THE ERASED CORNERS
822 Words
FAINT TRACES
Episode 4: The Erased Corners
---
There's a kind of silence that doesn't wait for night.
It sits beside you even in sunlight.
In crowded classrooms.
In whispers you're not sure you heard.
That's the kind of silence today brought me.
I didn't bring the sketchbook to school.
Not because I was scared - or maybe I was, but not of the sketch.
Of myself.
Because last night, when I looked at the page, her eyes weren't where I'd drawn them.
They had shifted.
Looking up.
At me.
I snapped the book shut and shoved it deep under my bed.
As if burying it might slow whatever was happening.
But I felt her today.
Not in my head - in my skin.
Like someone brushing past me without touching me at all.

---
At school, everyone moved like nothing was wrong.
Same laughter.
Same noise.
But I could see it - the little gaps.
Moments that flickered just too long.
Teachers pausing mid-sentence like they forgot where they were.
Eyes blinking out of sync.
Friends walking right past me like I wasn't there.
I kept catching reflections that didn't follow me.
One in the metal elevator door smiled a beat too long after I'd stopped.
And in the middle of all this was Ansh.
Sitting exactly where he always sat,
but looking like he didn't belong here anymore.
Like he'd been pulled out of the wrong page of a story.
---
We locked eyes across the corridor.
He didn't look away.
And neither did I.
---
Lunch was loud.
People talking, laughing, scrolling their lives away.
But when Ansh sat beside me, it all dimmed.
Like someone had reached into the room and turned the volume down just for us.
He didn't speak.
He just reached into his bag and pulled out something small.
My breath caught.
It was a folded piece of paper.
Old.
Edges soft with time.
He slid it toward me like it might shatter if dropped.
---
Inside was a sketch.
My sketch.
Of Meher.
But not from my notebook.
This one looked older.
Worn.
Like someone had kept it folded for years.

---
"How do you have this?" I whispered.
He stared at the paper, not me.
"I don't remember," he said softly. "But I think I've always had it."
---
There was something in his voice I hadn't heard before.
Not fear.
Not confusion.
Grief.
Like she was someone he'd already lost once.
And maybe I had too.
---
The rest of lunch passed in silence.
Not uncomfortable.
But weighted.
Like the space between us was storing things neither of us had language for.
And still - even then -
something fluttered beneath my ribs.
Not just fear.
Not just confusion.
But something else entirely.
Because when his hand brushed mine,
it didn't feel like an accident.
And I didn't want to pull away.

---
I skipped the last class.
I didn't have a plan.
Just feet that kept walking until they remembered a place I hadn't meant to go.
The old art building.
Abandoned.
Boarded windows.
Caution tape half-torn from rain.
There's a side entrance - rusted shut.
But the window next to it is always foggy.
As if someone inside keeps breathing against the glass.
I stepped closer.
Wiped the mist away.
And froze.
---
Behind the glass, pinned crooked to a corkboard:
A missing poster.
Yellowed at the corners.
Torn along the top.
"MEHER SHARMA - MISSING"
No date.
No phone number.
Just her face - or something close to it - sketched in fading ink.

---
My breath hitched.
The world went quiet in a way it shouldn't have.
I hadn't drawn this.
I hadn't even known this place existed.
But that was her.
And beneath her name, in faint handwriting, someone had added:
"Some girls vanish from the world.
Others vanish from memory."
---
I don't remember getting home.
But I remember what was waiting for me.
The sketchbook - the one I left under the bed - was open on my desk.
A new page I didn't draw.
My hand trembled as I flipped to it.
There, in my own room, in my own book,
was me.
Not how I am now.
But thinner.
Fainter.
Like someone tried to remember me but forgot halfway through.
Beneath it, in small letters:
"You're starting to fade too."
And just below that:
"He's trying to forget you as well."
---
I sat down hard, the floor catching me.
My chest felt too tight.
Like my name might slip through my teeth if I spoke.
Because it's not just about Meher anymore.
It never was.
---
Whatever this is...
It's circling back to me.
To us.
To the pieces of ourselves we're losing - slowly, silently.
Not all at once.
But just enough that when we disappear,
no one will even notice we're gone.
---
to be continued...
- Writer
