By the time my aunt opens the door, I can feel the fatigue crawling under my skin like a slow fever, not loud or dramatic, just steadily simmering, making my bones feel like melted wax and my thoughts like heavy pages stuck together in a book that no one has bothered to read in years, and her voice—soft, worried, too careful—drifts toward me in a way that makes me want to collapse into her arms and simultaneously bolt in the opposite direction.
"Mira, darling, you're here," she breathes out as though she'd been holding that air hostage for hours, maybe days, maybe since the first time she noticed my eyes flicker to things that weren't hers to see.
I step inside, suitcase wheels rolling over the threshold, and the familiar scent of her home hits me—not warmth exactly, but something like stability with a splash of lavender and disinfectant, as if she's trying to sanitize the ghosts out of this place. The house is dim, but not dark; the curtains are drawn halfway, letting only enough light in to sketch vague shapes on the floor. Shadows stretch along the hallway like they've been waiting for me to return, bending slightly, leaning in, curious.
"I'm fine," I tell her automatically, the corporate autopilot response, the kind you give in performance reviews before admitting nothing is fine in any department, but she doesn't call me out on it, just touches my arm in that hesitant, half-afraid way that tells me she's been reading too many medical forums.
"You must be tired. Go rest. I'll make dinner in a bit."
I nod, even though the word "rest" feels fictional, like an outdated term from a dictionary that my brain doesn't have access to anymore. I drag my bag toward the guest room, and each step feels heavier, as if the house itself is pulling at my ankles, asking me to stay, asking me to remember something I've never known.
The guest room is neat, painfully neat, sheets tucked tight, pillows fluffed to unnatural proportions, everything smelling of detergent and compressed expectation. I drop my suitcase beside the bed and sink onto the edge, letting the mattress dip under my weight, letting the air press against my lungs with the kind of quiet that feels staged.
It's been exactly ten minutes.
Ten minutes since I stepped inside.Ten minutes since the familiar became uneasy.Ten minutes since my body began silently begging for sleep but my mind refused to slow down enough to let it happen.
I lean back, stretching out on the bed, staring up at the ceiling where the fan moves in slow, lazy circles, each rotation a hypnotic loop designed to pull me under, but I can't fully surrender to it because something in the room shifts, barely perceptible, like a change in the air pressure or the faint hum of electricity rearranging itself.
It starts with a flicker.Just one.
The light bulb near the door trembles, the brightness dipping for a fraction of a moment before returning, but in that split second, I swear I see something at the corner of my eye—a shape, a silhouette, a smear of dark against the beige wall—but when I turn toward it, the corner is empty, still, normal.
A normalness that feels so forced it almost screams.
I push a hand over my face, letting my fingers rest against my eyelids. Maybe I'm just exhausted, maybe Dr. Raman's questions have burrowed deeper than I realized, maybe this house with its old memories and carefully hidden grief is choking me already. I inhale, slow and shaky, trying to talk myself down from this creeping paranoia, but the moment I lower my hand, I freeze.
Because the ceiling has… eyes.
Not real ones, not fully formed, not the biological kind, but shapes—shadowy hollows that look like sockets—and they're staring directly at me. I blink hard, once, twice, and the ceiling smooths out, returning to its plain off-white self, but the echo of those eyes stays burned into my retinas like afterimages from a flashlight.
My heart stumbles in panic, but I tell myself it's nothing, it's exhaustion, it's just my mind glitching after the day I've had, and I sit up abruptly, elbows digging into the mattress, trying to dismiss the prickling sensation crawling down my spine.
And that's when I see the first face.
It's in the window reflection, faint, blurred, like fog pressed against glass. It's not mine. Not even close. It's older, narrower, with hollow cheeks and a smile stretched too wide, a smile that looks like it's held up by wires rather than joy, and for a moment I can't breathe because its eyes—dark and sunken—are fixed on me with a familiarity that chills.
I whip my head around, looking directly at the window, expecting to see someone standing outside, but there's nothing but the garden, quiet and unmoving. When I turn back to the reflection, the face is gone. Just my own disoriented expression stares back at me.
"Okay," I whisper to myself, voice trembling even though I try to steady it, "we're not doing this. Not today."
But the room disagrees.
The walls start to feel closer, like the space is shrinking molecule by molecule. The shadows in the corner deepen, stretching up the wall in slow, unnatural movements, until they vaguely resemble silhouettes—shoulders, heads, the hint of elongated limbs—but every time I focus on them directly, they flatten back into harmless shade, only to reform when I look away.
I squeeze the bedsheet in my fists, nails digging into the fabric, grounding myself in the sensation because everything else feels too fluid, too unreliable. I stand, legs shaky, and walk toward the dresser where a small mirror rests, its frame chipped at one corner, probably older than me.
I lean closer, wanting proof that I'm still me, that my face hasn't rearranged itself into something I don't recognize, but the moment I do, something moves behind me.
My reflection stays still.
I don't.
My breath catches.I turn around slowly, as if my body already knows what I'll see and is begging me not to confirm it, but the room looks empty, perfectly normal, horrifyingly calm.
Yet the feeling persists—that I'm not alone.
That I'm being watched.
That something is staring through me, not at me.
I swallow hard and step back from the mirror. I need to breathe, need to reset my brain, need to convince myself that these are symptoms, not truths, that this is the diagnosis's fault, not mine.
But then I blink.
And the room is full of faces.
Dozens of them, layered over the furniture, hovering in the corners, stretched across the ceiling, all of them distorted like melting wax figures, eyes warped, mouths curled into grotesque half-smiles, expressions that don't belong to any living human I've ever met. They don't move. They don't blink. They just stare, silently, endlessly, as if waiting for me to acknowledge them.
My voice catches in my throat, a strangled sound, something between a gasp and a plea, but the air feels too thick to push anything out. My pulse slams against my skin, every beat echoing in my ears like a drum inside a hollow room.
I close my eyes, counting slowly, praying the way corporate HR slides mental health pamphlets under your door—calm, controlled, performative.
One.Two.Three.Four.
When I open them again, the faces are closer.
Their features sharpened, their smiles wider, their hollow eyes bleeding into the space around them as though the shadows themselves are part of their bodies.
A whisper floats through the room, barely audible, like a breath carried on the wind.
"Mira…"
My name.My curse.My fracture point.
I stumble backward, hitting the edge of the bed, my knees buckling in a moment of pure panic. I fall onto the mattress, hands shaking, lungs burning, throat dry. My mind is racing with thoughts that don't feel entirely mine—fragments, flashes, memories that don't belong to any timeline I've lived.
A burning room.A door slamming shut.A hand reaching out.A scream cut in half.The smell of smoke.The shape of a face melting in the heat.My own voice, younger, begging.
I gasp and press my palms against my temples as though I can physically force these not-memories back into whatever dark drawer they crawled out from, but the harder I press, the louder the faces seem to whisper.
"Mira…""Mira…""Mira…"
The ceiling flickers again.
And for an agonizing second, everything in the room blurs into one gruesome mass of eyes and mouths and expressions that aren't human anymore, like reality itself has been stretched too far, like my mind is trying to show me something I'm not built to see.
I choke on a sob I didn't realize I was holding.
Then—just as suddenly as it began—everything snaps back into place.
The faces vanish.The corners return to their normal, innocent darkness.The furniture stops breathing.The ceiling smooths.The mirror reflects nothing but my trembling self.
The room falls silent.Too silent.
I sit there, chest heaving, sweat clinging to my hairline, hands still shaking like they're remembering something my mind refuses to admit. My throat aches from the scream I never released, my heart pounding so hard it feels like it might bruise my ribs.
From the hallway, I hear my aunt calling gently, "Dinner's almost ready, sweetheart."
Her voice is warm.Stable.Real.
I clutch the edge of the bed, grounding myself, reminding myself that the world outside this room is still functioning, still operating on its usual KPIs and mundane routines, still oblivious to the horror that just unfolded inside my head.
I take a deep breath.
But when I look toward the window, I see it again.
Just for a fraction of a heartbeat.
The same face.The same hollow eyes.The same impossible smile.
Watching me from the reflection.
Waiting.
As if the madness isn't arriving.
As if it has always lived here.
With me.