I was born on a cold night.
The kind where even the walls seemed to shiver.
The lights flickered once. Twice. Then stayed on like nothing had happened.
My mother said I didn't cry much when I came into the world.
Just opened my eyes, wide and silent.
People smiled. Laughed. There was music in the other room.
But I… just stared at the ceiling, as if I'd been here before.
I don't remember that, of course.
But I remember the dreams that came after.
My first memory wasn't of a toy. Or a voice. Or my mother's face.
It was of a room with no corners.
A space that stretched forever — soft and gray, like fog trapped inside cotton.
There was no light, yet I could see.
No sound, yet I could hear something breathing.
A cradle floated in the center of the void. It rocked slowly.
And something lay inside it — wrapped in a blanket that seemed… too still.
I stepped closer.
The cradle stopped.
The thing beneath the blanket twitched once.
I should've run. But I didn't.
I just stood there — too curious, too small to understand fear.
Then the blanket slowly peeled back…
And I woke up.
I remember blinking into the real world.
The ceiling fan above spun in lazy circles. Dust danced in its wake.
Mother was humming in the next room, her voice thin and sweet like overused thread.
I turned on my side and looked at the edge of my bed.
The blanket was slightly lifted. Like something had crawled underneath.
"Just a dream," I whispered.
But my voice didn't sound convincing.
Father wasn't home that morning.
Mother said he was "working."
I didn't know what that meant yet. I only knew that when he came back, the air changed.
Sometimes it smelled like smoke.
Sometimes like sour bottles.
Sometimes like nothing — which was the worst of all.
But today, it was quiet.
Mother cooked something soft. She fed me with her hands. Smiled like nothing was wrong.
Like her wrists didn't have fading blue marks.
Like her eyes didn't blink too fast when I dropped a spoon.
We sat together in that narrow kitchen.
Just me and her.
The world outside our window felt too big to matter.
That night, the dream came again.
This time I wasn't in a void.
I was in our house — but wrong.
The walls were curved. The clocks had no hands.
The windows looked into other rooms instead of outside.
And under the table, the blanket waited again.
It whispered.
"He is watching…"
I stepped closer.
"He is waiting…"
The blanket moved.
And from underneath it, a hand reached out — not human. Not bone. Not shadow.
Something in-between.
I opened my mouth to scream.
And woke up.
Sweat clung to my neck.
The real blanket — my real one — had fallen to the floor.
I leaned over the edge of the bed to pick it up.
There were fingerprints on the floorboards.
Small. Barely visible. Pressed in dust.
Not mine.
I didn't tell my mother. I didn't speak of the dream.
Somehow, I knew it wasn't meant to be shared yet.
I just lay back down, clutching the blanket to my chest.
Staring at the fan above me.
Watching it spin.
And in the back of my mind, a voice whispered again.
"This is not your beginning.
It's your reminder."