Room

The room is unfamiliar. I don’t know how I got here.

The walls press in, sterile and colorless, their flat off-white surface smudged with faint, ghostly stains. A single chair hunches in the center of the room, metal legs splayed awkwardly on the scuffed floor. Overhead, a dim bulb flickers and hums, casting warped shadows that ripple like ink spilled on water. The air is thick with the scent of something stale—like a room left untouched for too long.

My pulse kicks up.

I don't remember coming here.

I don’t remember anything.

My breath quickens. The chair’s presence gnaws at me—too deliberate, too expectant. I shift my weight, and the sound of my own movement scrapes against the silence. The chair’s metal legs shriek against the floor. I flinch. My skin prickles.

The door.

No handle.

No way out.

A tremor runs down my arms as I rub them, my own touch foreign, like wearing someone else’s skin. My jaw clenches. The echo of a voice curls at the edge of my mind, a whisper, warped and stretched, like words spoken underwater.

"You’re not real."

A sharp, twisting nausea coils in my gut. The bulb overhead flickers—once, twice—and in the momentary dark, something shifts.

The chair is no longer empty.

Someone is sitting there.

My breath hitches. My muscles lock.

I blink.

The chair is empty again.

A cold sweat breaks across my skin. The silence thickens, stretching, suffocating. But the air feels different now, heavier, pressed in by something unseen. A presence. Watching.

I inhale sharply and force my legs forward. Think. Remember.

Pain lances through my skull. My vision blurs. When it clears, the room has changed.

The walls, once bare, are scrawled with frantic, overlapping words. My stomach twists as I recognize the handwriting—mine.

I don’t know how I got here.

The room is unfamiliar.

Wake up.

Wake up.

Wake up.

A mirror looms against the far wall. I know it wasn’t there before.

My feet move on their own, slow, unsteady. The glass ripples as I approach, the reflection shifting and distorting. My own face stares back—except my mouth is moving.

I am not speaking.

A voice, low and wrong, leaks from my reflection’s lips:

"The room is unfamiliar. I don’t know how I got here."

My hands tremble as I step back. My reflection doesn’t.

It leans closer, mouth moving without sound at first as if caught in a silent scream. Then, the voice returns, layered—whispers overlapping, cascading into something almost human but not quite.

"The room is unfamiliar."

I shake my head. "No."

"I don’t know how I got here."

"Stop it."

The reflection tilts its head. Its lips curl—not into a smile, but something worse. Something that mocks a smile.

"You’ve been here before."

The air in the room thins, pressing in on my lungs. My heartbeat hammers.

"I haven’t," I whisper.

"Haven’t you?"

The mirror warps, the glass darkening, twisting my reflection into something grotesque. The face becomes hollowed out, skin tight over bone. Its eyes—my eyes—blacken at the edges, spreading like ink soaking into paper.

I stumble back.

The room bends with me. The walls stretch away, expanding into an abyss of gray nothingness. The light above flutters like a dying heartbeat.

Then—

A sound.

A sharp tap-tap-tap.

Not from the mirror.

From behind me.

I freeze.

The sensation of breath ghosts against my neck. Cold, damp. Too close.

A whisper brushes my ear.

"You are trapped."

I spin around.

Nothing.

Just the chair.

Just the door with no handle.

But something is here. I feel it, a weight, a presence standing just beyond my sight.

I squeeze my eyes shut and drag in a shaky breath.

None of this is real.

It can’t be real.

But then—

The chair scrapes against the floor.

I whip my head around.

The chair has moved.

It’s closer.

I stumble back toward the mirror. My reflection watches, head still tilted, waiting.

The chair scrapes forward again.

A metallic groan. An inch closer.

A low creak. Another inch.

Closer.

I can’t breathe.

The air has turned to ice, thick and sharp in my lungs.

Then—

Silence.

The chair stops.

I force myself to look at it, really look at it.

It is empty.

It was always empty.

Right?

A shadow stretches from behind it.

My stomach clenches.

The shadow is growing.

Rising.

Unfolding.

A shape, shifting, stretching upward like a marionette pulled by invisible strings.

Limb by limb, a figure emerges from the shadow.

It is tall. Too tall.

The head tilts toward me, but there is no face. No features. Only smooth, shifting darkness.

The air ripples with its presence.

My vision wavers.

It steps forward.

The walls shake.

The mirror fractures.

A voice echoes—not from the figure, but from all around me, from the walls, the floor, the very space I exist in.

"You are not supposed to be here."

I can’t move.

I can’t run.

The figure raises a hand, reaching.

A deep, sickening hum vibrates in my skull, a sound without a source, pressing into my bones.

The mirror behind me shatters.

Glass rains around me, slicing my arms and my face, but I don’t feel the pain.

The reflection’s voice warps into something monstrous, a chorus of screams and whispers, all speaking as one:

"Wake up."

The figure lunges.

A flash.

Darkness.

Then—

I am standing.

The chair is gone.

The mirror is gone.

The words on the walls are gone.

The room is white. Empty.

I touch my arms. No cuts. No blood.

But something is different.

The door now has a handle.

I exhale, shaking, and reach for it.

My fingers close around the cold metal.

Turn.

The door creaks open.

Beyond it—

A hallway. Dim, endless, stretching forward into nothing.

I step through.

Footsteps echo behind me.

I don’t look back.

I keep walking.

The corridor bends. Twists. Doors appear on either side, closed tight, unmarked.

I reach the end.

Another mirror waits.

My breath catches.

The reflection is not mine.

It is me, but not me.

This version stands taller. Stronger. Eyes sharp with knowledge I don’t possess.

I raise my hand.

The reflection does not.

A slow smile unfurls on its lips.

It leans in, pressing a hand against the glass.

"You finally made it this far."

My pulse stutters.

"Where am I?" I whisper.

The reflection's smile widens.

"You already know."

A crack splinters through the glass.

The walls flicker.

The ceiling ripples.

The space between me and the reflection distorts, twisting into a vortex of shifting, flickering images.

A bedroom. My bedroom. My old life. A desk stacked with papers. A window overlooking a city at night. A phone rang. My name is on a hospital chart. Blood on my hands. A crash. A scream. A cold, sterile light.

I stagger back.

"No," I whisper.

The reflection places a finger against its lips.

"Shh."

The mirror implodes.

I open my eyes.

A hospital bed.

Bright, sterile light.

Machines beep in a slow, steady rhythm.

A woman stands at the foot of the bed, eyes wet with exhaustion and hope.

"You’re awake," she breathes.

I blink.

My throat is dry. My body is heavy.

Her hand grips mine.

"It’s okay," she says. "You’ve been in a coma for a long time."

My pulse stirs. A deep, hollow ache swells in my chest.

The room is unfamiliar.

I don’t know how I got here.