Careful What You Write, I Might Be Written

“The two kids ran from being murderers.”

I remember the old man rasping, his voice hollow from a lifetime of smoke. His library carried the same aroma — it reeked of ash, mold, and dusty paper.

I forced myself to nod like it was the first time I’d heard the story.

Like I hadn’t already watched it happen.

He crushed an ash into an overflowing tray. Smoke curled under the low ceiling.

And I let the silence hang between us.

“Any suspects?”

“Case was closed four years ago. The town forgot it. No one knew someone would still be dug up in the dirt,” I said confidently.

He took a long drag and exhaled, rocking in his chair.

A pause. Then he muttered:

“Strange thing, though…”

He looked at the ashtray like it had the answer.

“No one would’ve stolen that book unless they were involved.”

His head moved slightly, left and right, in quiet disapproval.

“Town people move on. But not the girl’s family. Her poor old folk is still seen crying. I mean… losing a kid…”

He trailed off.

“Boy, you knew the girl, didn’t you?”

Well. That’s one way he could’ve put it.

“I did, sir.”

I did more than anyone.

“She was one damn idiotic siren.”

There was nothing to say. Nothing to contradict.

Eve Robinson really was a mad girl.

“May God take care of her in heaven,” he murmured, tracing a shaky cross in the air.

After leaving Old Benson and his library, I went to Eve’s house.

He’d told me her father left town a year ago — couldn’t bear to stay in that house.

I never planned to pay him a visit. He never deserved one.

The day was cold.

I heard soft steps behind the door.

A lock turned.

The door creaked open.

Emi Robinson.

She looked at me with cold eyes and gave a small gesture, telling me to come in.

She offered to take my coat, and I let her. She hung it somewhere out of sight and disappeared for a minute.

I stood frozen.

It all came back — like an unfrozen lake, spilling into the room.

Eve…

I remembered the hidden books she kept under her bed.

The kitchen she used to drag her burned pastries out of, grinning like it was a rebellion.

Her hands, gliding silkily through my hair.

Whispering:

“You’ll regret this.”

It was all still in the air. It was all Eve.

A few moments later, I was sitting across from her sister — Emi

My mouth went dry.

I shifted in my seat under her stare — those cold green eyes that looked too much like hers.

“Oh, Oli,” she said with a sly smile, crossing her legs. “Stop the formalities. We know each other too well for that.”

Her shirt slid slightly off her shoulder as she looked down, sipping something that looked like coffee.

I chuckled and leaned my head on my hand.

“The book. You heard about it?”

“It was Eve’s ghost that came to get it,” she said, laughing with something bitter under her breath.

“She was obsessed. Every night she read it. Every single line.”

She dropped her head. Her hair fell forward like a curtain closing.

Silence returned — thick and unchanged.

Emi was nineteen now.

Still a kid.

Eve was nineteen. And I was twenty-one when it happened. Emi was just fourteen.

A mind that young can only bend so far before it breaks.And five years later, her wounds hadn’t even scabbed over.Still raw. Still bleeding.

We were all too young to understand what we were walking into.

She shifted suddenly.

Leaned forward — her hand gripping the side of the chair — her body tipping toward me.

Her face paled.

Eyes wide.

Lips parted like the words might turn to ash.

She looked like someone standing before death himself — Thanatos in human form.

“She’s alive,” she whispered — like it was a sin.

My heart stopped.

My body vanished into itself.

I scanned the corners of the room, suddenly certain we were being watched. I felt naked.

“Alive?”

“Have you been drinking?”

My eyes didn’t leave her — I studied every flicker, every small muscle, looking for signs of a lie.

“I saw her at the lake,” silence. “A year ago. Still as water. Same red coat. I swear to God, it was her.”

She shook her head hard — like she could knock the memory loose.

“Then I got a call. Five months after she disappeared.”

A tear slid slowly down her cheek, but her voice stayed steady.

“‘I love you,’ she said. ‘But I had to get away.’”

Her breath hitched.

“‘I was stripped of life.’”

She blinked. I saw it — the moment she stepped into that mess again.

“Of life, huh?”

Her voice turned sharp. “And what about me? What about me?”

Her scream bounced through the house like it had been waiting.

I stayed silent.

I didn’t know if this was a bad joke or if Emi had finally lost her grip.

“C’mon, Oli,” she said, with a dry sniff and a bitter laugh. “You knew her better than anyone.”

She leaned back in her chair.

Her spine cracked, and for a second, it sounded like the floor beneath her.

The house shared her grief.

“She never talked about leaving?”

I didn’t answer.

She didn’t talk about leaving.

Her insides were screaming it.

A loud scoff cut through the quiet.

“You think anyone forgot about your affair?”

Her voice sharpened.

She leaned back in her chair now, both hands gripping its arms, eyes steady on mine — a look more threat than question.

“No, Emi. No one forgot,” I said, calmly.

“And I never wished to.”

Forget?

How could I?

The way she moved, like the world belonged to her, like the air bent around her body just to feel her skin.

Her fingertips were always cold. She used to press them to my cheeks and whisper how she felt the heat of my lies.

Her smile made people look. Her eyes made them stay. I’ll admit it — they made me fall to my knees.

But no one else saw what I saw.

They saw Eve the way she wanted to be seen — untouchable, wild, free.

I saw what was underneath.

Behind that door. Beneath all that noise.

A poor little lamb, being crushed by her own house.

Her mother died.

Her father called his control love.

He locked her in the same rooms she used to dance through.

She was breaking.

And I was the only one who saw it happening.

She needed help.

She needed me.

She wouldn’t have made it without me.

“Haven’t you thought…” I started, voice low, “she might’ve written the book herself?”

It matched too perfectly. The book had her fate exactly written.

A siren, murdered by two lovers.

In reality — a girl who vanished.

Two boys who ran.

Emi gave me one last look — something between hope and despair, her eyes screaming hatred, regret.

A thousand emotions flickered there, none of them lasting long enough to name.

That’s how I knew it was time to leave.

I left her in that mourning house and stepped toward the lake.

We used to call it the haunted lake.

The light was mesmerizing.

The river whispered quietly, trickling over itself.

Leaves — orange, brown — were scattered across the ground, painting the town one last time before winter washed it all away.

Before university, we used to spend hours here — swimming, camping, daring each other with ghost stories.

I took in the scent of wet autumn earth and stepped onto the bridge —

the wood soft beneath my feet, worn down by continuous damp and cold weather.

I crossed it slowly, letting the wind lead me toward the woods.

Then, I saw…

An enchanting phantom.

A wine-dark coat.

Auburn hair swaying like smoke in the wind.

There she sat — still as the cemetery in front of her.

I didn’t speak. Just walked closer, and stood beside her like I had a hundred times before.

For a moment, we both looked forward. Only the trees spoke.

I glanced at the stone in front of us.

The name carved into it was soft from time and rain, but I could still read it:

Mary Robinson.

Her mother.

“Always following me,” she said.

Her voice was hollow, but steady — as if spoken from somewhere else.

The girl beside me didn’t move. Still as a statue in trance.

“You come this day every year,” I pointed out, not sure why — only that I had to say something.

It was her mother’s four-year anniversary. The only hours she ever returned to town.

“I was the one who took it,” she said.

I already knew. And for some reason, it thrilled me.

“But why?”

Part of me knew the answer — but hearing and imagining are not the same.

“Oliver… why?”

A hint of sarcasm in her question.

She gave a quiet, bitter laugh — not joy, not pain. Just tired irony.

“You used my life in your little story,” she said.

“You made me a character. You could do anything you wanted with me. You put me on display for anyone to read.”

I wrote it when the grief was fresh. But it mirrored too much.

Eve as the siren. Blake and Miles as the fools who drowned her.

We were still whispering about escape when I wrote it.

I told myself it was fiction.

She believed me.

The wind rose. The tall grass whispered softly against itself — the only thing still speaking.

She didn’t turn. Her hair fell over the side of her face, covering it completely.

I couldn’t tell what expression she wore.

“They didn’t deserve it,” she went on.

“Blake and Miles — both of them were accused of killing me because of that book.

You wrote it, and the town believed it. That was enough.”

“Little Eve,” I muttered. “Playing innocent now.”

She didn’t react.

She despised the town as much as it despised her.

No one had any sympathy — not for a girl born into poverty, surrounded by family scandals and whispered shame.

“They did deserve it. I loathe them,” I said.

“They haunted you like stray dogs. You deserved better.”

And it was true.

Blake and Miles had both dated her — but they never really knew her.

They were hungry for her in the wrong ways.

Boys from broken homes, chasing something to claim.

It was perfect.

Perfect to frame for murder.

From all the silence, a faint whisper is heard:

“I will turn myself in.”

Eve did not intend for me to catch it — but I did, and swallowed it.

She stood up, as the wind tossed strands of auburn hair across her face.

Her cold green eyes locked with mine like the end of a sentence.

Not angry, just final. Like she already knew how this story would end.

“You never wrote an ending,” she said. Her voice was nearly lost in the wind.

“You were the ending all along,” I replied.

But only the grass heard it.

She smiled — a pitying, ironic smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

“Careful with your words on paper, Oliver…”

She stepped back into the breeze.

“You forget — I might be the one written.”

Then she turned.

Walked away toward her car.

The wind moved with her, like it was clearing a path.

And I stayed there, alone, with only one thought left in my mind:

There couldn’t have been a better ending.

Thank you, my Eve.

Delete

That memory carved itself into me. Every second of it — etched, vivid, alive.

I open my eyes.

Benson sits across from me, a cigarette between his fingers, his lawyer beside him.

They both watch in silence.

“Yes…” I say simply. “I did it. Right before she got into her car.”

I pause.

I try to move, but the tight pull of the cuffs reminds me where I am.

“She was my muse. It wouldn’t have been such an extravagant ending…

if I hadn’t killed her.”

The lawyer speaks this time.

“Witnesses told us you confessed your love to her — before her disappearance five years ago. Is that true?”

I nod.

“I did. God knows I did.”

A breath. A silence.

“But I loved the story more.”