Echos in the Dark

Michelle Beyers woke to the hum of the oxygen machine and the sterile white glow of hospital lights. She had survived the crash. Her husband, Daniel, had not. They told her she had been unconscious for days, and in those days, the world had stolen her sense of normalcy.

Recovery was grueling. Her body ached, but her mind suffered more. The doctors diagnosed her with narcolepsy, an aftereffect of the trauma. She struggled to distinguish wakefulness from the strange visions that plagued her. But nothing prepared her for what came next.

Chapter 1: Fractured Pieces

The house felt empty without Daniel. Michelle moved through the rooms like a ghost herself, touching the furniture, the framed photographs, the tiny details of a life that had once been whole. Every object felt sacred, preserved in time, but also hollow without him.

Then the strange things began happening.

The first time, she thought she was imagining it. She walked into the kitchen one morning to find Daniel’s favorite coffee mug on the counter. It wasn’t just there—it was filled exactly as he would have made it. Three sugars, two splashes of cream.

She froze.

Her breath came in quick, shallow bursts. She reached out with a trembling hand and touched the ceramic. It was warm.

“Did I... did I do this?” she whispered to herself. She had no recollection of making the coffee.

She dumped it in the sink, trying to push away the nagging thought clawing at the back of her mind.

That night, she checked Daniel’s drawer—the one where she had placed his watch, his wedding ring, his last belongings. The watch was gone.

She searched frantically. Through the drawers, through the entire bedroom, the nightstand, the closet. Nothing.

“Lack of sleep,” she muttered. “That’s all this is.”

But then the voicemails started.

Chapter 2: Echoes of the Past

One evening, as she walked into the living room, the red light on the answering machine blinked. It was an old relic, something Daniel had insisted on keeping despite her protests about just using their cell phones.

She pressed play.

“Hey, love. Just letting you know I’ll be home late. Don’t wait up.”

Her breath hitched. His voice. Crisp and casual, like it always had been. Like he wasn’t dead.

Her legs buckled, and she collapsed onto the couch, pressing her hands to her mouth. She checked the timestamp. The message had been left yesterday.

She deleted it. An error, it had to be.

But it happened again.

And again.

Every few nights, the same message, with slightly different wording. Sometimes it was just a simple, “Love you, see you soon.”

She played one for her friend, Angela.

Angela’s face paled. “This is some sick joke.”

“I swear, I’m not making this up.”

Angela reached for her hand. “Michelle... this isn’t healthy. Maybe it’s your condition. Your doctor said hallucinations are possible with narcolepsy.”

Michelle recoiled. “You think I’m imagining this?”

Angela hesitated. “I think grief can do strange things. And you haven’t been sleeping.”

Michelle didn’t argue. What was there to say?

She made an appointment with her doctor, who prescribed sleeping pills to help regulate her sleep cycles.

Chapter 3: The Stranger in the Coffee Shop

For weeks, the house was quiet. No misplaced objects, no strange messages. It was almost as if, by sleeping more, she had sealed whatever crack had let the past bleed into the present.

Then she saw him.

She was at a small café downtown, sipping on chamomile tea, staring blankly at her phone. It was an overcast afternoon, a steady drizzle coating the streets outside in shimmering gray. The bell over the door jingled, and a figure stepped inside.

Her breath stopped in her throat.

Daniel.

Sitting at a table near the window, laughing, his eyes crinkling in that way they always had. A woman sat across from him, stirring her coffee.

Michelle’s heart pounded as she stood, nearly knocking over her cup. She stumbled toward the door, her vision tunneling.

Outside, the streets were a mess of honking cars, sloshing tires, and blurred figures. She tried to cross, barely noticing the screech of brakes and a driver shouting at her as she nearly stepped in front of a cab.

By the time she made it to the other side, Daniel was gone.

She pressed her hands to the café window, her breath fogging up the glass.

No. No, no, no.

Her hands shook as she pulled out her phone and called Angela.

“He’s alive,” she gasped. “Angela, I swear to God, I just saw him.”

Angela’s voice was strained. “Michelle, that’s impossible.”

“I saw him!” she screamed, drawing the attention of pedestrians. She turned, scanning the street wildly.

No sign of him.

Chapter 4: The Cracks in Reality

When she got home, the silence of the house felt like it was pressing down on her. She sat on the couch, her hands gripping her knees.

Had she really seen Daniel? Was she losing her grip on reality?

As exhaustion pulled at her, she drifted into a restless sleep.

And then—

A sound.

Footsteps.

Familiar. Slow. Moving toward the bedroom.

Her heart pounded as she forced herself up. The house was dark, the air thick with something unspoken. She crept toward the bedroom, every step feeling heavier than the last.

She pushed open the door.

Nothing.

Her breath came in ragged gasps. She turned on the light. The room was empty. Just her mind playing tricks again.

She sat on the bed, tears burning her eyes. What’s happening to me?

Then her phone rang.

She snatched it up, hands shaking. “Mom?”

“Honey,” her mother’s voice was soft. “I just wanted to check on you.”

“I’m not okay,” Michelle whispered. “Mom, I saw him. I saw Daniel.”

Her mother hesitated. “Michelle, you know we talked about this before. You and Daniel discussed his wishes in case something happened. You don’t remember?”

A cold wave washed over her. “No. We never had that conversation.”

Her mother sighed. “And what about your trip to the lake house last summer? The one he planned?”

“I—” The words stuck in her throat. That never happened. Did it?

Then she noticed something else—her hands.

They were different. The faint scar from childhood—gone. The calluses from her years of playing piano—missing.

Her reflection in the bedroom mirror flickered for a second, an almost imperceptible glitch, as though the pixels themselves struggled to keep her image in place.

Then the bedroom door creaked open.

Footsteps.

Familiar.

A shadow in the doorway.

“Michelle,” the voice whispered.

Her pulse stilled. Her breath caught in her throat.

She turned—

And saw herself standing there, watching.

The world cracked apart.

Darkness swallowed her whole.

When Michelle awoke, the room looked the same—but wrong. The pictures on the wall were slightly different: her wedding photo with Daniel now showed them standing in front of a place they had never been. The color of the curtains had changed. Her phone no longer recognized her face.

She stumbled to the bathroom, flicked on the light—and gasped.

The reflection stared back with blank eyes. Her face… similar, yet unfamiliar. Sharper jaw. Eyes a shade too light. Skin too smooth. The scar on her collarbone, from the skiing accident years ago, was gone.

A mechanical voice echoed faintly from her phone behind her.

“System error: biometric mismatch. Please verify user identity.”

She backed away from the mirror, from the glass that shimmered like liquid for half a second—as if the world was re-rendering itself in real time.

She opened drawers, desperate for something familiar, something hers. But the clothes weren’t hers. The books on her shelf bore her name as the author—only she’d never written them. The covers depicted surreal scenes: cities made of bone, people with stitched smiles, hollow-eyed children staring up at crimson moons.

She ran outside. The street was there—but so quiet. The sky above was bruised purple, the clouds tinged with red. No birds. No wind. Every person she passed moved too slowly, their limbs jerky, robotic.

They didn’t blink.

Didn’t speak.

Didn’t see her.

Michelle walked in a daze, her breath fogging in the warm air. The newsstand still had papers, but the headlines made her stomach twist:

“Temporal Leak Worsens: Memory Replacements Imminent.”

“Global Consciousness Sync Delayed: Users Report Phantom Lives.”

“Version Control Glitch Detected. Subject 487: M. Beyers—Flagged for Recalibration.”

Subject?

She turned to flee, but froze when she saw the café. The same café where she’d seen Daniel weeks ago. And there he was again—laughing, alive, wrong. Sitting across from someone with her face.

The other Michelle turned, and their eyes met.

The world paused.

A buzzing started low in her ears, rising to a high-pitched shriek. The people froze mid-step. The air shimmered. The other Michelle stood slowly and began to walk toward her.

Michelle backed up, stumbling into a metal pole. A nearby screen flickered to life, displaying the symbol of an eye with fractals radiating outward.

Then, a voice spoke from nowhere and everywhere:

“Welcome, Subject 487. Consciousness sync complete. Version displacement detected. Initiating purge.”

Michelle screamed—but there was no sound. Only light. And then—

Oblivion.

---

Epilogue: Static

In a bright white room with no doors, Michelle sits at a desk.

Her hands type furiously on a keyboard that glows with symbols she doesn’t recognize. On the wall, a screen shows surveillance feeds—dozens of herselves navigating fractured realities.

Some crying.

Some lost.

Some… laughing beside Daniel.

A door finally opens behind her.

A figure enters.

It’s her again—this time dressed in clinical white, clipboard in hand. Her eyes are cold, unblinking.

“Reset failed,” Clipboard Michelle says.

“They always fight it,” Desk Michelle whispers. “They remember too much.”

Clipboard Michelle tilts her head. “Try a deeper extraction next time.”

Desk Michelle nods, tears streaking down her face. “Which one is the real me?”

The clipboard falls to the floor.

No answer.

The light flickers.

The room glitches.

And somewhere, in another version of reality, a woman named Michelle Beyers wakes up again—to the hum of an oxygen machine, and the sterile white glow of hospital lights.

Was it all a dream?

Or was this the dream?

She doesn’t know anymore.

And maybe… she never did.