Darkness.
Not the endless kind.
But the heavy, quiet kind that sits in
corners and watches you breathe.
I woke up lying on somthing soft. Cold.
Familiar.
The texture of the floor--it felt like my
bedroom carped.
For a moment... I believed I was back.
The air smelled like dust and stillnes.
No voices. No pulsing mirrors. No
shadows whispering choises into my
bones.
Just me. And silence.
I sat up.
The room was... mine. But not.
Same layout. Same bed. Same desk.
But everything was slightly wrong.
The clock on the wall had no hands.
My mirror was fogget from the inside.
And the window showed nothing.
Just gray -- like the sky had been erased.
I stood slowly.
On my desk sat a single object: a book.
It wasn't there before.
Its cover was blank,
Its pages, empty -- except the first one.
One sentence was written in shaky ink:
"You chose. Now you must remeber
why".
My hands trembled.
A chil swept through the room, though no
wind came.
And then--behind me--
the mirror hissed.
I turned.
Something was watching me from the
other side.
It didn't move.
But I knew it saw me.
And it remembered.
I took a step toward the mirror.
It didn't reflect me.
Instead, it showed a hallway--narrow,
dark, lined with flickering lights.
And at the end of that hallway...
a door.
My old front door.
I hadn't lived in that house since I was
eight.
Since the night I stopped dreaming.
Since the fire.
My chest tightened.
"No," I whispered.
The book on my desk flipped a page by
Itself.
More words appeared, scrawled in the
same frantic ink:
"If you don't remember, it will."
A low creaking sound filled the room --
the sound of something heavy shifting...
inside the walls.
I ran to the door and pulled it open.
But the hallway from the mirror was waiting for me.
Not my apartment hallway.
The one from the mirror.
Old. Peeling wallpaper. Familiar stains on the carpet that shouldn't be there
anymore.
Something was guiding me back.
I stepped inside.
The air changed instantly.
Thicker. Colder.
It smelled like wet wood, burnt plastic... and something else.
Memory.
A child's laugh echoed from deep within the hallway - soft, broken.
I froze.
It was my voice.
But I wasn't laughing.
Not really.
I moved forward, slowly, my fingers brushing the walls for balance.
Every step I took made the lights above flicker more violently, as if the hallway itself didn't want me there. Or maybe… it was waking up.
The laugh came again.
Shorter this time. Sharper.
Like it had been cut off.
I reached the end.
The door from the mirror stood in front of me — the one from my childhood home.
Its surface was scorched black, as if it had been pulled from the fire and left to rot.
I raised my hand to touch it—
And it opened on its own.
The smell hit me first. Smoke. Ash. Plastic melting. And underneath it all—
the scent of something older. Something rotting.
Inside was a child's bedroom.
My old bedroom.
But it wasn't right. The walls were covered in crayon drawings — ones I never made.
Figures. Faces. Red circles where the eyes should be.
Words scratched over the wallpaper:
"She sees me."
"I didn't choose."
"It made me."
In the corner, a small figure sat on the floor, rocking slowly.
It wore my favorite dress.
Its head hung low.
Its fingers were covered in soot.
And then, it looked up.
It had my face.
But the eyes—
Empty. White. Flickering.
And it smiled.
"You left me here."
Her voice was mine, but… hollow.
Like it echoed through an empty shell.
I wanted to speak, but my mouth was dry.
No words came out.
She stood.
Her feet were bare. Burned. Bleeding.
"Do you remember what you promised?"
She took a step toward me.
"You said we'd never forget. You said we'd never leave each other."
Another step.
The floor beneath her sizzled with every movement.
"But you did leave. You chose to forget."
My back hit the wall.
She stopped inches from me, her face pale and twitching.
The smile had disappeared.
"I stayed behind.
I took the fear.
I took the fire."
Tears welled in my eyes — not from guilt. Not yet.
From something deeper:
Recognition.
"I didn't know," I whispered. "I didn't understand."
She tilted her head. "You didn't want to."
The lights in the room blew out, one by one.
We stood in near darkness.
And then, she pressed something cold into my hand.
It was a matchstick.
One word carved into the wood:
"Again."
I stared at the matchstick in my palm.
It was warm.
Almost… pulsing.
As if something inside it still burned.
The girl—the other me—stepped back into the shadows, her eyes never leaving mine.
The room began to breathe again.
Slow. Heavy.
Like lungs filled with smoke.
I looked down.
The drawings on the walls had changed.
Now they were moving.
The crayon lines twisted, squirmed — forming new shapes. Flames. Screaming mouths.
And always, eyes.
Watching. Judging. Waiting.
The air thickened, growing hotter.
The wallpaper curled, blackened.
And suddenly—
fire.
The first spark came from the corners.
Then the bed ignited. Then the floor.
The room was catching again. Just like before.
I turned to run.
But the door was gone.
Only the mirror remained.
And in it — not my reflection.
A woman.
Tall. Covered in ash. Her eyes glowing dimly red, like embers barely alive.
She lifted a finger and pointed… to the matchstick in my hand.
And whispered:
"This time… burn it right."
My hands shook.
The flames crawled closer. The girl
sreamed – a high, broken sound.
I struck the match.
Light.
Heat.
Clarity.
And everything exploded--
Darkness.
But this darkness wasn't absence.
It was full.
Heavy with breath.
Thick with memory.
Alive.
I floated inside it — weightless, voiceless — suspended in something older than thought.
Then came the heartbeat.
Not mine.
Louder.
Like the pulse of the place itself.
BOOM.
The sound rippled through me.
The darkness blinked.
And suddenly—
I was standing again.
Not in the burning room.
Not in the hallway.
But somewhere else.
A void made of shifting shadows and cold light, where everything felt… reversed.
And in front of me:
a door.
Wooden. Familiar.
My childhood bedroom door — untouched by fire.
Carved into it, glowing faintly, were four words:
"Now, the choice begins."