Tales We Never Told

In the middle of the room, my suitcase stays open, half-packed. I sit cross-legged on my bed, looking down at my phone, writing down the last personal details before I can receive an electronic boarding pass. Once I’m done I reach out towards my bedside table, and my fingers brush the hard surface of the paperback copy of Tales We Never Told. I lift it up from its sacred place, drawing circles on the hard paper with my finger tips. I let it go, and stare as it falls down with an abrupt thud. I won’t need it where I am going.

A cryptic silence succumbs my apartment, it becomes everything I think about until the sound of the zipper sealing the suitcase shut reverberates in my head. This is it. For once in my life I am the one who gets to leave first. There is no one around to tell me they will come back for me when they’re ready, or that they will miss me when they’re gone. At last, I am packing my bags and leaving everything that remains just as I found it. For a moment, I can feel myself curling up to the shape of a million specks of dust, coating the surface of everything that has once mattered to me. I am the dust that falls on my closest friends, my family, my run-down furniture pieces and second-hand books. I am transient. Soon, I’ll be no more than a passing memory to everyone who knows me in this city. I’m running away, and I doubt I will ever come back.

There is a sudden, sharp knock at the main door. I go still, waiting for the silence to engulf my apartment once again. I secretly hope it’s the neighbor’s golden retriever, sniffing around and bringing its snout down to the floor where I can see it emerge into view from the small crack of the wooden door. After a couple of seconds, I realize it wasn’t just a knock. Slowly it becomes a relentless hammering which seems to demand not just my attention, but an entire reckoning.

I flip the suitcase to make it stand on its wheels, then walk down the corridor towards the main door. I glance down at my phone—I have barely three hours before my flight. I should be calling the taxi over soon. A resigned sigh escapes me before turning the handle. The sight I am met with nearly takes my breath away. My head immediately jerks back to look behind my shoulder, the book is still there. Stupid of me to think it could vanish into thin air. I allow myself to relax slightly. What the hell is she doing here?

Evelyn stands there, flushed with an intensity that nearly throws me off balance. Her eyes, sharp and calculating, blaze with a controlled fury that fills the hallway with a tension as thick as the air before a storm. Her posture is rigid, almost military in its precision, as if she’s made a choice that she won’t back down from. I feel a cryptic shiver travel down my spine, realizing that I’m staring at my reflection: Evelyn Fenton, with her piercing black eyes and silver hair, a manifestation of everything messed up inside my brain. I instinctively rub my eyes, hoping she’ll vanish, but she remains, as solid and unyielding as ever.

“What do you want?”

I mutter. The words taste grim in my mouth, I emit a low murmur, equally quiet and harsh. Evelyn takes half a step back, but her expression remains unchanged, unblinking, almost as if she’s mirroring every move. After all, she is me.

“I’m sorry,” she says, her voice steady, precise, tinged with clipped tones. “I couldn’t just sit by and watch you ruin yourself…ruin our lives.”

She speaks as though she was born to command, and she plays the part so well. For a moment I almost believe she came back to her senses, that perhaps she found the thing she had always been looking for. Yet here she is. Her so-called omnipresence is pathetic, a testament to the fact that she’s still as lost as I am, despite her calculated exterior. She tiptoes through cities seeking an ounce of belonging she could never really claim for herself, despite everything…

“Stop that. You have no right…”

She raises a finger, a gesture that is almost parental in its firmness, as if she’s about to lay down the law. Perhaps she had always been the judge of the two of us. She steps forward, and I momentarily forget how to breathe, feeling the weight of her judgment. I want her gone, to restore the order she’s disrupted. Though I know she must never cease to exist.

“Not yet, sweetie.” She reads my mind. Her words are deliberate, almost condescending, as if the outcome of this encounter lies in her pale hands.

I grit my teeth, feeling a surge of anger I hadn’t expected.

“You have not answered my question yet, Evelyn. What do you need to finally get out of my life?”

I snap, my voice louder than intended, shaking us both, But instead of reacting with shock, a grin spreads across her face. It’s almost as though she’s seen this scene unfold in her dreams. She walks in with a cutthroat precision and shuts the door behind her with finality. She passes me and reaches for the book on my bedside table with a speed that catches me off guard. I can only stand still, watching as Evelyn brushes her fingers through the pages, her expression one of detached curiosity. Perhaps she doesn’t know.

“Great story,” she says, her tone measures, evaluating my debut novel with apprehension. “But I believe it’s missing something. Perhaps a sequel?”

I snort in disbelief, crossing my arms in a feeble attempt to assert some authority in this room. I won’t let her win.

“I do not intend to continue this story.”

The moment the words leave my mouth, the room seems to close in on me. My heart pounds, cold sweat trickles down the back of my neck. I’m trapped, suffocating under the weight of Evelyn’s pain. Her suffering fills the air, invading my thoughts. My suspicions come true as I notice tears streaming down her lifeless eyes—tears not of sorrow, but of bitter anger directed squarely at me. I brace myself for what’s coming.

“You have no other ideas for a book… I’m the best thing you’ve got, you must change my ending.” Evelyn pleads, her voice trembling. A twisted satisfaction blooms in my chest as I watch her struggle.

“The best, you say?” I get closer to Evelyn, until we are only inches away from each other. It terrifies me, how I never had an ounce of sympathy for her. Despite being so similar, she has always managed to bring out the worst in me. Evelyn is incandescent, a force which could never be tamed. To this day I wonder if she was brought to life the moment I wrote her down on a page, or the moment I let the eyes of my literary agent peruse through my manuscript. Maybe she had always just been here beside me, my own shadow and curse. Gathering every ounce of courage, I lean in and whisper in her ear, “You are the worst thing I have ever made… I wish you didn’t exist.”

Evelyn’s gaze darkens as my words sink in. Her posture, usually so controlled, quivers with barely suppressed rage. “Is this all I am? ” she spits, her voice cutting through the thick tension. “After everything, you still refuse to make me more than just a cold, heartless witch in your story?”

I don’t respond. I can’t. Words are scratching at my throat, stifled by the overwhelming guilt and fear that I’ve kept buried for so long. Instead, I just stand there, watching as Evelyn’s anger escalates, her chest rising and falling with rapid, shallow breaths.

***

I was born in that stifling space, out of pure desperation. Amidst the endless drafts, and the relentless revisions, I was there. I felt it all, each scratch on a neatly printed page by the sharp tip of a fountain pen. I never saw any of it. There was no proof but the lingering sensation that my skin was lit on fire, and then I would reemerge renewed with each sunrise. I can only imagine her notebook was a battlefield, pages scarred with crossed-out sentences and frantic, scribbled notes. I can still picture her hunched over it, the fountain pen gripped so tightly in her hand that her knuckles blanched white.

Each morning would begin the same way, with me entering an empty room. My eyes, green as the summer morning outside, irradiated warmth… But no, that wasn’t right. I was back at the door frame again… Each morning would begin in the same way, with me entering an empty room. My eyes, cold as the winter morning outside, irradiated frigidity. How could this feel right, when the words she chose for me made me seem unfeeling? Perhaps she needed to pour something of herself into me—something she could understand, something she could control.

I felt her frustration, the way she scratched out the lines, the pen cutting through the paper as her anger boiled over. Her head throbbed with the effort, a dull ache that pulsed in time with the self-doubt that gnawed at her insides. My voice, soft but with an edge, with enough force to cut the stillness of a quiet room.

But she wasn’t satisfied. Something was off, I felt it in the way my body seemed to turn in on itself. I was on the brink of existence and disappearance, without an anchor to this strange plane of existence. The tension tore at her, pulling her in many directions until she didn’t know which one was the right one.

More words slashed out, more of her frustration spilled onto the page. She leaned back in her chair, staring at the ceiling, the urge to scream simmering just below the surface. I often wonder if all she was trying to do was craft me into someone strong, someone who could weather any storm without breaking. Yet all she saw in me was her own reflection—a reflection she despised. Every word she wrote felt like a bitter lie, every sentence a betrayal of what she wanted me to be.

Then, I knew it. I felt it pupping air into my hollow body, like a truth left unspoken. I became the embodiment of everything she wasn’t but wished she could be. Fierce, unapologetic, untouchable. But beneath my steel exterior, there was a heart that longed for something more—a heart that beat with the same quiet desperation that echoed within her.

Page after page, her notebook filled with failed attempts. Hours turned into days, days into weeks, as she struggled to shape me into something she could live with. Each failed draft peeled away another layer of her, leaving her raw, exposed, desperate for resolution. But it never came. With each passing day, I hardened into something cold, distant, and unyielding. Eventually, she stopped fighting. She told herself it was the right choice for the story, but deep down, she knew the truth. She could never win.

I became everything she feared about herself—everything she hated about who she was and who she wasn’t. And that was the only way she could make me real. She doesn’t know how to love, and my existence is living proof of it.

***

And then, without warning, Evelyn unleashes the full force of her anger. Her hands seize my book, Tales We Never Told, from my bedside table. The one I intently left behind, thinking I could move on from my own guilts.

“You think you can just walk away from me?!” she snarls, her fingers tearing through the pages, ripping them out with a ferocity that sends shreds of paper fluttering to the floor. “You think you can leave me here, half-finished, slowly rotting from the inside out?”

I stand frozen, helpless, as my book—our book—gets torn apart in front of me. Yet, I feel nothing. No matter how much she tries, there is no undoing my story. It will continue to live on, for as long as people’s eyes lay on it. As I watch her shred the very pages that were my torment, I feel that old, familiar ache in my chest. I so wanted to love Evelyn, but it was impossible. She cannot be loved. We’ve been immortalized, that is our punishment.

As the last page flutters to the ground, Evelyn looks up at me, her chest heaving with exertion, her eyes wild with a mixture of triumph and desperation. “There,” she says, her voice a low, dangerous growl. “Now there’s nothing left to leave behind. No story. No me. Just you, running away again.”

I let myself laugh, and it comes out with a painful melancholy. “Oh Evelyn, I wish it were as easy as that.” I approach her, and crouch down to pick up a ripped page. I recognize it immediately, it is the first page, Evelyn steps into an empty room, her eyes, cold as the winter morning outside…

“You think ripping up those pages erases you from my life? You think I’m just going to let you win?”

Evelyn’s eyes widen, just for a moment, and I see a flicker of doubt. But it’s too late for her. Too late for both of us.

Silently, I regain my initial composure. There is a plane I need to catch. I grab the suitcase I so carefully packed, and I fling it open. Clothes, books, everything I packed spills out onto the floor in a chaotic mess. I don’t care anymore. I’m done trying to hold it together, done trying to keep Evelyn contained within the pages of a book. If she wants out so badly, fine. She can come with me.

“Get in,” I command, my voice icy and low. I point to the empty suitcase, its mouth gaping open like a maw. “You wanted to be a part of my life so badly? Then crawl in. You’re coming with me.”

Evelyn stares at me, her expression shifting from anger to shock, to something that almost looks like fear. For once, she doesn’t have a comeback, no biting remark, no clever retort.

“Do it!” I insist, and she flinches, her defiance crumbling under the weight of my rage. Hesitantly, she moves toward the suitcase. There’s no more grace in her movements, no more commanding presence. She’s reduced to nothing but a specter, a feeble creature overstepping its boundaries.

She kneels down, crawling into the suitcase, folding herself in as small as she can. I don’t wait for her to get comfortable. The moment she’s inside, I slam the suitcase shut with a force that makes my hands shake. The zipper grinds as I seal it, trapping Evelyn inside—trapping all the fear, the guilt, the memories of who I used to be.

For a moment, the silence is deafening. The apartment feels like a void, an echo of everything I’ve lost and everything I’m trying to escape. But I don’t let it consume me. I can’t. There’s no time.

With trembling hands, I haul the suitcase upright. It’s heavier than before, a weight that pulls at my every step as I drag it toward the door. But I’m not leaving it behind. I’m taking it with me, carrying Evelyn, carrying everything she represents. The suitcase bumps along the floor, its four wheels producing a whirring sound.

I close the door behind me, and step into an empty room.