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This town’s mirrors were not like any others. They did not reflect the present. They showed the future. The townsfolk called them “smart mirrors,” though no one knew who had coined the term.

No one could say exactly when or how they appeared. One day, they simply were—sleek, obsidian rectangles hanging in every home, their surfaces gleaming like liquid night.

At first, it was a marvel. Each morning, as the mist clung to the ground like a burial shroud, the people of Millbury would gather before their mirrors, their breath fogging the glass as they peered into what lay ahead. Glimpses of joy, of love, of lives unfolding in sunlit perfection.

A child’s first steps.

A wedding ring slipped onto a trembling finger.

A promotion, a retirement, a life well-lived.

But as the days grew shorter and the nights colder, the reflections began to twist.

The mirrors, once heralded as gifts, became curses. They showed not just what could be, but what would be. A car skidding off a rain-slick road. A cough that wouldn’t go away, deepening into something darker. Faces twisted in rage, hands slick with blood. The townsfolk recoiled, covering the mirrors with sheets, smashing them to shards. But the whispers began—soft at first, like the rustle of dead leaves, then louder, more insistent. They slithered through the cracks, coiled around thoughts, and burrowed deep.

And then there was Eleanor.

Eleanor lived on the outskirts of Millbury, in a house that seemed to hold its breath. Her mirror was different. Silent. Empty. While others saw their fates unfold in vivid, horrifying detail, Eleanor’s mirror showed only her—her face, her room, the quiet stillness of her life. It was a refuge, a sanctuary from the chaos that gripped the town. But then, one evening, the whispers began.

At first, they were faint, almost imperceptible. A murmur here, a sigh there. Eleanor would turn, expecting to find someone in the room, but there was only the mirror, its surface dark and unyielding. The whispers grew louder, more insistent. They didn’t show her the future; they spoke it. Fragmented words, half-formed sentences, slipping through the glass like secrets too heavy to keep. “Watch,” they hissed. “Listen.”

Eleanor couldn’t look away. The mirror, once a blank slate, now pulsed with a strange, otherworldly energy. It drew her in, not with images, but with sound. The whispers became voices, layered and overlapping, each one carrying a fragment of truth, a shard of something vast and unknowable. They spoke of things Eleanor had buried deep within herself—fears, regrets, the hollow ache of a life half-lived. They spoke of the cracks in the world, the thin places where reality frayed and bled.

The town descended into madness. Neighbors turned on each other, their faces pale and haunted, their eyes darting to the covered mirrors as if they might come alive at any moment. But Eleanor’s mirror remained uncovered. She couldn’t bring herself to hide it, not when it seemed to hold the key to something she couldn’t quite grasp. The voices grew louder, more urgent. They called her name, beckoned her closer, until one night, she pressed her ear to the glass.

The cold seeped into her skin, and the whispers became a roar. In that moment, she understood. The mirror wasn’t empty.

It was full—overflowing with possibilities, with paths not taken, with lives unlived.

It wasn’t showing her the future; it was showing her herself.

A thousand Eleanors stared back, their eyes wide with knowledge, their lips moving in silent unison.

They were her, and yet they were not.

They were the echoes of choices unmade, of roads untraveled, of a life that could have been—or might still be.

The townsfolk whispered of Eleanor, of the woman who stared into the void and found herself staring back. They said her mirror was cursed, that it held a power too great for any one person to bear. But Eleanor knew the truth. The mirror wasn’t cursed. It was a mirror, nothing more. And yet, it was everything. It was the past, the present, the future. It was the question and the answer, the whisper and the silence.

In the heart of Millbury, where the woods whispered and the mirrors watched, Eleanor’s house stood as a beacon, a place where the line between reality and reflection blurred. And in the depths of the glass, the voices still called, soft and insistent, weaving a tapestry of truths too vast to comprehend. For in the end, the mirror didn’t show the future. It showed what had always been there, waiting to be seen.

But as the days passed, something changed. The whispers grew louder, more urgent, more desperate. They began to speak of things Eleanor had never known, of places she had never been, of people she had never met. They spoke of a door, hidden deep within the mirror, a door that led to a place beyond time, beyond reality.

And they begged her to open it.

Eleanor hesitated. She had seen what the mirrors could do, the chaos they could unleash. But the voices were insistent, their pleas growing more frantic with each passing day. And so, one night, with the wind howling like a banshee outside her window, Eleanor reached out and touched the glass.

The surface rippled like water, and for a moment, Eleanor felt herself falling, tumbling through darkness and light, through time and space. And then she was there, standing before the door. It was old, its surface carved with symbols that seemed to shift and writhe as she watched. The whispers were deafening now, a cacophony of voices urging her forward.

With trembling hands, Eleanor reached out and turned the handle. The door swung open, revealing a void so vast and empty it made her heart ache. And then, from the darkness, something emerged. It was formless, shapeless, a thing of shadows and whispers. It reached out to her, its touch cold and electric, and in that moment, Eleanor understood.

The mirrors had never been about the future. They had been a warning, a plea for help from something trapped beyond the glass. And now, it was free.

The last thing Eleanor saw before the darkness consumed her was her reflection in the mirror, her face twisted in a scream that never reached her lips.

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 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.

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. 

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. 

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 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.

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.”

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 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.

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.

I hadn’t thought about Lunvail in years. The city was far enough to forget, with its cracked sidewalks and its endless noise. I had a job, an apartment with leaky pipes, and a girlfriend who left me for someone with a Tesla. 

You could say I was getting used to it, the life that’s too loud and too cold to make you feel anything, until the call came. Mom’s gone. You can’t outrun a call like that.

Lunvail isn’t a place you leave easily. It has this way of holding you in its grip, like the rusted iron of the old bridge that cuts through the fog and the trees. 

People talk about the town like it’s a ghost story, a place where the air always feels damp, even on sunny days, and the ground seems to remember every footstep taken on it. They say if you stand at the edge of town and look out, you can see the fog rolling in long before it hits. It’s like the town’s breathing, pulling you back every time you think about leaving.

But if you’re from Lunvail, you know the rule. The one you never question, even though no one tells you why. You honk twice before you cross the bridge. 

Two long, drawn-out honks. 

It doesn’t matter if you’re alone or if it’s the middle of the night or if the fog’s so thick you can’t even see the headlights in front of you.  You honk. Twice. And then you go.

---

The drive back felt like falling through time, past old gas stations and boarded-up stores, past the edge of town where the trees start to close in on the road, where it gets darker, colder. The air in the town always felt heavier than anywhere else, like it was holding secrets, and the fog… the fog was thicker than I remembered. I had to slow down, the road barely visible beneath the dense mist that wound through the trees like a living thing, wrapping around the car, pulling me toward the bridge.

I saw it then, the Lunvail Bridge. It looked smaller somehow, even more fragile, pavement is patchy and there are holes to fill here and there. 

The kind of bridge you’d expect to fall apart after the next good storm. But it stood there, silent in the fog, waiting for me. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d crossed it. Probably some night long ago when I was still a kid, when things felt… safer.

I pulled up to the bridge and paused, staring at the darkness ahead. A part of me told me not to do it, so I didn’t.

I honked once and felt like a rebel. 

The silence pressed in, thick and suffocating. Not the quiet of a peaceful night. This was different. This was alive.

And then I heard it. Tap-tap.

A soft knock on the passenger window. A polite tap, like someone asking for permission to come inside.

I froze. My breath caught in my throat. The tapping came again, louder this time, and I couldn’t move. My hands were glued to the wheel. I turned slowly, as if the world was moving in slow motion. And there, against the fogged glass, was a hand—long fingers, crooked, like something that didn’t belong in the world. The knuckles bent at odd angles, like a child’s drawing of a hand, twisted into shapes that made my skin crawl.

Tap-tap. I couldn’t breathe.

My fingers found the horn, and I slammed it. Twice. Hard. The sound rang out, shaking the stillness. The tapping stopped. The engine roared back to life. The lights flickered, blinding in their sudden brightness, and I didn’t think—I just hit the gas, tearing forward, not even looking back.

The tires screeched as I shot across the bridge, the fog pushing at my windows, as though something was trying to pull me back.

A figure. Standing in the middle of the bridge. It was hunched over, twisted, its limbs far too long, and its head angled at a grotesque angle.  It didn’t look at me. It looked past me, as if waiting for something else. Something worse.

I glanced in the rearview mirror, my breath coming in ragged gasps, but the headlights of another car were coming from behind me. Another soul on the bridge, blissfully unaware of what stood between us and the town. 

The car kept coming. No slow down. No hesitation.

The figure moved. It unfolded, stretching, cracking, like a broken marionette being pulled by invisible strings. It leapt, no—it flowed—onto the car’s roof in one smooth, impossible motion, disappearing into the fog. The car didn’t stop. The headlights never faltered as they crossed the bridge, heading toward the unknown. 

They didn’t honk!

I sat there, numb, my fingers still clutching the wheel. I couldn’t move, couldn’t think. The fog started to peel away from the bridge, like a curtain being drawn back. The world went quiet again. Too quiet. But the car after me was able to pass the fog.

“So silly of me,” I felt cheated by my own self that I panicked when I didn’t honk twice and created mirages out of fear. It wasn’t until later, when I reached the edge of town—past the last house, where the trees were so thick they looked like shadows—that I saw something in the side mirror.

The scratches on the passenger window where I heard the tapping. They were deep, too deep to ignore. And they weren’t random. They spelled out one word, sharp and jagged, etched into the glass with a precision that made my stomach drop:

Next.

I didn’t understand. Not until I looked down the road, back toward Lunvail. And that’s when I realized. The fog had been waiting. 

And the toll was never for the bridge. It was for whoever crossed it next. Now I keep wondering…

…what happens to the next car that passes the bridge, since the car after me didn’t honk?

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.

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.

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 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. 

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. 

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?

The loss doesn’t strike you once, like a lightning bolt. No, it’s subtle. It lingers in the corners of your mind, in the shadows where you used to think you knew what was real. It comes when you wake up in the morning, ready for the world, only to be slapped with the knowledge that you don’t have the luxury of calling them anymore. The phone feels too heavy in your hand. You don’t realize it until you reach for it, fingers already dialing, that you’ll never hear their voices again.

But it’s the empty spaces that get you. The silence where their laughter used to be. The absence that lingers like a pressure in your chest. It’s the little things, the minutiae of life, that come crashing down in those quiet moments. You realize you don’t remember the last conversation you had with them. You don’t know exactly when you said goodbye—when that last word fell between you, unspoken, unnoticed. It’s gone, slipping from your memory as if it was never there at all. And the world tilts.

Nothing feels right. You reach for the routine, try to hold onto the habits, but even those are becoming unfamiliar, like clothing that’s too tight or shoes that pinch your feet. You can hear their voices in the back of your mind, but they’re muffled now, distant echoes that seem to disappear before you can catch them. Their faces start to blur, their gestures fading. The things they used to do, the way they moved—those things are slipping away, vanishing as the days go on.

Sometimes, it feels like you’re drowning in that absence. The grief is not loud, not a sudden storm, but a steady, suffocating pressure that doesn’t let up. It’s not sadness—it’s emptiness. A vacuum where they used to be. It’s the silence after you forget to call them, the days you forget their favorite songs. It’s the way everything in your world starts to feel hollow, like the shell of a house after it’s burned down, the framework remaining but no heart, no life.

Your friends try to console you. They say the things that people say in these moments: “It’s what they would’ve wanted. They wouldn’t want you to be sad.” But the words never make it past your skin. They feel like something they’ve memorized, like lines in a play they’ve only ever heard about, never truly lived. How do you move on when the world doesn’t feel like it used to? How do you get out of bed when everything feels wrong, like stepping into a world where the rules have changed without you? How do you keep walking when the ground beneath you feels too soft, as if it might give way at any moment?

But you do it. You get up. You keep moving forward because there’s nothing else to do. You put one foot in front of the other and walk through a world that’s familiar but isn’t. Everything around you seems the same, and yet… it’s not. There’s a sense that something has been rearranged. You don’t notice it at first, but it’s like the air tastes different now. And you can’t shake the feeling that something isn’t right.

It’s on a night like any other that things start to shift. At first, it’s almost imperceptible. A flicker at the edge of your vision, a brief shadow that’s not quite where it should be. A noise—a whisper—carried on the wind, but when you turn around, there’s nothing there. You laugh at yourself. It’s nothing, of course. Just the remnants of your grief, the fog in your head, the things that linger when you’re not paying attention. But then… there’s a pressure. A pull. You can feel it at the back of your mind. You can’t explain it, but it’s there—an old, familiar tug. You start to follow it, even though you don’t want to. It’s a memory, but not one you remember living. You know it, though. You can feel it in your bones.

And then, it hits you.

They’re here.

Not in the way you thought, not in the way you had hoped. They’re not ghosts, not shadows that haunt the corner of your eye. No, they are here in a way you didn’t expect. You hear their voices—not in the past, but right now. As if they’ve never really left. You can feel their presence, like a pull in your chest, like something unspoken calling you forward.

You don’t understand it at first. How could you? But the moment the realization hits you, you start to walk—no, you start to follow.

Without thinking, without understanding, you let yourself go. The streets outside your door feel familiar but wrong, as if they’ve been twisted just slightly, just enough to disorient you.

When you reach your old house, it looms before you, but it’s not like it was. The windows are too dark, the door creaking open on its own, and as you step inside, everything seems just a little too still. The walls press in on you, the air too thick, the house too heavy, like it’s holding its breath, waiting for something. But it’s not until you turn the corner and find the door—small, almost childlike, slightly ajar—that you know something is very wrong.

You approach, heart pounding, every instinct telling you to turn back. The light spilling from the crack of the door is soft, warm, but you can feel something else in it, something deeper, something that tugs at your insides and makes your skin crawl. The moment you open the door, you step into an endless hallway. It stretches, twisting, and you feel the walls move in on you, too close, too tight.

There’s no escape.

You don’t turn back, though. You’ve come this far, and whatever is waiting ahead, it’s something you have to see. But the hallway is shifting now, and the air is colder than it should be. The voices of your parents are louder now, stronger, but you can’t place where they are. They’re all around you. There’s no escape. It isn’t a door—it’s a trap.

And then you understand.

The absence, the weight of their loss, it’s not something you can fix. It’s not something you can fill. The truth is worse. The emptiness, the void where they used to be—it’s inside you.

You never left.

And so, you stand there, trapped between who you were and who you’re supposed to be, between the love you lost and the life you’re trying to build.

The house isn’t a memory. It isn’t a place. It’s a reflection of your grief. A labyrinth of what you’ve buried. You’ve been walking it your whole life, each step a mark of the things you thought you could outrun.

But in that moment, you understand. You can’t escape it. You can’t forget them. Not really.

And the thing is, you don’t need to.

You take a breath.

And you keep walking – through the door.

The last house at the edge of town, just past the bridge, was the kind of place no one looked at for too long. The road leading to it was barely more than a memory, half-swallowed by creeping vines and the quiet patience of things left forgotten.

The house itself had always seemed misplaced, hunched beneath the weight of years, its windows dulled with age and grime. It stood as a secret, pressed into the town like an apology no one wanted to explain.

No one lived there. No one ever had. And yet, one morning, someone left a gift on its doorstep. A loaf of bread, golden and warm.

No one knocked. No one was seen. But the bread remained. The next morning, another gift. A porcelain cup of tea, still steaming.

Then a stone, round and smooth. A key, wrapped in fraying string. A ribbon, soft as breath.

No one ever saw who placed them, and no one ever saw who took them. But each morning, without fail, the gifts would be gone.

Then, one night, a lantern appeared.

No one heard it, but the town was different the following day.

The air hung thick with an unspoken weight. The wind did not move. The sky, though clear, felt pressed too close. And the house at the edge of town?

Gone.

Not abandoned. Not ruined. Just… gone. The earth where it had stood was smooth and undisturbed, as though it had never been there at all.

But the gifts kept coming.

Jessica found a note at her door, bound with black ribbon. The words were simple, inked with a hand too steady to be human.

“Thank you.”

Jane, the baker’s daughter, received a golden coin. Mrs. Cranston, the schoolteacher, found a mirror wrapped in velvet. Even Mayor Harrow received a letter—delivered with no hands at all.

And the gifts did something.

The town changed. People smiled more, spoke in softer voices. Mrs. Cranston grew gentler with her students. Jane hummed while kneading dough. The mayor, who once clutched power with greedy fingers, gave more than he took.

The gifts wove something unseen into their lives, something delicate, insidious.

And then, one evening, a man came.

He stood at the edge of town and spoke in a voice like an echo from deep earth.

“They’ve learned it.”

His gaze moved over the town, and the people felt the weight of something vast, something endless, pressing against their bones.

“Kindness… is not a gift.”

“It is a debt.”

And just as suddenly as he arrived, he was gone. The cormorant shrieked once, then shot into the sky, vanishing into the night.

But from that day on, the gifts never stopped.

People kept receiving them. More notes. More ribbons. More coins, mirrors, keys.

They had no choice but to accept.

Because kindness is a debt. And debts must be paid.

And somewhere, buried beneath their quiet smiles, a question grew.

What happens when the debt is paid in full?