Chapter Five - The Memory That Wasn't Hers
389 Words
The words on the notepad stared back at her like an accusation.
You were not alone the night your father left. Someone else was listening.
Her chest tightened. That night was carved into her silence: the slammed door, the half-packed suitcase, her mother’s hands trembling but refusing to tremble in front of her. No one else had been there. She was sure of it. She had built her entire solitude on being sure of it.
But the listeners didn’t lie. They couldn’t.
The knock came at midnight. Soft, deliberate. Nyxelle froze. The crooked-smile stranger stood on the other side, but she knew before opening. He leaned against the frame like he had been waiting hours.
“I warned you,” he said simply. “They’ve started peeling you open.”
She clutched the notepad to her chest. He noticed, eyes narrowing. “Ah. They’ve shown you something.” His voice held curiosity, but also hunger.
Nyxelle scribbled: Who else was there that night?
The stranger’s grin faltered. Just a flicker, gone in an instant. “That’s not the question you should be asking.”
He stepped closer, lowering his voice. “You should ask why they let you remember the door but not the window.”
Nyxelle’s blood ran cold. There had been no window open that night—she was sure—wasn’t she?
The stranger straightened, his smile sliding back into place. “You see, silence isn’t just the absence of sound. It’s where things hide. And the listeners don’t feed on your quiet—they feed on what you’ve buried there.”
From somewhere deep in the walls, a hum began. Not electric. Not mechanical. A resonance, like a throat trying to remember how to sing.
The stranger tipped his head toward the sound. “They’re restless. You’ve touched the memory they’ve been saving.” His eyes glittered. “And when they’re restless, they start collecting.”
Collecting. The word felt sharp in her bones.
Nyxelle’s notepad slipped in her hand. She managed to scrawl one last question before the hum in the walls became a vibration in the floor, the air, her teeth.
Who are you to them?
The crooked-smile stranger looked at her, and for the first time his grin vanished completely.
“I’m what’s left,” he whispered, “after they’re done.”
- Writer
