When Death Isn't the End

THE BREAK IN THE LOOP

CHAPTER 12

The sound of the wall clicking shut was too final.

We stood in the pitch dark, barely breathing. The air was stale, thick with dust and something harder to name—like the memory of rot. I reached out, instinctively, and found Beverly’s hand. Her fingers were ice cold, trembling.

Neither of us spoke.

Somewhere ahead, something groaned—a sound like settling wood, or the shifting of something long dormant. I pulled out my phone and turned on the flashlight. The beam cut through the dark like a knife, illuminating a narrow passage with warped wooden walls, slick with condensation in some places and cracked like dry skin in others.

“This wasn’t on the blueprint,” Beverly whispered.

“Of course it wasn’t,” I said. “This wasn’t built. It was hidden.”

We moved slowly, careful with each step. The floorboards creaked underfoot, but not like old wood. The sound was… wet. Swollen. Like the house had been drinking its own secrets for years and was finally full.

The walls on either side seemed to ripple, the shadows bending in odd directions whenever I moved the light. I tried not to look directly at them for too long.

Beverly let out a low hiss. “Do you hear that?”

I paused. At first, nothing. Then—yes. A soft scraping, like something being dragged across stone. Far off, but not far enough.

We didn’t speak again. Just kept walking.

Eventually, the corridor curved left, then right, then again, like a spiral. My phone buzzed weakly in my hand—no signal, of course—and the battery was already at 38%. I didn’t want to think about what would happen if the light died.

We reached a door.

It was unlike the others I’d seen. This one was metal, rusted in thick, angry veins. No knob. Just a handle like a lever, wrapped in peeling black tape.

Beverly looked at me.

I took a breath, wrapped my hand around the lever, and pulled.

The door screamed open.

What lay beyond was colder.

Colder than outside. Colder than anything made sense to be.

We stepped inside a room that felt too big for the house. The ceiling arched impossibly high, lost in darkness. The walls were lined with shelves—hundreds of them—filled with cassettes.

Some labeled. Some not.

J-2.

J-3.

J-4.

All the way up to J-32.

I stopped breathing.

“They’re all yours,” Beverly said, stunned.

“No,” I whispered. “They’re not.”

She turned to me.

“They’re me,” I clarified. “But they’re not mine. They’re… versions.”

The air shimmered faintly as I stepped closer to the shelf. The cassettes seemed to hum.

On the floor in the center of the room was a chair. Simple. Wooden. But strapped to it were thick leather restraints—arms, ankles, chest.

Something had happened here.

Something had been done here.

Beverly crouched near the shelves, brushing dust from a tape labeled J-12. “If these are the ones who didn’t make it… then how are they recorded?”

I stared at the chair. “Someone’s watching. Someone’s always been watching.”

My phone buzzed again, flickering. 17%.

Then I saw it—another crack. This time in the back wall. Subtle. Thin.

I stepped toward it. This one didn’t need to be pried. It opened at my touch.

Beyond it was a smaller corridor. And at the end of it… another door. Wooden. Ordinary-looking. Familiar.

Too familiar.

I knew that door.

From dreams. From flashes I couldn’t explain. From the first time I’d heard the voice on the tape say “Find the one that wasn’t meant to exist.”

“I think this is it,” I murmured.

Beverly came up beside me. Her face was pale. “The original?”

I nodded.

But before I could reach for the handle, a low sound filled the air.

A whimper.

Behind us.

From the chair.

Slowly, we turned around.

And there—sitting in it now, strapped down, eyes wide with terror—was me.

Not a memory.

Not a recording.

Me.

And she—I—was whispering something.

Over and over.

I moved closer.

The words were hoarse. Raw.

“She’s not the door… She’s the key…”

Then her eyes rolled back, and she slumped.

The restraints stayed fastened. No one had put her in. She just… was.

Beverly’s voice broke. “What the hell is happening?”

“I don’t know,” I breathed. “But we need to go through that door. Now.”

We backed away from the chair. I didn’t look back.

At the door, I put my hand on the knob.

And it turned.

At first, there was only darkness. A deep, underwater silence that felt endless.

Then—sound. A low, rhythmic beep. Steady. Familiar. Followed by the soft hiss of air, like breathing, but not mine.

I blinked.

Light pierced the black, sharp and sterile.

And then—I was there. I was real. I was awake.

White ceiling. The hum of fluorescent bulbs. The antiseptic smell of alcohol and latex.

A hospital.

I tried to sit up, but my body resisted. Every muscle felt submerged in syrup. My throat ached, dry and foreign. I turned my head slowly and saw the IV in my arm. Tubes. Monitors. A heart rate line that jumped with my movement.

There was a nurse at the corner of the room. She glanced over, noticed my eyes open, and immediately pressed a button.

“She’s awake,” she said into the hall. Her voice echoed like I was hearing it through layers of glass.

Within seconds, more footsteps. Another nurse. A doctor. A face I didn’t know.

And then Beverly.

She rushed to my side, eyes red and puffy. Her hair was a mess, and her hands trembled as they reached for mine.

“You’re awake,” she breathed, like it was a prayer. “God, Jasmine, you scared me.”

I opened my mouth, but no sound came out.

“It’s okay,” she said quickly. “Don’t talk. You’ve been unconscious for four days. They said you had some kind of seizure. You collapsed in the hallway.”

The hallway.

The passage.

The door.

I blinked hard, trying to remember the rest—but it slipped through my fingers like smoke.

“What happened?” I rasped.

“You don’t remember?” Beverly asked, voice low.

“I remember going into the wall,” I whispered. “There was a passage. It closed behind us.”

Beverly stiffened.

“Jazz…” She leaned closer. “There was no passage. Not when the paramedics got there. They found you collapsed outside the linen closet. I—I tried to explain but… they thought I was in shock.”

My head spun. I pressed my hand to my forehead.

Had it been real? The tapes, the girl, the static-faced man?

Or had I finally snapped?

The doctor leaned over, shining a light into my eyes. “You’ve had quite an episode, Miss Onuoha. But the scans are clean. No aneurysm, no trauma. Sometimes stress can cause dissociation and fainting spells. The mind protects itself in strange ways.”

I nodded. Not because I believed him. But because it was easier than the truth.

Or whatever the truth was.

—

Recovery was slow, but uneventful. By the end of the week, they discharged me with a folder of prescriptions, a follow-up appointment, and a list of recommended therapists.

Beverly insisted I stay with her a while longer. I didn’t argue.

But nothing strange followed us. No tapes. No doors. No girls in white nightgowns.

The days passed in a haze of healing and quiet.

And eventually, I went back to school.

—

It was surreal, being surrounded by so much noise and life again. The campus buzzed with students, parties, tests, gossip. Everything I’d once known. Everything I’d missed. It was as if nothing had changed—but I had.

Still, I forced myself to slip back into routine. To become the Jasmine they remembered.

I smiled. I flirted. I danced.

I let the nights take me like they used to.

The men came easily.

Different faces. Different games.

Some rich. Some reckless. All temporary.

I didn’t talk about the girl. Or the tapes. Or the passage.

Beverly and I had an unspoken agreement: that part of the story was shelved. For now.

Instead, we drifted back into the rhythm of our old lives—like everything strange had just been a fever dream.

I even went back to work.

The bar was still loud and grimy and filled with people pretending to be okay.

I was one of them now.

And in that numb, fast-moving world, I found a kind of peace.

But some nights, just before sleep, I’d feel it—the faintest pressure behind my eyes. Like a memory trying to push its way through.

I’d close my eyes and whisper to myself:

This is real. This is now. I’m awake.

Even if I wasn’t sure anymore.