Chapter 2: My Body Went Without Me
1164 Words
He was about to say my name.
I lay in the dark with that thought in me, staring at the ceiling and waiting for it to make sense.
It didn’t.
Twelve years of that forest, that sky, that face watching me from the edge of the trees. He never spoke.
And last night, the one night he finally did, my alarm decided that was the perfect time to go off
I pressed my hand to my chest.
The empty feeling was still there. My heartbeat felt different this morning, less like something was missing, more like something was waiting.
I told myself it was just a dream. Dreams aren’t real. I needed to get up and go to work.
So I got up. I got dressed. I went to work.
The mirror was the first thing I saw when I walked through the door.
I hadn’t moved it. Mr. Sebastian hadn’t moved it. It stood where the delivery men left it yesterday, tall and dark against the far wall, unbothered by me.
I hung my coat up.
I picked up the clipboard.
I turned my back to it and started working.
“You’ve been holding that clipboard for an hour,” Mr. Sebastian said from his office doorway.
“Good morning, Mr. Sebastian.”
“You’re staring at the wall again.”
“I think while I stare at walls.”
He made that sound that wasn’t quite a word and went back to his phone. I looked down. One item written on the clipboard. One, in an hour.
I wrote three more things that didn’t need writing and moved to the other side of the shop.
The mirror stayed behind me the whole time.
I could feel it. Not like a sound or a weight. More like knowing someone was watching you from across the room before you turned around.
I tried to ignore it.
I catalogued silverware. I answered emails. I served two customers who left without buying anything.
At lunch I sat with my back to it, eating a sandwich I didn’t taste, rereading the same page four times without understanding a word.
At two, a customer spent fifteen minutes looking at the ceramic owls and left without buying anything.
At three, Mr. Sebastian put on his coat.
“Lock up at five,” he said.
“Same as always, sir.”
He left.
The shop went quiet.
I lasted four minutes before I walked over.
Up close, the mirror was worse.
Not frightening. Just heavier, like standing near something that had been waiting a long time and had learned patience better than I ever had.
The frame twisted in a pattern my eyes couldn’t follow. The glass bent the light in ways it shouldn’t bend.
My reflection looked back at me.
Brown eyes. Dark hair falling out of its knot. The shadows I’d carried since I was seven sat under my eyes like they owned the place.
I raised my hand slowly.
Stopped.
Put it back down.
“No,” I said quietly.
I went back to the counter.
I finished the inventory.
I locked up at five and walked home.
I made dinner. I watched something on my phone. I checked my messages. Ethan asked if we were still on for Thursday. I replied yes and left it at that.
At ten I went to bed.
I closed my eyes and waited for the forest.
It didn’t come.
The dream was gone, like someone had switched it off. The sleep that replaced it was flat, dark, and wrong in a way I couldn’t name. Not restful. Not peaceful. More like being held underwater.
I don’t know what time it was when it started.
Something pulled me out of the dark.
Not a sound. Not a light. A pull, deep in my chest, where the empty feeling lived, like someone had reached inside and was walking away with it.
My eyes opened.
My bedroom ceiling. Dark. The c***k ran toward the window. Everything as it should be.
I closed my eyes again.
The pull came back harder.
My legs moved.
I didn’t tell them to.
I was sitting up before I knew it, standing before I decided to stand. My body walked to the door with the calm purpose of someone following directions I hadn’t been given out loud.
“Oh, this is a different dream,” I thought.
My hand opened the front door.
Cold night air hit me. Salt from the sea. November against my bare arms and bare feet. A small part of me screamed that this was wrong, that I needed to go back inside, that I was in pyjamas and it was the middle of the night.
My feet kept walking.
Past the bakery. Past the library where Ethan’s window was dark. The wind pushed at me from one side, and something else pushed from the other, something with no name, but more force than the wind.
I tried to stop at the corner.
My body turned left.
I tried to turn around.
My legs carried me forward.
It wasn’t violent. That was the worst part. It was gentle. Inevitable. Like a river moving where it was always going to go.
The antique shop appeared ahead of me.
“No,” I thought. “Go back. Go home.”
My hand found the spare key in my pyjama pocket.
I didn’t remember taking it. Mr. Sebastian had mentioned it once, by the ceramic frog at the back door. Some part of me had remembered.
The lock turned.
The door opened.
The shop was dark and cold. The clocks ticked unevenly. The owls watched as I walked past without stopping.
The mirror was at the far wall.
The pull in my chest became something final when I saw it.
My hands pressed flat against the glass.
Cold rushed through me, up my arms, across my chest, down to my feet. The screaming part of me went quiet.
Because the glass was soft.
It gave way like still water. The mirror pulled me forward, and I leaned in.
The last thing I saw was my reflection, wide-eyed, with an expression that looked less like fear and more like recognition.
Then the glass took me.
Cold. Dark. A sound like wind through something enormous. Like chiming. Like leaves. Like something almost saying my name.
Then warmth.
A gold light hit my face.
My bare feet touched the ground.
Soft. Dark. Smelling rain and something older than rain.
I opened my eyes.
The trees were gold, leaves glowing and chiming without wind.
The sky above was purple.
Exactly like the dream.
The ground was real. The air was real. The sound was real.
I was here.
I was actually here.
I was so happy.
“I hope the alarm doesn’t go off. Th
is is a beautiful dream,” I said to myself, smiling.
But I didn’t know yet.
This wasn’t a dream.
And something was about to happen.
- Writer
