lost. Not even misplaced. No. It was as though it had never existed in the first place. One minute it was there, soft and comforting in its familiar spot, and the next — nothing. No sign, no evidence, not even a forgotten thread. Just an absence, like a memory fading before you could grab hold of it.

At first, no one noticed. Maybe it had slipped between the folds of laundry. Maybe it was tucked under the bed or behind the couch. But when it happened again, and then again, and then a third time, the strange weight of it settled in.

Socks didn’t just disappear. Not like this. And not for everyone. It wasn’t just your sock drawer. It wasn’t just your laundry room. This was happening everywhere.

One sock, gone. Another, vanished. It was happening to everyone, in every home, in every laundry pile. The socks were being… hunted.

But no one talked about it. Not at first. There were whispers, of course. The nervous kind. The “I’m sure it’s nothing” kind. But as the days passed, something else crept in. People who tried to speak up were hushed. “It’s just a sock,” they’d say. “You’re imagining things.” They would laugh, but it was a laugh that didn’t reach their eyes. The silence wrapped itself tighter around the missing socks, until they weren’t even mentioned anymore.

Then, one evening, as the sun’s light bled into that soft amber dusk — the kind that only happens when the day is almost done but hasn’t quite slipped away yet — something strange happened. A sock appeared. One sock. Sitting at the edge of a bed as though it had always been there. But it wasn’t the sock that had disappeared. Oh no. This sock was green, bright green, with zigzags, but not the kind you’d ever seen before. They seemed to wiggle, as if they had their own pulse, their own rhythm.

It didn’t come through the door, or down the hallway, or from anyone’s laundry pile. It simply appeared. And though it sat there still, a strange energy hummed from it. It wasn’t quite alive, but it wasn’t quite dead, either. It was as though the sock itself was waiting for something — someone — to notice.

And that was just the beginning.

That night, in the stillness that only comes after midnight, another sock arrived. But this one? This one was different. It didn’t look like anything from this world, not even remotely. Its edges were frayed, yes, but not by time. It was the kind of fraying that suggested the fabric of reality itself was starting to come undone. The threads sparkled, like starlight woven into soft, impossible shapes. It wasn’t fabric at all. It was something else.

And then, that’s when things really got odd.

The socks… started to speak.

Not with words, no. Not with sound you could catch in your ears, but with a hum. A whisper, a shiver, a resonance that pulsed through the air. It wasn’t a voice. It was more like a song, ancient and elusive, weaving through your thoughts, tugging on the edges of your mind. Only a few could feel it. Those who were meant to hear it. Those who knew to listen.

The socks started moving, too. But not in the way socks move. No. These socks would appear in the strangest places — a sock in the middle of a kitchen floor, another in a forgotten drawer, a third perched on a windowsill. They never left a trail. No lint. No nothing. They just were, as if they were traveling between places that shouldn’t exist, in a way that should not have been possible.

But the strangest part? The socks weren’t just moving. They were changing things. People who wore them began to feel it — that strange pull. They’d put on a sock and suddenly feel… different. As if they weren’t just stepping into a pair of socks, but stepping into a new reality.

And that’s when the world started to shift. You could feel it. The ground beneath your feet felt off. Buildings that had always been there began to look wrong. The streets twisted like ribbons that didn’t quite connect, and the trees bent in ways that made no sense. Everything felt… slightly out of place.

That’s when it hit. The socks weren’t just disappearing. They weren’t even being taken. They were portals. Little gateways, stitched together from threads older than time, waiting for those brave enough to step through.

They were taking pieces of this world. Bits and fragments. The things that got lost, the memories forgotten, the dreams slipped from our hands. And they were carrying them to a place far beyond the world we knew — a place just beyond the edges of our understanding.

The socks, you see, weren’t just laundry. They weren’t just clothes. They were keys. Keys to somewhere else. Somewhere… strange. A place where the forgotten things go, where the lost hours and the missed moments slip away into a space between realities.

And here’s the kicker: those who wore them? They had a choice. A choice that sounded so simple, so easy, it almost didn’t feel like a choice at all. Stay. Or step through. Walk into the unknown and follow the socks into whatever strange and mysterious place they led.

Some stayed. Some didn’t.

And as for the socks? They kept moving, as if drawn by some unseen hand, as though they were always meant to find their way back to the one who would notice.

Because, you see, they were never meant to stay.

But you? You were always meant to find them.