He awoke with a shiver that wasn't his.
Air dragged into his lungs like it had forgotten how. The breath caught, shallow and sharp, before stuttering free in a wheeze. For a moment, he simply layed there, cold seeping into his bones, listening to the soft rasp of his own breathing like it belonged to someone else.
The ceiling above him sagged and cracked, painted with long, black mold veins that spread like something still alive. A bulb dangled crooked from the ceiling, swinging gently on a cord, casting fractured light that pulsed across the room like a dying heartbeat.
He blinked. Once. Then again.
Where was he?
No answer came.
More importantly—who was he?
A tremor ran through his limbs. Everything felt off. His skin was tight over bones that jutted too sharply. His stomach churned with hunger, the kind that gnawed like teeth from within. His hands were thin, pale, fingers bruised and bitten raw. There were scabs on his arms, both old and new. His legs ached like they hadn't walked in days.
He tried sitting up. The mattress beneath him groaned like a wounded animal, the rusted springs giving a final protest. His head swam. A pounding throb began behind his eyes, slow and relentless.
He looked down.
There, on the floor, just beside the foot of the bed, lay a crumpled sheet of paper.
He stared at it for a long time.
Something about it felt wrong. Important.
He reached down, picked it up with shaking hands, and unfolded it carefully.
I can do nothing.
I tried. I waited. Nothing changed.I screamed and no one heard me.I became what they said I was. I don't want to be me anymore.Sorry.
He didn't move.
The paper trembled between his fingers.
There was no name signed at the bottom. But there didn't need to be. Whoever had written it had meant for it to be the last thing they ever said. There was no drama in the way the words bled into one another. Only resignation. Exhaustion. Silence made permanent.
He swallowed.
A bitter, metallic taste sat on his tongue—faint, but there. An echo of something swallowed. A final decision.
And yet… he was here.
Breathing.
Alive.
And the person who'd written this note?
Gone.
He pressed the paper flat in his lap. His hands were unfamiliar. Smaller than they should be. Narrow and battered. He didn't recognize the veins, or the half-healed cigarette burns that marked one wrist. A faint bruise ringed his left arm, where something like rope had once bitten too deep.
This body wasn't his. And yet… it was.
He closed his eyes. Tried to remember.
Not from this life. The one before.
But everything was hazy. Distant. Like memories stored underwater. There was the faint outline of a name he couldn't recall. A voice. A promise. And then... a fall.
And now he was here.
Not reborn into a child.
But into the shell of someone.
The mattress creaked again as he shifted his weight and stood. His knees buckled, and he reached out to catch himself against a wall smeared with handprints—some greasy, some red.
He turned toward the window.
Grime fogged the glass. He rubbed a spot clear with the heel of his palm. Outside, a narrow alley stretched into mist. Buildings leaned into each other like drunkards in mourning. Trash lay in heaps. A flickering street-lantern buzzed above a cracked cobblestone path. No sun. No birds. No motion.
Only a thick silence, broken now and then by something scurrying just out of sight.
He looked down.
Three floors. Maybe four.
He touched the window latch. It was rusted shut.
Of course it was.
He turned away and scanned the room. One rickety dresser. Its top drawer broken. A cracked mirror above it, spiderwebbed from a fist. A crooked chair in the corner, legs uneven. A metal bucket beside the bed that reeked of old vomit.
And nothing else.
No pictures. No clothes. No warmth.
Just absence.
And the note.
"I can do nothing."
He stared at it again, then folded it slowly, carefully, with fingers that shook for reasons deeper than cold. He slipped it into the pocket of his torn pants, the gesture feeling heavier than it should.
Then came the sound.
A distant creak—floorboards groaning under weight. A door slamming two rooms over. Voices murmuring, unintelligible. Then a single bootstep outside his own door.
He froze.
The knob rattled, once. Then stopped.
A voice muttered on the other side, gravelly and bored.
"…still breathing?"
Silence. Then retreating footsteps.
No knock. No greeting. No concern.
Whoever had lived here was not missed.
He let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
It seemed the world expected this body to stay dead.
He walked to the mirror. Looked at the face reflected back at him.
Pale. Hollow-cheeked. Lips dry and cracked. One eye bloodshot. Hair patchy. A scar along the jaw. Faint, but recent.
And something else.
A look.
Not of fear. Not yet.
But of being watched. Judged.
This boy had been hated.
There was no question of it. Not from what little remained. Not from the state of the room, or the note, or the silence on the other side of the door.
He was gone now.
But he—the soul now inhabiting him—was not.
And if this life had been cast aside like trash...
Then maybe it could be picked back up and made into something else.
He looked back at the window. Fog. Distance. A world beyond this room that did not care whether he lived or died.
That was fine.
He'd come to understand it soon enough.
He ran his fingers over the note in his pocket one last time and whispered—
"I'm not him."
Then he turned back toward the door.
But he didn't open it. Not yet.
Not until he was ready to face whatever the world had waiting for this cursed name.