The Mirage Hotel

Act I - The Welcome

The Mirage Hotel was never built to be found.

No map showed it. No phone signal worked inside.

But once you stepped through the revolving doors, the world outside simply forgot you.

I checked into the Mirage Hotel on a Tuesday. By Thursday, I’d forgotten my own name.

The bellhop wore a velvet uniform stitched with threads too fine for mortal eyes to see. His gloved hand hovered, and somehow the room key was already pressed against my palm — cold, weightless. I stumbled through a lobby carved from impossible dreams: glass floors suspended over flowing rivers, chandeliers like frozen galaxies, marble columns veined with gold that pulsed faintly, almost as if breathing.

I remember thinking:

This is luxury. This is escape. This is what I deserve.

Even as the shadows curled strangely at the corners of my vision.

Even as the grand clock above the concierge desk ticked backward, second by second.

The Mirage never takes prisoners.

It doesn’t need to.

You give yourself willingly.

The bellhop said nothing as he led us — me and Adam — to the elevators.

He didn’t need to. The Mirage had a way of arranging things without words.

I remember clinging to Adam’s arm, laughing about how we must have won the cosmic lottery.

“Best honeymoon ever,” I said, and meant it.

The elevator was panelled in a dark wood that seemed to hum against my back. As we ascended, the windows revealed nothing but mist swirling outside, thick and endless. No other buildings. No horizon. No sun.

I didn’t ask questions. Not then.

On the fifteenth floor, the doors slid open without a sound. A hallway stretched out before us — long, elegant, unsettling in its sameness. Every door identical: silver numbers, blood-red carpets, sconces that flickered with a cold flame.

Room 1515.

Our room.

Inside: silk sheets, rose petals, a view of nothing but mist pressing against the glass like a second skin.

The Mirage left no detail untouched. It was everything they promised. Luxury. Seclusion. Escape.

I kissed Adam hard by the window, our laughter echoing too loud in the emptiness.

He tasted like champagne and a future I didn’t yet know how to fear.

By Thursday morning, he was gone.

Not missing.

Not stolen.

Gone — as if he had never existed at all.

⸻

ACT II: The Cracks in the Dream

The Mirage had ways of working into you.

Small things, at first. Things easy to dismiss.

I remember sitting at the breakfast table with Adam — croissants, coffee, sun pouring in from nowhere — when he asked me about my favourite book. I smiled, opened my mouth, and… nothing. Not a blank, but a hollow, as if the thought had been scraped clean out of me.

I laughed it off. “Jet lag.” I said. But the look Adam gave me — concerned, confused — lingered longer than the conversation.

Later, in the lobby, I caught him staring at one of the mirrors.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

He didn’t answer immediately. His reflection hadn’t either.

It lagged — just a breath behind.

A sliver of a second.

Enough to notice. Enough to doubt.

Adam shook his head and smiled, like he didn’t want to say what we were both thinking.

By dinner, it was the whispers.

It wasn’t the usual hotel hum. It was different — almost like our own voices echoing from down the hallways, repeating things we’d said hours earlier. Twisted. Warped.

Adam tried to track it once, leaving me in the restaurant while he followed the sound.

He came back pale, hands shoved deep into his pockets, mouth pressed in a tight line.

When I asked what he’d heard, he just said, “Nothing, love. It’s nothing.”

But that night, he didn’t kiss me goodnight like he usually did.

That was Wednesday.

By Thursday, the room was too quiet. Too still.

I reached across the bed in the early morning haze — and found only cold sheets.

No Adam.

No luggage.

No imprint in the pillow where his head had been.

Only the whisper of his voice still rattling inside my head, asking:

“What’s your favourite book, again?”

⸻

I stumbled through the hotel that day, searching.

Room after room, hall after hall — but every door led back to the same place: the lobby, eerily pristine, untouched.

The other guests didn’t notice me.

They were too busy. Drunk on the glamour of the Mirage. Sipping drinks that glittered like liquefied stars.

Trying on silk suits and gowns that shimmered with colours no earthly dye could replicate.

Laughing without humour. Smiling without soul.

Their eyes — when I caught glimpses of them — were blank. Shining. Forgetful.

The Mirage had devoured them whole.

I thought I saw Adam once, disappearing into the mist beyond the ballroom doors.

I ran after him — heart in my throat — but when I burst inside, there was nothing but empty tables and chandeliers spinning slowly, without sound.

I caught my reflection in a cracked mirror by the wall.

For a terrible moment, I didn’t recognise myself.

Then I saw it:

The necklace around my throat — Adam’s wedding band strung on a chain.

And suddenly, I remembered.

The Mirage hadn’t taken everything.

Not yet.

And if I remembered… maybe he did, too.

Somewhere.

Somehow.

⸻

ACT III: The Price of Memory

The ballroom was a graveyard of memories.

Through the mist, I saw them — the trapped ones.

Women with diamond tears carved into their faces.

Men with gold crowns fused to their skulls.

Children clutching broken toys made of light.

They hadn’t been guests.

They had been offerings.

The Mirage didn’t offer luxury.

It demanded loyalty.

It feasted on memory, fed on identity, until all that remained were glittering shells — beautiful, empty, obedient.

At the centre of the room, under a ceiling sagging with rotted silk, a throne stood. Not golden. Not gleaming.

A twisted tangle of bone and brass and blood.

And slumped at its base—

Adam.

I gasped, the air burning my throat.

He looked up, and for a second — a terrible, beautiful second — he smiled.

“Love,” he whispered. His voice was raw. Shredded.

I rushed forward — but the Mirage surged up around him, mist solidifying into chains that bound his wrists, his throat, his mind.

“You have to go.” he choked out, fighting the pull. “You still remember.”

“I can get you out!” I cried, fingers clawing at the chains that weren’t chains — they were memories, knotted and strangled.

“No,” Adam said softly.

His wedding band, still hanging from my neck, pulsed against my heart.

“You were stronger,” he said. “You always were.”

The Mirage took a tighter grip around him, unseen but suffocating.

Stay. Stay. Stay.

Forget. Forget. Forget.

“Take me instead!” I shouted into the choking mist. “Let him go!”

Adam shook his head fiercely. “No! You’ll lose yourself. You’ll lose everything.”

Tears blurred my vision.

I wanted to.

God, I wanted to.

Because how could I walk away from him? How could I leave him alone in this…this hell?

“You promised,” he said, voice cracking. “You said you’d never forget.”

The Mirage coiled around me, slick and sweet — offering peace, reunion, a life without grief.

All I had to do was stay.

All I had to do was let go.

But Adam was right.

The Mirage could give me a thousand yesterdays — but no tomorrows.

And somewhere, beyond these walls, was a life he wanted me to live.

A life he couldn’t have anymore.

With shaking hands, I lifted the wedding ring around my neck and kissed it.

I pressed it to Adam’s lips, too — a blessing, a promise.

“I love you.” I said.

The words ripped something vital out of me.

I think it hurt worse than dying.

Adam smiled through the chains.

Then I turned.

And I walked away.

The mist screamed, clawing at my back, trying to pull me under.

But step by brutal step, I made it to the ballroom doors.

When I looked back one last time, the throne was empty.

Adam — gone.

Freed?

Destroyed?

I would never know.

The doors creaked open, and the sunlight — real sunlight — seared across my skin.

It hurt.

It was beautiful.

And it was mine.

I stepped out into the world.

I stepped out with a wound that would never heal.

I stepped out remembering.

Because forgetting was easy.

Remembering was a choice.

And I chose him.

Always.