✦
"Have you ever felt like you're being watched---not by a camera, not by eyes---but by the room itself?
By a place that remembers you better than you remember yourself?"
✦
She only closed her eyes---for a moment.
Not sleep.
Not fainting.
Just… refusing to see, for a second, when everything felt too unreal.
But when Elara opened her eyes again…
the world wouldn't let her see the same thing twice.
This room---
hadn't changed.
But it wasn't the same either.
The table that was once on the right, now stood on the left. The doorknob had switched sides.
And the light flickered. Slowly.
Rhythmically.
As if trying to sleep.
Or waiting for *me* to fall asleep first---
…so it could change shape.
"Don't talk about getting out."
I blinked.
I wasn't even thinking about that.
But now… I can't think of anything else.
She wants to get out.
The doorknob is on the right.
But the moment she reaches for it---
it's on the left.
I want to touch it.
I want to leave.
But now… even the door is gone.
As if reality just erased the sketch lines of my existence.
"I want to leave
I want to leave
IWANTTOLEAVE---
But the door---
door...?
was taken."
I remember the sound it made. The cold, trembling metal in my hand.
She turned to the window.
There was no window.
And there never had been.
She was sure it had never existed.
She was even sure she could draw its shape.
Curved wooden frame. Sheer curtains. Dim light.
"Wait..."
If the window never existed,
why do I remember its scent?
Why do I know exactly how the light fell across the floor?
Why, in my head, do the curtains move… like I'd once touched them?
Was this memory---
or something my brain wanted to believe, to make the emptiness feel less foreign?
But there were no traces.
No dust.
No hinge.
Just a wall.
Just silence---too certain that no window had ever been there.
Did someone move this room while I slept?
Or…
Was it me who never returned to the same place?
I sat down slowly.
The floor pulsed a second after my palm touched it.
Delayed---like reality had to think before deciding whether it would let me touch it.
My footsteps felt heavy.
Not the heaviness of fatigue, but the weight of gravity itself deciding---whether it wanted to work today or not.
The digital clock blinked: **33:33**
The same number as last night.
And the night before.
And the one before that.
Though I'm no longer sure it was ever night.
She wanted to write something on the wall.
The date.
But her fingers froze in midair.
She didn't know.
What day?
What month?
What year?
"How long have I been here? "
Elara stood.
Looked for a calendar.
A clock.
Anything.
Nothing.
No markers. No time.
Just the light---blinking,
counting hours that never existed.
They say time heals.
But here… time freezes inside the wound.
I stepped closer to the mirror.
But the reflection---I hated the way it stared at me.
Too long.
Too intently.
Too terrifying.
It stared back---
not at me,
but through me.
Wearing my face.
Thinner.
Paler.
Older.
More exhausted than time itself.
And the eyes…
blinking too fast, as if trying to keep pace with my fractured thoughts.
Its breath fogged the mirror.
But no mist formed on the other side.
That reflection wasn't breathing.
It wasn't afraid.
But Elara was.
She knew she was.
Yet she tried to be brave---because she wanted out.
The reflection blinked.
But I didn't.
I froze.
My breath caught---but not from fear. From something deeper…
Like the realization that what I was seeing
might no longer be me.
I slowly raised my left hand.
In the mirror, my right hand moved---too smoothly,
as if it already knew what I'd do before I did.
Its lips---my lips---were closed, but not sealed.
As if holding back laughter.
Suddenly, writing appeared across the glass---faint, like mist clinging to the inside:
"MURDERER."
I stepped back.
As if trying to leave my own shadow---
but the shadow didn't follow.
"You Are A Murderer."
The letters faded, then reappeared---this time with pressure, like they were pushing me to believe.
But… how could I not exist, if I was reading this right now?
Or maybe…
maybe the message wasn't for *me*.
Maybe it was from one part of myself---
to another
…that no longer remained.
My steps faltered.
The left wall seemed longer.
Or the right.
Or walls no longer had sides.
Or maybe...
...I was tilted.
This room shifted too much to be sure.
I looked again at the digital clock.
Still 33:33
I touched the numbers, trying to feel them. My skin met plastic,
but the sensation was like touching water that didn't want to be touched.
The clock hands had stopped.
But the ticking---
kept echoing
inside my skull.
A sentence emerged---from nowhere:
"You're too fast.
The world hasn't had time to adjust to you yet."
It wasn't a voice. Not even a whisper.
More like a leftover echo of something that never happened.
I tried to speak, but my mouth---
was clogged with jammed time.
The walls pulled away, then collided.
The floor vanished, then hardened.
And I---
was like a printing error in the wrong dimension.
I wanted to scream. But the sound that escaped was only echo---no origin.
I didn't feel like I was losing consciousness.
I felt like I was losing the right to believe there was ever a 'me' at all.
The mirror was still there.
But my reflection no longer moved.
It just stood there. Watching. Writing something with its finger---dragging it across the glass.
The words didn't appear on the surface.
But I understood them.
"Who are you,
if the entire world agrees
you should've never existed?"
I turned to run---but my body moved on its own.
To the left.
My steps pre-written, like a script I hadn't read yet.
Toward a cabinet, now slightly ajar.
As if waiting.
Or… calling.
Its door cracked open.
The sound like a breath held far too long.
I moved closer.
Slowly.
Without permission from my mind.
Inside---
I didn't remember ever opening it.
Or putting anything inside.
Not clothes.
Not anything I owned.
But me.
The *me* that was no longer whole.
Scattered pages.
Not from books---but memories.
Shreds of pasts that never happened,
fragments of futures censored before they could grow.
Among them:
A ribbon soaked in ink,
a small hand grasping at air---too small to save itself, too trusting of someone like me.
Eyes open, but empty.
And in the center…
my face.
But paler.
More afraid.
More accurate.
Blurry texts written on peeling skin:
"Elara should've stopped here."
"Cut this part---it hurts too much."
"Replace her."
"This one remembers too hard."
"This version lasted too long."
I wanted to close the cabinet.
But it wouldn't let me.
And I understood why.
Amid the fragments---
was one blank space.
Clean.
Just big enough for who I am now.
Or maybe not me.
Maybe you.
Because this cabinet was never just about me, was it?
I froze. My fingers brushed a single sentence
----
and in that moment, I remembered a pain I'd never known.
As if some part of me had once been betrayed by the world…
but was forbidden to recall it.
Then from inside the cabinet came a quiet sound.
Not a whisper.
More like… a breath trying to speak:
"This is the framing room.
They don't care if you're broken---
as long as you can be displayed like you never were."
"And they… are speaking to you now."
I have to stay calm.
I have to be still.
I have to wait my turn.
…The sentence didn't come from inside my head.
But from beside my ear.
Like a whisper that already knew my breathing pattern.
I turned---
no one there.
But the voice still hung in the air.
Warm.
Close.
Like someone had just leaned in.
Something moved my hand. Slowly, I wrote on the floor---
not with ink, but with the tip of a finger trailing a thin thread of blood:
NULLA
I didn't know what it meant.
But the moment the word was written, the room fell silent---
like the universe before creation.
No sound.
No gravity.
No reason.
Just…
absence---watching from behind everything that's real.
And I knew: something inside me was trying to return.
Something long denied.
Restrained.
Buried.
NULLA.
A fragment of peace, born from the void.
The mirror smiled.
But not kindly---
like someone who knew your secret
and was waiting for you to break.
I returned its gaze.
No words came out ---
but something inside me answered.
Like an emotion forcing its way through my eyes, not my mouth.
"If I don't exist…
then who's speaking right now?"
The mirror smiled again. And when I turned around… my reflection was still there.
Smiling.
Standing tall.
As if waiting for me to collapse... so it could wear me.
"If I speak now, something worse will happen."
I didn't know where that certainty came from. But I held my breath.
For a long time.
Longer than I should have.
until silence became the only thing I could remember
I stepped back slowly, intending to run---but the room felt like it was holding my breath.
Then came a clicking sound.
I want to run.
Even though nothing was chasing me. No shadow. No one. But my body stiffened as if it already knew what was coming.
As if this place was preparing… to become worse.
The sound of a small lamp turned on in the corner of the room.
I turned my head slowly.
Then the voice came.
From a static speaker I had never seen before.
A quiet voice… the one that used to lull me to sleep when I had a fever.
But now, the tone was wrong.
Wrong.
"Elara… why did you do that?"
My mother's voice.
But not my mother.
I opened my mouth.
But the voice that came out… wasn't mine.