FADED DAWN

Empty Room

There was a room no one entered.

It wasn’t locked, but it stayed shut, heavy with silence. The air inside it was always colder, like it had refused to move on with time. The windows were dusted, the curtains clean—but still, it felt forgotten.

I made it my home.

Not by choice, at first. It began with a fight—one I didn’t cause, but wore like a second skin.

Ivie had never been a friend but somehow she shadowed each other I was the awkwardly favoured one by my old principal, maybe she saw something I didn't know I had but she offered a hand, one, I took and found a comfort my soul was familiar with, almost a haven long lost.

Ivie hated me, I knew but the energy from her hate seemed to make me glow.

it was the venom that dripped from her voice when she accused me of being jealous, maybe I was, maybe I just wanted to protect myself.

the events were a blur. we were both assigned to burn dirt gathered close to a moat. it should be easy, but Ivie felt it was a good time to get rid of me, she asked we jumped over the moat whilst the fire burn, I hesitated knowing something was going to happen

step aside my spirit screamed and my body obeyed before my mind could process the why, Ivie narrowly missed me and fell face down. wild rage came over me and I kicked her over and over and over. her spirit stood aloof, seeking mine for atonement

I took full responsibility for everything, I refused to say what happened and welcomed the chaos that followed

My mother had said my eyes were too sharp, my voice too quiet. That my silence was dangerous. She said I was “too still,” like a bad omen.

“You're becoming something I can't control,” she said.

She would hit me to feel better after a hard day and unlike others, I never cried just heavy grunts, lips never opening to scream or wail, just flesh absorbing her energy, draining her with every blow leaving her with nightmares that made her wake up screaming, terrified

She was right.

I moved into that room with a single mat, a thin wrapper, and a cup. I didn't ask for help. I didn’t cry. I just folded myself into the silence like it was a womb.

Some nights, I thought I could hear the old man pacing outside—his whispers like smoke beneath the door. But he never came. He had failed. He had been stripped.

And still, I felt watched. Not by him.

By something else.

The spirit in me no longer slept. It began humming again. Not with words, but with presence. It moved through the corners of that room like wind that knew my name. I started to listen. Truly listen.

And I heard things.

Not voices—not yet—but vibrations. Memories that were not mine. Warnings that came like dreams. Faces I didn’t know crying out for me. Sometimes I'd wake up with salt on my lips, tasting someone else’s grief.

I wasn’t scared.

I should’ve been.

But when your life has been nothing but hands reaching to break you, the unknown becomes sanctuary. At least the spirits didn’t lie. They didn’t flatter. They didn’t ask for my body or call it a curse.

They just waited.

Waited for me to stop pretending I was normal.

---

The first real memory that surfaced in that room was sharp as a slap.

I was nine.

There was a woman—a distant aunt, someone I barely knew. She had called me pretty, then left the room with me alone and told me to dance. She said she wanted to teach me how to “carry myself.”

But what she taught me was shame.

She lifted my wrapper and said I must always keep clean down there “in case a man notices.” She used the corner of her scarf to wipe me, rough and rushed. Her face didn’t change, but something in her eyes made my spirit retreat.

That was the day I stopped sitting on anyone’s lap.

I never told my mother.

I never told anyone.

That memory lay like stone beneath my ribs, until the spirit in me stirred it awake. And I saw it clearly—how innocence had been chipped away in small, forgettable moments. No blood. No scream. Just quiet exits of safety.

Each one a tiny theft.

---

In the room, I began to map those thefts.

The girl who smiled too wide when I failed.

The uncle who held me too long in his hug.

The teacher who called me “wild” for asking too many questions.

The boy who joked about how I’d look “bent over.”

All of them wrote stories on my skin.

None of them asked if I had a pen.

---

One night, I dreamt of fire.

It wasn’t violent. It was controlled. A slow burn, like someone lighting strands of hair in a circle around me. I stood at the center, eyes open. The flames didn’t touch me. They bowed.

And in the fire, I saw faces—each one I had forgotten. Faces of those who had wounded me with smiles, who had turned me into a reflection of their hunger.

They burned.

Not with agony—but with revelation. As if their truths were finally exposed. Their masks melting.

And at the center of the circle, my body shimmered. I wasn’t dressed. I wasn’t naked. I was essence. Pure. Elemental. Watching. Remembering.

I woke up with heat in my palms. I couldn't move them for hours.

---

People started to avoid me—not out of hate, but confusion.

I looked the same. I acted the same.

But something in my presence made them uneasy. Like standing in a room that remembers every word ever said in anger.

I didn’t shout. I didn’t accuse.

But I knew.

And they could feel it.

The boys no longer teased. The girls whispered but stayed far. Even the pastor’s wife stopped inviting me to youth meetings.

I didn’t belong anymore.

But strangely, for the first time—I didn’t want to.

---

It was in that solitude, that stillness, that my power began to form shape.

Not lightning.

Not prophecy.

But clarity.

I could see the soul of things. The lies that walked into a room before their owners. The hunger behind the eyes. The guilt that clung to shoulders like perfume.

And I began to speak less.

Not because I had nothing to say.

But because words became too small.

---

By the time my mother came knocking, offering rice and stew, saying, “You can come back now,” I simply smiled.

I was already gone.

Not physically.

Spiritually.

I had stepped into the space between flesh and eternity.

And from there, I began to write my own name.