𝕌ℕ𝕋𝕀𝕃 𝕄𝔼𝕄𝕆ℝ𝕐 𝔽𝔸𝔻𝔼𝕊.....

Shadows and silence

The room was dark, but Sam could see everything. She was running through a hallway she didn’t recognize; walls twisting, doors opening into nothing. Voices whispered just out of reach, soft but urgent, like echoes of something she should remember. Somewhere, laughter, cold, sharp, echoing in her ears, made her stomach tighten.

She turned a corner and saw herself. Younger, smiling, unaware. A shadow stretched across the floor, jagged and impossible. It whispered her name, calling her, pulling her toward it. Sam tried to run, but her feet wouldn’t move. Her chest ached, her lungs burned. The walls seemed to close in, the shadows bending around her like they were alive.

A flash of light, painful, searing-and something pressed against her chest. Cold. Heavy. Burning. She screamed, but the sound vanished into the dark. Her hands clawed at the air, searching for something solid, something real, but there was nothing. And then the hallway disappeared.

She woke up.

Sweat soaked her pajamas. Her hair stuck to her forehead. Her heart pounded so fast it hurt. For a long moment, she didn’t know where she was. Then the treehouse came into focus. The blankets. The wooden walls. Her sanctuary. She pressed her palms to the floorboards, feeling the familiar grooves under her fingers, grounding herself.

Her life had always been quiet, kept small and safe. She moved carefully, tracing the edges of books, notebooks, and little trinkets she had collected over the years. A tin can held pencils, each one sharpened at just the right angle. The world outside was messy, loud. Up here, she had control. Up here, she was safe.

These dreams came often, more nights than she could count. Always the same twisting hallways, always shadows that whispered her name, always the sense that something she could never grasp was reaching for her. Sometimes they left her trembling in the dark; sometimes, they left only a quiet ache in her chest that lasted until morning. She had learned to move carefully, to expect nothing, and to retreat to the safety of the treehouse when the nightmares ended.

Sometimes, she thought about her family. Faces and names were blurred, like glass smudged by rain. She didn’t remember much, but she felt something, something strong and aching in her chest. She knew, deep down, they would have loved her. That they would have held her, laughed with her, even scolded her if she needed it. She missed them, not because she remembered them, but because the thought of their love felt like sunlight she had never touched.

There were rules she had learned in silence, though she didn’t fully understand them. A warning she could never quite name, something that followed every bond she tried to form. How far it stretched, what it could take, and when—it was all a mystery. She had learned to keep herself distant, to wrap her heart tight and never let anyone too close.

She moved to the window, looking at the dark trees. Shadows stretched across the forest floor, long and still, curling like fingers into the night. The wind made the branches scrape against each other, and she shivered, not from cold, but from the weight of something she could never name, the memories that slipped through her fingers, and the loneliness that settled in her chest.

Sometimes, she wondered if she had ever really had a home. Sometimes, she wondered if the shadows were the only ones who remembered her at all. The world outside could be loud, chaotic, and dangerous, but inside this small wooden box of her own making, she could breathe. Here, the air smelled faintly of pine and old paper, and for a few hours, the unknown rules couldn’t touch her.

Her life had been quiet, measured, careful. Every connection she tried, every smile she offered, felt fragile and timed. She had learned to survive alone, to protect herself from something she couldn’t name.

For now, the treehouse would hold her. For now, she would be alone with her thoughts, alone with the quiet, and alone with the shadows that always lingered just out of reach.

And sometimes, in the stillness, she let herself wonder what it would be like if someone could stay, if someone could remember her, if someone could care.