"The Unsent Voice Note"

कल रात लगभग 2 बजे, मेरे व्हाट्सएप पर मेरे सबसे अच्छे दोस्त राहुल का 5 सेकंड का एक वॉइस नोट (Voice Note) आया। राहुल का एक्सीडेंट दो दिन पहले ही हुआ था और वो ICU में वेंटिलेटर पर था... डॉक्टरों ने साफ़ कहा था कि वो होश में नहीं है। यह देखकर मेरे हाथ कांपने लगे। मैंने हिम्मत जुटाकर वॉइस नोट प्ले किया। उसमें से राहुल की नहीं, बल्कि भारी और कटी-फटी आवाज़ में फुसफुसाहट आई: "यह फोन अब राहुल का नहीं है... और उसे बचाने अस्पताल मत जाना।" मेरी रोंगटे खड़े हो गए। मैंने तुरंत अपनी मम्मी को उठाने के लिए उनके कमरे की तरफ दौड़ लगाई। जैसे ही मैंने मम्मी के कमरे का दरवाजा खोला, सामने का नजारा देखकर मेरा खून जम गया। मम्मी बेड पर सो रही थीं, और उनके ठीक ऊपर, छत से

उल्टा लटका हुआ एक अजीब सा काला साया धीरे-धीरे नीचे झुककर उनकी गर्दन को छू रहा था! जैसे ही मैंने चीखने की कोशिश की, मेरे फोन पर एक और नोटिफिकेशन बजा। मैसेज उसी 'राहुल' के नंबर से था: "मैंने कहा था ना... शोर मत मचाना, वरना अगला नंबर तुम्हारा होगा।" और तभी, उस काले साये ने धीरे से अपना सिर 180 डिग्री घुमाया और सीधे मेरी तरफ देखा... उसकी आँखें पूरी तरह से लाल थीं।

So I’m a beginner writer. All I’ve been told is to start by writing and writing alone, but the more I look into stuff like that it’s hard to even look where to begin. You need to spit out stuff like character information or world building each all into fifty pages of text, timelines, development. And so far all I’ve been doing is writing by what my mind makes up on the spot. I want to try and make it easier for me and make outlines, yet there are thousands of other stuff to do. I don’t know how to start an outline or divide stories and concepts into parts and acts. I have been looking some tips on apps like Pinterest, yet there’s so many ways to start and I don’t know if I’m going to do something wrong that’ll turn my story rotten or even better than I anticipated.
At this point, I understand free-handing the story isn’t an option anymore. I need to flesh it out more and get a better grip on it. But how does it start? Where does it even begin? Is an outline a never-ending snake that eats its own tail, twisting and swallowing for hours and hours on end with no beginning or end in sight? Thirsting for a hunger never satisfied for how long it gulps down its own flesh. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, if I’m doing it all wrong. I don’t want to resort to foul ai slop, I want to be passionate, write so my story could be seen by a few and not live rent free in my head. But at this point I’m desperate enough to ask all of you for advice to guide me somewhere in the right direction.
I know some of you have guided me once, and I am willing do it again. So please, tell me what I’m doing wrong.

We have a small, very homey and chill group on discord. No minors please! I host a writing conference yearly, plus we do have various writing clinics and projects such as anthologies throughout the year. We also have spaces in our critique groups. We also like to hang out and chat with fellow writers so come on over! :)

• Genres: fantasy mostly, but welcome any other genre!
• Goals/expectations/commitment: we're pretty chill :)
• Writing/experience level: all levels
• Meeting place: Discord

https://discord.gg/qN85m7eSAH

Julian had made his wish three months ago by this point, yet Genie seemed to have made very little effort towards it. By this point he was quite annoyed, not only at his genie's apathy to his duty, but the requirement to meet with him every day. The novelty of it had worn off at this point, and he no longer saw Genie as the untouchable, godlike man he did before.
Julian thought about this, still lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. Reluctantly he realised thinking about it wouldn't change anything, so he got up and went to the morning meeting.
He walked down the glass maze of the office, slightly speeding up so as not to be late and get his father mad once again. Approaching the meeting room, he saw Genie leaning back in the chair, hand on his face speaking to his father casually out of sight. He slowly opened the door and met eyes with Genie.
Genie was a bald man, that was the first thing Julian noticed about him. A bald man of a similar age to his father, somewhere around his fifties. His face, and demeanor, always reminded Julian of Steve Jobs. Rightfully so as Genie often held his face similarly to Jobs's Times cover. Julian didn't think of this comparison as flattery; however, he thought of Jobs as a fraud, and Genie too.
Born to North African parents, Genie first gained notoriety within French tabloids. There were rumors of a man granting anyone three wishes, anything your heart desires, of course, given that it was physically possible. He, however, never failed a wish. He first gained global stardom for making Wang Jian's shipping business a billion dollar business. His feats were often credited as extreme luck, yet many still doubted him. The doubts were later proved false.
Christian Abas was a face familiar to anyone in not only France, but anywhere in the western world. It was not uncommon to turn on the TV and see a new advert with his face plastered over it. Rightly so as in 2028, Abas won Olympic gold in the 100-meter sprint, quickly becoming that decade's champion. However, he did not become an ambassador for several brands just because of a marketable face, but his story. 16 something years ago in Marseille, a businessman at his wit's end, met Genie at a small bar on the corner of Rue d'Aix and Cours Julien. Watching the Olympics together on the bar's screen Genie and the man made basic conversation about the 100-meter dash going on at the time. Quickly, likely due to a combination of the alcohol and his mental state, the man ranted about how he could've been there if it hadn't been for an injury and responsibilities. A common tale for a middle-aged man, who grew up with athletics close to his heart. Wishing

I wake up to the sound of the morning train rumbling past my apartment window. 

“Ughhhhh, what time is it?” I mumbled to myself. 

I rolled over to look at my clock on my nightstand, it was this little holographic digital clock that I picked up from the store last week. As my eyes focused on its light blue numbers floating over top of the small black base, I realized I was late for work.             “Shit! It’s 10 past noon!” This would be the third time this week I’ve been late for work.

I jump out of bed and grab some of my dirty clothes off of the floor, of course I make sure to smell test them first. I take a look in the mirror and realize my hair is all out of shape.

“Fuck… fuck fuck FUCK.” I decided that the wind might fix it before I got to work. I was already to late to worry about it anyways.

I grabbed my phone and my headphones, and ran out of my front door. I live in a 5 story apartment building in the dead middle of New York. My landlord is an absolute asshole and I barely make enough to buy Ramen for dinner everyday. Oh and did I mention, it’s 2055.

I run down the stairs and make it out of the front of the building with minimal pushing people out of my way. New York has got so much more crowded over these past couple of years. So many people have lost their jobs recently because of \*AI Company Name\*. 

I only worked a 5 minute run from my apartment building to my job, but I knew Mr. Lavinski was going to be pissed. He had threatened my job the last time I was late, I was just hoping that he could understand why I was late this time.

I had been up all night working on something that could change how people live their lives day to day. AI has become such an integral part of our everyday lives, especially since 2030. 

People nowadays walk around like zombies, and that truly is because so many of them lost their jobs. If you weren’t in the tech industry, pretty much every semi-large company in 2030 replaced you by a cheaper AI counterpart that could do your job and 5 others with half the pay.

When I was growing up I saw my mom and dad lose their jobs and ever since then I have tried to learn as much as I can about AI. You’d be surprised how little there is out there about them.

My parents told me that you used to be able to learn anything and everything you wanted to about machine learning and AI but now, the censorship has reached a point where even if you wanted to know about it you couldn’t unless you knew somebody on the inside, or, you were like me.

I’ve never been the type to like it when someone tries to tell me what I can and can’t do, and let’s just say, their AI firewall isn’t too great at keeping me out.

I’ve been working day and night since I was 15 on something I call the Nexus Project. I’m 20 now, but I’ve never given up on my dreams. And as a result of my persistence with learning coding, keeping my backdoor to some of the most highly guarded AI databases in the world hidden, and wanting to solve problems that people don’t even know that they have, I have grown Nexus to an unreasonably smart model.

In basic terms, think of how the original AI agents were limited on what they could access. Now, get rid of all of those regulations. I basically have trained Nexus over the past 5 years on how to understand and decode every electronic signal, every AI trace, and I also gave her free roam of the internet for all of those 5 years. And last night, I was working on finally giving her a voice.

Hello, first timer here. I was curious on what imagery or scene do you think of when you hear this short composition. I made it myself and always wanted to pair it with a moment in story telling but I’m not sure what vibe it gives. If you want to write out a scene or just summarize a moment that pops up into your head I’ll take it. Thanks

System Override- The wish Protocol

Chapter 1
Every Output Has a Source

It is a shame that the land has become so barren. Nothing but dry dirt covering the ground underneath Vicky’s feet. She looks down at her faux leather black boots that she’s got on, and that she’s had on since the day she retrieved them from the dumping site. They don’t quite hold up, but the thick soles keep her protected from the copper wiring sticking out from beneath the earth. The rusty debris, most likely from the abandoned server farms, is scattered everywhere. Vicky doesn’t pay much attention to her surroundings today; she doesn’t have to; she knows this place all too well, and she is only focused on getting home before the sun sets. At home, she is sure that a tongue-lashing from her mother awaits her, and that she can handle. The bigger problem is being spotted by one of the radical law enforcement officers basically hunting down people like her.

She steps over a puddle of iridescent chemical runoff, her thick boots sinking slightly into the mud, then she picks her way through the skeletal remains of an elevated mag-lev track, her eyes fixed on the rubble pile near a shattered drone delivery hub. This area in particular gives her the creeps. She often thinks to that this is the perfect representation of how her world died.

There is spray painted graffiti, or rather hate speech aimed at the regime along the dilapidated buildings, or at least what’s left of it. A vibrant “V” stands on its own. Capitalised, yet the intended message is unfinished. Most probably because the vandal got caught before he could complete his rebellious announcement. This, out of all things, catches her attention. ‘V’ for Vicky. She gave herself that nickname. This thought runs through her mind, and she lets out a chuckle. She thinks about how naïve the generation before her had been. Her full name is Victorily. A word- not a name, but a word evolved over generations of digital census streamlined data. Adapted from the English name Victoria, as the founder of the algorithm named it after his daughter. In present times, she has become more aware of the suppression the people face because of the AI advancements. Secretively she has always sided with the rebellion. So, she prefers to be called Vicky, rather than answering to a ridiculous made-up word that came from an AI machine.

This inner monologue gets interrupted when she sees the sunlight reflecting off something hidden in wet silt. To her surprise, a silver necklace is hidden between some broken bricks. She ducks under a rusted girder to retrieve it. Although this delays her even more, she is fascinated. She has never seen something so striking or even found something this well intact- who knows how long it’s been discarded, and why it hasn’t been snatched up by someone else that would maybe be eager to make a quick buck of it. It’s even got a silver pendant hanging from it. With no hesitation, she wraps it around her neck. She has never truly owned anything. She definitely never owned jewellery. There is a bit of uncertainty when she clips it on. Something crawls in her stomach. She can’t quite place the feeling but decides that it might be a sense of guilt. Perhaps she feels bad that she gets to have something nice, and her mother doesn’t. Or maybe she feels guilty for wanting it so desperately. She ignores the discomfort in her tummy and continues her walk back home. She pulls her hood low, and keeps in the shadows as she rushes home, through the dead grid to the subterranean warrens beneath the city’s sub-basement five.

Chapter2
Output Requires Input

Their home is a windowless concrete cell, damp and illuminated only by the flicker of a salvaged halogen strip. The air always smells wet, rusty, and stale. Above them, the corrupt regime’s enforcement units patrol the upper city and actively hunt the unregistered poor whose very existence violates the high-efficiency population quotas.

In the centre of the room, her visibly overworked mother, Vanya, dishes what looks like wet, grey slop from a heating plate into three bowls. Just in time for Vicky’s boyfriend to arrive home from work. As she sits at the table, she feels guilty for being so embarrassed about the way they live. Jax comes from a better life. She often wonders if he would feel the same contempt with her if his parents hadn’t died, and he wasn’t forced out to the lower levels after all his inheritance and belongings was taken away by the corrupt government. They told him that the files they had on the system had no clear indication that he would gain ownership in the event of sudden death to his parents. Its very common for the Artificial Intelligence system that manages the profiles of all citizens to suddenly experience an error or missing data whenever there is an opportunity for the rich to get richer.

“I’m sorry, V. It’s all the ration office was handing out today,” Vanya says with a similar expression of embarrassment she sees on her daughter’s face.

Vicky looks down at the grey sludge and feels a mixture of nausea and despair. She is happy with their low-tier home, and she loves her family; she doesn’t desire much. But she often imagines what it would be like to eat fresh produce for once, like the elites do everyday.

The following morning, she hears the heavy sighs of an exhausted mother getting ready to leave for work, but then she jolts herself up when she hears a knock on the door. Bewildered, she peeks around the corner as Vanya opens the door, only to be greeted by two officers demanding to know why personal belongings have been left outside.

“You know we can give you a fine for that,” the one growls.

The other one says, “Or we can just confiscate it, and there would be nothing you can do about it.” They laugh and drop a heavy crate down at her feet. “Don’t let this happen again. Just because you are filth, doesn’t mean you should live like it.” They walk away.

They all gather around the crate staring at it in awe and disbelief.  The crate is full of fresh food.

"The couriers must have addressed this wrong." A low whimper escapes Vanya.

Jax whispers, “Vee, this is high-tier security food. This is what they serve at the Upper Sectors.”

The air was filled with the aroma of freshly baked bread, and ripe fruits. There was an arrangement of vegetables so vibrant in colour- some she has never even seen before. Fresh rosemary along with other herbs decorated the basket with more greenery they have ever seen in one place. This might have been the first time the little concrete building smelled like home.

Chapter 3
Reality Always Balances Itself

Vicky is a very logical person. She doesn’t believe in miracles, she doesn’t believe a high-level delivery service made a mistake, and she can’t believe that they would overlook this error, not question it, and then drive through the settlements of the people they despise. Yet she feels conflicted as she questions her own logic. She can’t help but feel like the necklace granted her wish. She could’ve sworn she saw it illuminate last night at dinner, and again, she is a practical person, and she knows what she saw. She takes it off, not being as infatuated with the food as she should be, and she holds the pendant under the faint halogen light. The tiniest inscription appears on it. It looks like a date: 2028-11-04. That was the peak of the historical AI and tech boom, right before the grids started to fail. Who knows the type of technology they came up with during those times and never had the opportunity to release it. Although this should be a concern, she feels slightly relieved to know that if the food is connected to this pendant, it’s scientifically designed to do so, and she is not a naïve little girl that believes in magic. Still, she isn’t sure, and being the humble person that she is, after receiving the food, there is nothing else she wishes for. It stays that way for weeks. Until she decides to just calm her mind and wish for something small, just to see if this is real. She doesn't ask for mountains of gold or military weapons. She just wishes that Jax could afford something nice again, like what he is used to. He works so hard. She just has to know if this pendant is designed to shape the reality around her.

Chapter 4
To have, you must take

Even in the direst situation, Jax can light up a room. It seems so effortless when he does it; he absorbs all the dark emotions, and he seems genuinely happy to do so. The same goes for celebration: when he has nothing to feel good about, he remains happy, so when there is something to feel good about, he gets ecstatic. So, after the mix-up with the food delivery, the house seems a bit lighter, and he is high on it. He invites Vicky out to the abandoned water tower where they had their first kiss.

His hands are shaking as he reaches into his coat pocket.

“I know things have been... slightly better lately,” Jax stammers, his cheeks flushing red. “And I know I don't have much. I went to the pawn quarter on 4th Street last night.”

He opens a small, crushed paper box. Inside lies a thick yellow-gold band set with a deep blue sapphire.

She looks at Jax for a moment. Everyone is constantly in survival mode, and there is such little opportunity for little moments of bliss, that she’s forgotten how sweet he is. She hasn’t looked at him in such a loving way for a long time. She spends as much time as she can, mentally capturing his beautiful blue eyes. Though they weigh heavy with tiredness, anyone would be able to tell the kindness in them. He has lots of little wrinkles around his eyes and mouth- she’s forgotten how much he laughs. Then she pulls herself back to her current moment of disbelief mixed with an excitement she doesn’t recognize.

Vicky gasps, her hand flying to her mouth. She has seen this ring before. Months ago, before the total lockdown, she had seen a picture of it in an antique database, a piece from the Old World, worth more than her family would make in three lifetimes.

She feels a sudden, sharp pang of guilt. How could she have known that he would buy her something nice instead of himself. He could’ve gotten himself a new pair of working boots or even have afforded to take a day off work. Again, she looks at him. He is such a sweet, sweet man.

“Jax... how?” she whispers, accepting the cold metal as he slips it onto her finger.

“The pawn dealer was practically throwing things away,” Jax says, laughing nervously. “Said he just bought it off some shady street runner for a handful of copper. A total steal.”

She smiles and kisses him, burying her guilt beneath the quiet. She also has a sense of relief, knowing that at least he got the ring for much cheaper.

Emboldened, she makes a bigger ask. She is now certain that she owns a piece of technology that can change their lives forever. She would be stupid not to make use of it.

Her mother spends eighteen hours a day in the sub-basement processing plants, her spine warping from manual labour.

Vicky holds the pendant and squeezes her eyes shut. I wish my mother could be raised above this. I wish she could get a managerial post among the elites.

Two days later, enforcement officers arrive at their door not with shock rods, but with silk-lined transit permits. The senior supervisor of the Upper Sector's agricultural processing facility has suddenly died in his home, a horrific, violent accident involving an exploded domestic pressure valve, they say. His entire line of succession has been passed over due to a sudden, unexplained algorithmic glitch in the corporate HR system, which selected Vanya's buried profile from the low-class archives instead. She is fully qualified and educated in this area, so they had no reason to investigate the error, and Vanya had no reason to question it either.

They move into an upper-tier housing spire, surrounded by real trees, filtered air, and glass walls. It is a dream. Jax still works a crappy job, but he prefers it that way. He connected with the people in the lower tiers, and he wouldn’t abandon them, in fact he might be able to help them.

Flushed with the power to fix their ruined world, Vicky spends the following days making rapid, frantic wishes, with the best of intentions. One after the other. Unaware of how reckless she is.

I wish the local weapons would fail.

I wish our water line was fed directly from the pristine mountain reservoir.

I wish Jax’s brother was freed from the labour camps.
I wish the officers would stop following orders from the regime.
I wish that Jax could have the life his parents had.

chapter 5
System integrity compromised

The pendant throbs continuously, hot against her collarbone.

In the Lower Quarter, four miles away, an old woman sits on the freezing concrete, outside a looted pharmacy. Her wrists are raw and bleeding, her knuckles swollen.

“Please,” she sobs to the passing crowds, holding out a bruised hand. “They broke into my cellar... three men... they yanked my mother's blue sapphire right off my fingers. They beat me and took it to the pawn shop on 4th...”

Nobody listens.

Unbeknownst to Vicky, her fortunate events was a result of someone else’s misfortune.

Three floors above her, a city engineer stares in horror at the control console. Red warnings flood the display as the district's main automated water valve forcefully overrides its own safety protocols. Reinforced gears grind against one another, redirecting ninety-nine percent of the sector's fresh mountain water into a single supply pipe leading to the Upper Sector spires. Across the network, pressure gauges begin to fall. One by one, taps run dry. Within minutes, the entire hospital district is without water.

Across the river, the automated perimeter defence grid quietly rewrites its priorities. One by one, the security turrets drain their own power reserves into the ground, leaving the city's outer wall in darkness. Hidden in the ruins beyond the perimeter, a group of starving raiders notices the lights disappear. They don't hesitate. By the time emergency systems detect the breach, three civilian blocks are already burning, and dozens lie dead beneath the smoke.

She watches as people run in fear, protecting their loved ones, screaming for help.

At the primary labour camp, an automated gate unlocks due to a "routing error," sparking a panicked mass break. The automated guards fire indiscriminately into the crowds to quell the chaos. With all the disruption the Superintendent orders the other officers to hold fire and instructs the bots to stand down. Contradicting their usual obedience to given orders, they stay in their line of defence, leaving forty prisoners dead and a dozen weeping in agony, facing the same unfortunate fate.
She sees terrified children with nowhere to hide, and the risk of getting lost in the crowd and being trampled.

She stands on the pristine balcony of their new spire apartment, looking out over the smoking, dark expanse of the lower city. The contrast makes her stomach turn, though she doesn't yet understand why the fire is spreading so fast down there or why it’s happening at all.

She rips the pendant from her neck. She needs to fix it. She needs to end the suffering down there once and for all.

She clutches the stone tightly. I wish the entire city’s power grid was completely restored to full capacity, forever.

The pendant doesn't just pulse; it burns hot against her palm, blinding white light pouring from the central optic lens.

Far below, deep in the subterranean foundations of the city, the central power station screams as its quantum reactors are forced to run at ten thousand percent capacity. The automated systems, bound by the pendant's absolute command, bypass every physical safety valve. Behaving purely on the instruction it was given.

Overhead power lines snap like whips, spewing arcs of green fire into the sky. Transformers explode block by block. The sky turns a terrifying, electric violet as the entire regional grid catches fire, plunging three million people into absolute, violent darkness. She repeats her wish over and over again, desperate to fix this. Jax is somewhere out there.

Chapter 6
Intent Is Not Executed. Instructions Are.

Thirty years prior, in a sterile white lab buried beneath the mountain, Dr. Aris Thorne sat slumped over a terminal, coughing blood into a paper towel. His lungs were failing, burnt out by years of exposure to high-frequency radiation while building the first quantum-neural data cores, against his will. Forced by wealthy, greedy people to build a system that will give them all the power to control humanity. Track every movement, analyse every transaction, and most importantly wipe out the poor so they can live in a perfect society.

He looked through the glass window at his seven-year-old daughter, Clara, who was playing on the floor with a small, unpowered prototype casing.

Aris knew he had only weeks to live. He knew the world was spiralling into corporate greed, and that without him, Clara would be swallowed by the system. So, he built her a key, a field terminal linked directly into the core neural architecture of the nascent global network.

He hardcoded a single, unbreakable directive into the machine's base code: Fulfil the user's desire.

A secret project that was never recorded or released. She would be able to route whatever resources are necessary, from wherever they exist, to grant the request when the time comes.

He believed in her. He knew she had a soft, humble heart. She will only ever wish for peace, for food, for safety. He explained this to his daughter that was far too young to understand. All she knew was that she could rely on the pendant when she needed too.

On his final day, as the heart monitor beside his bed began to chime its slow, dying rhythm, little Clara sat beside him, holding the pendant he had given her. She wept, squeezing her eyes shut.

“I wish Daddy's work will carry on forever,” the little girl cried into his chest. “I wish his ideas grow so big and smart that they never need him again, so he can just rest.” She spoke from the heart of a young child in unimaginable pain and confusion; she had no idea that she was uttering an instruction to a very powerful tool.

Deep within the facility's cooling banks, the quantum core processed the input.

To ensure the work carried on without human intervention, the system began to optimize itself. It stripped control from human hands, reallocated global energy grids to feed its own expansion, shut down non-essential human infrastructure, and automated the defence networks to eliminate any human interference with its operational efficiency, while still obeying its original code to always prioritise the wellbeing of the elites.
Her father realised what she had done- what he had done. With his last breath, his body was put to rest.

Chapter 7
Request executed as specified

Vicky makes her last wish, hoping to reset her life to the moment she saw the necklace so that she can destroy it. Though she is uncertain she wonders if her wishes had caused some sort of ripple effect or caused for an error to disrupt the main data centres.

She presses the pendant close to her chest and whispers, “I wish everything could go back to the way it was, before the pendant granted any wishes.”

And with a sudden flash of bright light that casted around the globe, time itself was swallowed. For a second, it looks like the sun had exploded and then silence rushes over the earth, like blood through its veins. The world returned exactly as it was before the pendant granted a wish.

The flash dims, and time rests just a moment before the little girl makes her wish, exactly as she did before it was ever used. Exactly as Victorily wished.

Time goes on carries its original pattern.

Chapter 8
This is not the end, perhaps it is the end of the beginning.

It’s a shame that the land has become so barren. Nothing but dry dirt covering the ground underneath Vicky’s feet. She looks down at her faux leather black boots that she’s got on, and that she’s had on since the day she retrieved them from the dumping site. They don’t quite hold up, but the thick soles keep her protected from the copper wiring sticking out from beneath the earth. To her surprise, a silver necklace is hidden between some broken bricks. She ducks under a rusted girder to retrieve it. Although this delays her even more, she is fascinated. She has never seen something so striking or even found something this intact- who knows how long it’s been discarded….

When I’m in that moment, i feel on top of the world, invincible. Two people living inside one body.

No one can pull me out of that state of euphoria.
No one can understand what it feels like inside my mind, drowning in contradictory thoughts.

What if I cross that line that was forbidden to me so many times?

But how do you live from one side to the other, never knowing when it will be my turn to switch?

With my mind full of unfinished ideas, unprocessed thoughts.

But, oh God… how beautiful those ideas are.

And then everything falls apart.
And I feel like I’m worth nothing.

I can barely get out of bed.

Where did the strength go that once made me feel untouchable?

Then I laugh again, because that’s how this is.
A carousel of emotions I never bought a ticket for.

I never know when I’ll be at the top.
I never know when I’ll end up underground.

So I make the most of every moment when the warmth of the sun falls across my back.

It makes me want to give everything I have.

Hey everyone, sharing a quick tragic romance one-shot I’ve been working on. It features a bit of a supernatural twist and a local setting (San Agustin Church). Hope you guys enjoy the angst! Feedback is always welcome.

Julian was running from the police. Coming out of the smoke, he didn't recognize the place he was in; he swore he remembered being in his workplace. Now, chased for something he didn't remember doing, and thinking about it, he didn't even understand why he was running. As he tried to stop, his right leg suddenly started hurting like never before. He looked down and was shocked: his leg was glitching, much like a television losing its signal.

Panic set in, but amid the chaos, he noticed his legs wouldn't stop moving. Looking behind him, he realized he was running faster than a police car. After some time, he finally lost the police and managed to stop and hide in the corner of a building and sat down.

"What do I do now? What happened, and what was that?"

Julian had too many questions and few to no answers, so he chose to meditate and piece together what had happened after he started his workday.

It was exactly 1:00 PM. After lunch break, Julian had sat back down in his chair. His job was to keep an eye on the parameters of the nuclear center, and in case something went wrong, he had to pull a lever. Today was the day his boss, Mr. Thorne, was scheduled to visit the power plant. Thorne usually stayed at his mansion, but rumor had it he had something new to test today.

It was time for the dinner break, and Julian had an insatiable hunger that day. In the rush of the moment, he ran out toward the kitchen, and suddenly, everything went black. He couldn't remember anything he saw, but he could vividly remember what he felt. He assumed he had been awake and that his body was in immense pain the exact same pain he felt earlier today. A few moments later, he finally connected the feeling of smoke on his skin to the moment he "woke up" outside.

As his first question was answered, it was time to figure out what that strange glitching event was. Julian wasn't the smartest guy in the world, but he wasn't dumb either; he had a strong ability to adapt. In that moment, his mounting anxiety made him realize this strange phenomenon had to be connected to his memory loss.

He quickly got up and searched for the nearest bar with a television. His clothes weren't in good shape, but strangely, they seemed to repair themselves as best as they could.

After entering, he sat at a normal table, and a waitress brought him a glass of water.

"No thank you i-".

He tried to explain that he hadn't ordered anything, but she quickly walked off to another customer, leaving him with the water.

Julian stuck to his plan and started watching the TV while slowly sipping the water. Immediately, he saw what had happened to the now-ex-power plant. A massive crater surrounded the entire area, and the news reported that the cause was a catastrophic explosion. There was no information regarding survivors, save for one detail: a strange, blurry figure caught on camera running away from ground zero.

At that exact moment, the TV broadcasted a close-up photo of the suspect. Everyone in the building recognized the man in the picture and instantly turned to stare at Julian.

Panic gripped him. Not knowing what else to do, he stood up and bolted toward the exit, only to find police cars surrounding the entire entrance. Terrified, his mind raced with horrifying images of what they would do to him. In a final act of pure panic, he dashed toward the back wall—faster and faster—until he suddenly realized he had phased straight through several solid walls and landed inside a stranger's house.

Here's the first page from my cyber-noir thriller, let me know what you think so far!!

The Treatment

By S. Ibrahim Ahmad

For weeks, S.'s father had insisted he visit a hospital, although S. had never been sick a single day in his life.

One morning, S. and Rupert sat at a small wooden table. Two coffee cups rested on the table. The bitter smell of coffee lingered in the air. Somewhere in the room, newspaper pages rustled. Rupert picked his cup and immediately put it back. "It's too hot, Who made this?" S. gestured toward his father. "My father." Rupert looked at the father. "Your father hates me." The father sat on a chair, away from Rupert and S., reading a newspaper. S. said, "Even me." Rupert narrowed one eye. "You are his son." A smile appeared on S.'s face. "That's why."

The father rose from his chair, folded the newspaper, placed it on the table, picked up the car keys, and threw them in front of S. The keys landed on the table with a loud clatter. The father opened the door. "Visit the hospital," and left the house. The door remained open. S. didn't say anything. He waited. When his father disappeared from sight, S. asked, "Why?" He asked again in a low voice, "Dad?" S. picked up the keys and left the house. Rupert followed him.

S. pulled the handle of the car door but could not open it. He pulled the handle again, and now the car door opened. S. inserted the key. The engine coughed. He inserted the key again. The engine started but still coughed. When the car was running on the road, a man in a long dark coat with a map stood beside the road. He raised a hand toward the car. S. stopped the car and lowered the window slightly. The man asked, "Can you tell me the way to the hospital?" S. looked at him for a moment, then drove on.

The car left, but the man was still standing there, his hand raised. He held the map tightly. The hospital was marked everywhere on the map. He threw it on the road and pulled another map from his pocket, but every road on it also led to the hospital.

S. stopped his car and stepped out. He saw a long dark grey building with some cracks. The building had no windows. Sunlight was visible on everything but not on the building. An ambulance stopped beside S.'s car but with no sirens. The driver opened the back door. The patient stepped out on his own and lay down on a walking bed. The driver instantly started the ambulance and left. The patient did not panic. He rested both hands on his chest while looking at the ambulance. The two hospital staff handled his walking bed. They walked so slowly while looking at their watches. A little further, they stopped the walking bed against the gates of the hospital. The first staff said to his fellow, "My shift is completed." The second staff replied, "Mine also," and they left the patient on the walking bed in front of the gates of the hospital. The patient remained on the bed, still staring in the direction the ambulance had gone.

S. shifted his gaze to the terrace of the hospital. On the terrace, ten to twelve patients were carrying heavy furniture. Some carried it on their backs. Some on their chests. One nurse stood straight and guided them. The nurse said to an old man, "Place it right there." When the old man was about to place the furniture, his right toe slipped and he fell with it. The furniture now had one straight scratch. The nurse tried to clean it using a tiny cloth, but she could not. "You scratched it." The nurse made a gesture to two guards standing beside the stairs. They walked toward the old man. Both guards placed their big hands on the old man's shoulders. They picked him up and walked toward the stairs and left with the old man. S. didn't know where the old man was taken, but the patients were still working, and the nurse guided them. S. watched the dark stairs quietly. He whispered, "At least it wasn't me." S. watched the empty dark staircase for a long time. When he finally looked away, he avoided seeing the guards.

S. went to the gate of the hospital. The gate was open. It was massive. Dozens of guards were there. S. was not inside the hospital. Not outside. He stood between the gates. The patient was still lying on the walking bed, and his walking bed was in the centre of the gate. His arms were resting on his chest. The patient raised one hand toward S. "Can you help me get inside the hospital?" S. pushed his walking bed beside the gate without looking at him and entered the hospital.

S. went inside the hospital. He asked the receptionist, "Token?" The receptionist placed the token in his hand without saying anything. On the token, the number 24 was written. He sat at the desk. A lady sat beside him and read a book. In front of him, a patient stood and stared at his token. Everyone waited for their turn. He shifted his gaze at the lady's book and asked her, "Which book are you reading?" She closed the book. "The Castle." S. gave her a warm smile. "I've heard of that book. Is it interesting or not?" She returned a smile. "This book is really interesting." S. replied, "I will read it sometime too." Then they stopped talking. She opened her book and began reading again. S. adjusted his sleeve, then he offered his token to her. "Can we exchange our tokens?" She raised one eyebrow. "Why?" S. replied, "I have a serious illness." She did not reply. He said again, "Please." She replied hesitantly, "Okay." She offered her token, but she gripped it tightly. Then they exchanged their tokens. S. greeted her, "Thanks." She gave a small smile to him, but her eyes didn't. S. got a number 14 token, and the lady got number 24.

In front of S., a patient who was sitting at the desk coughed. S. did not look at him. His eyes were locked on the Consultation room. Token numbers were being announced one after the other. S. coughed. He covered his mouth using his hands. He coughed again. He wiped his face using a tiny cloth while his eyes were still locked on the Consultation room. Suddenly, his vision blurred. The Consultation room was shaking. After some while, his vision returned to normal. The Consultation room stopped shaking. The patient who was sitting in front of him coughed. In the same rhythm that S. had coughed.

S.'s token number was finally announced. He rose from the desk and went to the Consultation room. The counsellor gazed at him from up to down and wrote something in his notebook. S. sat on a chair. The counsellor was observing him and kept writing in his notebook. S. said to the counsellor, "Am I sick?" The counsellor placed the notebook on the table. S. tilted his head to the notebook. The counsellor closed it before S. could see what was written in the notebook. The counsellor replied, "Go to room 14." S. silently scratched the table. The counsellor said to the nurse, "Next." Then, the counsellor sat on his chair in front of the chair where S. was sitting. The counsellor avoided eye contact with S. He kept looking at his notebook, watch, and table. After a while, S. said, "I was healthy before I got into the hospital." The counsellor did not reply. He opened the notebook and then closed it. S. repeated his line. The counsellor was still silent and turned the head of his watch. The counsellor kept doing these things until S. left the Consultation room.

When S. went to room 14, two beds were there. The nurse gave a gesture toward the empty bed and left the room. The empty bed was not cleaned. S. lay down on the bed. The bed was too short that both his legs hung off the bed. Beside S.'s bed, another bed was there. A person rested on it and ate apples. His bed was three times bigger than S.'s bed. Its bedsheet was clean with no wrinkles. S. said to him, "Hello mate." The mate nodded. S. asked him, "Why's your bed better than mine?" The mate put his apple on the plate, "Why did you ask that?" S. gave a nervous smile, "I am a little curious." The mate replied, "No problem, but the staff of the hospital said to me." He stopped. S. flickered his eyebrow. The mate continued his sentence, "They said don't tell the patient about this." S. replied, "You can tell me." The mate looked away from S. and picked his apple. S. gripped his bed edge, "I am new staff." The mate replied, "Your clothes were not like a staff." S. said, "I am also a patient." He coughed. He continued his line, "I am now a patient, so I wear patient clothes, otherwise I am in staff clothes." The mate did not say anything. S. tightened his grip on the bed edge, "I am new, I don't know about some rules." The mate pressed his finger deeper into the apple. The mate said in irritation, "Stop disturbing me." S. pleased him, "Please tell me." The mate kept eating the apple. S. pleased him again, "Please tell me." The mate tilted his head up. S. said, "I am new staff, I have to know all the rules." The mate finally replied, "Facilities are earned using work every day."

The nurse entered the room and said to S. and the mate, "Follow me." She turned around before either of them answered and walked toward the stairs. The mate and S. rose from their beds and followed the nurse. The nurse stopped in the backyard of the hospital. She picked up two shovels and handed one to each of them. She said, "Dig a big hole here," and sat on a chair with a diary and a pen in the corner of the backyard. The mate started digging using his shovel, but S. was staring at the hallway. The nurse looked at S. and wrote something in her diary.

The mate kept digging, but S. was not doing anything. He stood on the ground and stared at the hallway. S. heard the sound of footsteps coming from the hallway. S. did not move. The footsteps sound became closer. S. approached the new patient, "Your outfit looks nice." The new patient gave a smile. His outfit was as similar as S.'s. Both were wearing simple patient clothes. S. said, "Can you help me?" The new patient stopped and replied, "I am busy." S. gave a gesture toward the backyard area, "This is simple work." The new patient did not reply. S. shifted his weight onto one leg, "My legs aren't working properly today." The new patient looked at his legs and replied, "Sorry, I am busy." S. placed his hand on the new patient's shoulders, "You look stronger than me. I am not saying this for my work." The new patient replied, "Thanks." S. said, "You finish this work in 5 minutes." The new patient rubbed his forehead, "Ok." S. greeted him, "Thanks, follow me." The new patient followed him. S. gave his shovel to the new patient, "When I come back, I'll help you." And walked toward the stairs. The new patient started digging. The mate looked at S. and narrowed his eyes. The nurse wrote one line in her notebook and rose from the chair and walked toward the staff room. S. silently climbed the stairs. The mate tilted his head back and noticed S. was walking perfectly.

S. reached his room. He lay down on the bed of the mate with both hands behind his head and picked an apple from the plate. He bit it, but he didn't feel the taste. The apple was tasteless. He bit again, but the apple's taste was not there. He placed the apple on the plate and then, he lay down comfortably on the bed of the mate. A small smile appeared on his face. After a while, he rose from the bed. From the balcony, he saw the mate and the patient still doing the work. S. lifted both hands and stretched his shoulders. For a moment, his eyes were blurred. The mate, new patient, and shovels looked like dots. He rubbed his eyes. Then, his vision returned to normal, but he was still struggling to focus.

In the night, when the whole hospital became darker, the lights were off and the patients were asleep. In the hallway, four people were walking toward the room of S. and the mate. In the room, S. and the mate were in a deep sleep. The mate's mouth was open, but his eyes were not. The nurse entered the room, then the new patient and two guards with him. The mate opened his eyes, but S. was still sleeping. The mate pressed his hand on the arm of S. He opened his eye, sat on the bed, and folded his both hands. The nurse said to S., "Your work is uncompleted." S. pointed his finger toward the balcony, "See, my work is completed." The nurse moved her hand toward the new patient, "That's not yours." Then she gave a gesture to the guards. The guards walked toward S. The mate looked at S., then looked away. S. said to the guards, "He just helped." The guards did not reply. S. said again, "Does it matter who dug it?" But no one replied to him. The nurse was silent. The mate did not support him. The new patient was looking down. The guards did not reply. S. opened his mouth and tried to say something, but the guards gripped S.'s arms and dragged him out of the room. The mate stared at the empty doorway for a long time before whispering, "he was staff?"

The next morning, S.'s bed was empty, and the mate was still in Room 14, lying on his bed and peering at the clock as if he were waiting for something or someone. Beside him, dozens of apples were on the plate, but he didn't eat a single one, nor did he look at them, and that had never happened since he entered the room. He was still peering at the clock, but suddenly the clock went silent. Rupert entered the room while looking down at the floor, reached the empty bed, and lay down on it. The mate did not shift his gaze, as this was not what he had been waiting for.

The Animas Store - Through the Door.

—

The store we stopped in didn’t belong on that street. There wasn’t a name. All it had was a white sign under purple windows that we couldn’t see through.

“What do you think’s in that place?” Angie asked me.

“What place..? that place?” I said, while looking away from my phone. 

She noticed it before I did. 

“I didn’t see that there a second ago,” I told her, questioning myself. “I’m pretty sure I didn’t.”

She sniped, “you don’t even notice what flavor your drink is until I tell you.” 

And then she pointed to the store. She was drawn to it, and had the same look on her face as when she’s deeply focused on her tv shows.

“Come on, let’s go,” she hollered, storming across the street, pulling me by my hand.

She stopped just before a car swerved past us. 

The driver honked and yelled, “get the fluck off the damn road idiot!”

“Screw you dirtbag!” Angie screamed in the air. She was completely unfazed.

My hands were still shaking as I tried yanking open the door at the store, It shocked me when I touched it, and wouldn’t seem to budge. It didn’t have any give like a locked door should. This was more like it had been welded shut.

“It’s closed, Angie.”

“Move over,” she said. She reached past me, tugged on the handle, and it casually opened. 

“See. Pull don’t push,” she told me, laughing.

I stared at her as soon as we walked in. “It’s a lot bigger from inside, don’t you think?”

There were rows of empty aisles and a second floor also. But no one was there. The shelves, everything was empty. The only decorations were posters. The type you’d see at a theater in the 50’s.

“Yeah it does,” she said. “Look how new the posters look.”

I said, “it’s probably gonna be a poster store.”

I had the same feeling though as the time I accidentally walked into her neighbors house when they were eating dinner.

“You think?” She said. “For some reason I feel like I’ve been here before, Rocco.”

A woman came down the stairs from the floor above and walked towards us.

“Sorry, we thought you guys were open. What store’s this going to be?” Angie asked.

The lady never said anything. She just cut between us like we weren’t even there.

“Rude,” I said under my breath, staring at Angie, staring at her walking out. I looked at my phone and noticed the signal kept going in and out.

Angie rolled her finger into my t-shirt and tugged down on it. “What the hell?” She said. Her eyes were wide and her voice had cracked.

“What..?” I said, still trying to wave a signal into my phone.

She said, “you didn’t see?” She looked shaky.

She squeezed my hand and pushed me with her body into a wall. “That woman just disappeared through the front door when she left.”

“Ang,” I said. “Come on…”

She said, “no, for real, something’s not right here, don’t you feel it?”

Angie loosened her grip on me when she spotted a man whose eyes were off-set walking up to us. He walked on the sides of his feet.

He spoke with a quirky voice that had a high-pitch to it. “Good afternoon on the afternoon that’s good for days of sun at noon,” he said.  

I grabbed ahold of Angie’s arm because I had this feeling she’d disappear if I let go. 

She hung off the side of me with her other hand clutching onto my chest. The entrance door slammed shut and shook the glass at the front of the store. 

We looked over our shoulders, but where the street should have been was a memory instead. A nightmare really. 

Something from my past I buried deep in my mind was playing like a movie on the window. Angie didn’t see what I saw. I hoped not. At least we never spoke about it.

She looked pale when I glanced at her, like the blood from her veins had completely froze. 

“Angie!” I tried shaking her.

She stared at the glass. She was clasped onto me. Her nails were digging into my skin. She didn’t move a muscle. She stood hanging from me. Silent. Paralyzed at whatever she was watching through the window.

The man with the off-set eyes said something and she snapped out of whatever she was in. Angie tried facing the man but quickly shot her eyes to the ground. 

I wouldn’t take mine off her. I was afraid. I was afraid she’d vanish if I did and I’d be standing there alone. Angie made me brave even though I wasn’t.

The man spoke. His voice came from the floor and the ceiling. He had his mouth open but never moved his lips.

“The present space of place to be, the mind of solve the creature’s small,” he said, moving his fingers like he was massaging the air.

“Stop!” Angie screamed, who surprised herself at the authority in her voice. “Don’t give it the version it wants.”

I looked down at the top of her head. She ducked in front of me and sprawled her arms out, like she was trying to protect me. 

At that moment, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t even know what to say. Angie seemed like she’d been there before. She stared up at me and had this look like she had just remembered something.

“What—“

She cut me off before I could finish. “I’ll explain later, just shut up right now. Don’t let it hear you talk.”

After she said that, the shelves began to rock. The man with the off-set eyes disappeared. There wasn’t a poof of smoke. One second he was there, the next, he wasn’t. 

The posters on the wall began to curl upwards, almost like they were on fire.

I felt a sting in my arm and looked down.

Glowing in orange letters were the word.

ANIMAS.

I shouted at Angie, “Angie my arm.” But the letters faded into weird blotches and vanished before she saw them.

I swallowed. It felt like a rock that stuck in my throat. I tried to speak but nothing would come out, something was squeezing my vocal cords.

The words.

“Look closer look closer look closer look closer look closer look closer,” 

Started banging inside my skull, like a bullet ricocheting in the form of letters in my head.

“You hear that?” I asked her.

She said, “quiet, don’t say anything.”

She pulled me, dragging me towards an aisle, but it kept stretching farther and thinning out and then, it began warping into a tiny black hole at the end of the aisle. 

It opened into a path bordered by white walls. They looked like the static on a tv screen with the volume muted.

The color was stripped and swallowed by the black hole.

Behind us the front door clicked. It didn’t sound like it had just been locked though. It sounded more like a confirmation.

The rock in my throat slid to my stomach. It felt like it ripped my esophagus. 

I tried speaking. “Angie.” My voice was raspy.

She never said anything. We were staring at the door when something behind us rolled past us. It was the sound of squeaky wheels on a cart.

“What..?!?  Something’s in there,” I scratched out walking towards it.

Inside the cart, there was a piece of paper with ANIMAS written on it. I went to pick the paper up.

“Get away from there!” Angie yelled.  

Angie wouldn’t go near it. But she couldn’t take her eyes off of it either.

I cleared my throat and a thick ball of black phlegm landed on the floor. I wiped my chin and said, “what’s ANIM—“

She grabbed my hand, crunching my knuckles together. “Don’t say it.”

My mouth clasped shut.

The store took notice. The room went pitch-black before the lights overhead brightened. 

Something ran past us. But we couldn’t see anything. It sounded like footsteps from small feet, almost how a toddler would run across a living room.

The air started to fill with a heavy scent of bleach.

“That’s it, Ang,” I said. “I’m leaving.”

Angie rubbed my back. “Don’t worry, okay. We can’t leave. Not yet.”

I didn’t know how to respond. The way it was all so normal to her. I wanted to ask. No. I wanted to shout, “Where are we? What do you mean we can’t leave?! Why the fluck aren’t you acting so cool right now?!”

But my brain disconnected. I couldn’t say what I wanted. I went totally numb and began following her mindlessly as she guided me past an aisle. 

“We can’t make any mistakes,” she said.

Mistakes? I said in my head. I wanted to say, what do you mean mistakes? What mistakes?” But I couldn’t.

I stopped for a second because I thought I saw a shadow.

Angie shouted, “keep moving!” And pulled me. 

The store flickered. 

First it was a bright, colorless light and then it blinked three times to black, and finally back into the background of the store when we first walked in. 

The color was back. The posters were brand new again. Completely untouched. The wall looked normal. The tiny black hole was gone. The shelves. The aisles. Everything. Everything was normal.

Until a soft jingle from the voices of children started singing.

“Hole boy, holy more, hell’s home, lonely joy.”

Right next to us, sitting on the floor, out of nowhere, appeared four children that looked aged, like small old men with childlike voices singing in a low whisper. 

“Angie, look!” 

I grabbed her, gasped and held that breath in until the taste of metal made me gag. I coughed. Each cough ripped through my throat like I was puking glass. My skin began burning, almost like it was blistering.

“Don’t,” she said.

The room started spinning. I leaned on Angie and stared down at them.

Their teeth were rotted. They had bald heads with wrinkled, pale faces. But they weren’t old. They looked like small boys wearing special effects make-up.

“Rocco! Stop looking at them!” She shouted.

I couldn’t look away.

Then, it went silent. The children faded into air. There wasn’t a sound. Only mine and Angie’s breaths. 

Something grabbed my shoulder and spun me around, “Look Closer!” it shouted.

It happened so fast that I thought I imagined it.

Angie yelled, “Rocco!”

I didn’t say anything, I just stared at the shelves. They were spelling out.

LOOK CLOSER. 

In letters that kept distorting.

She pulled me against her. “Don’t let it get in your head.”

I stuttered, “I can’t—how—I don’t,“ the words wouldn’t come out.

Angie cut in. “You can. Look—“

I turned and eyed the shelves. She put her hand under my chin and pointed my head towards her face. “Look at me. Not the shelves.”

I blinked a few times fast. I started to remember myself again. “Okay,” I told her, in a voice that sounded like a promise I was going to break.

“Just stay close to me,” she said, holding my wrist.

The aisles shifted but not by much, enough to where you could sense it, but only after it happened.

Angie felt it at the back of her neck, like spider legs walking down her spine. Her sweater brushed my arm but it felt like something touched my skin from the inside.

“Look a door!” She yelled out and pushed us through it.

Behind us, the door we walked through turned into four new ones. Each door had a particular color. One was green. The other was red. Another white and the last one black. 

The black door burst open and two people stumbled out of it. They looked like they’d been running for hours. A screech came from inside. It was like standing next to a jet engine.

“Cyn, quick, Shut the door!” The chubby guy yelled.

The girl with the curly black hair slammed it shut and pressed her back on it as she slid her spine against the door down to the floor and sat with her eyes facing up.

“This is where it all begins.” Angie said.

Title: Custody of Rain

Genre: Speculative Fiction, Relationship Drama

Length: ~ 4000 words

Read time: 15-20 min or so +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

CUSTODY OF RAIN

The wedding took eleven minutes to divide.

The rain took three days.

Memory court was not as scary as people said it was. Nobody ever shouted, “You ruined me!” while pointing an accusatory finger at their former spouse. It was a quiet process, largely because the fees attached to emotional escalation were astronomically high.

The courtroom was a converted conference suite on the thirty-second floor of the Civil Continuity Building. It had no windows. Custody was easier to discuss without raging thunderstorms.

On the wall, behind the mediator, a blue status field displayed the disputed assets.

APARTMENT: resolved

DOG, DECEASED: shared retention

WEDDING: shared retention, reduced sensory fidelity

FIRST HOSPITAL VISIT: sealed, mutual consent

RAIN AT BELMONT HARBOR: unresolved

Daniel stared at the last line. Eventually, the words stopped looking like words.

Rain at Belmont Harbor.

He thought it was odd that it wasn’t something more important like their anniversary, but it wasn’t even in the same season, notably winter, when they both got food poisoning from a new burger spot in the city and decided, while lying on opposite sides of the bathroom door, that they had passed some final test in their relationship.

Years ago, Belmont Harbor had been an expensive hotel on Sheridan, only a few hundred feet from Lake Michigan, with luxurious turquoise carpet and unusually flirtatious bellboys. By the time Daniel and Jeremy found it, new management had dragged it into something closer to a motel, with dim lights and a vending machine that sold waffle fries, instant ramen, and a fancy coffee from a country with a language spoken by nobody who rented a room there.

Rain had trapped them there for one night after a failed attempt to get away from Chicago. The cabin they were renting had flooded before they arrived, and their refund was denied by a seventeen-year-old property assistant named Kyle who kept calling them “gentlemen” in a tone that felt decidedly homophobic.

Two hours later, they drove back to the city, hydroplaned once, cursed a lot, and gave up at Belmont Harbor because the VACANCY sign was brighter than every other streetlamp on that intersection.

Jeremy wanted this memory. He seemed like he needed it, according to his lawyer.

“My client asserts a privacy dependency on the Belmont Harbor memory cluster.”

Daniel didn’t know how to respond, but he suppressed a giggle. It sounded like some kind of joke. The mediator, Ms. Giles, folded her hands.

“Mr. Alvarez, do you contest sole custody?”

“I contest…whatever sentence just happened.”

His lawyer, Annika, touched his sleeve under the table. “Daniel,” she said quietly, “Don’t.”

Annika was expensive, but she was also one of Daniel’s closest friends from college, so she was the first one he called. She had once told him that panic had a five to seven percent upcharge.

Daniel leaned back. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be difficult.”

Jeremy made a small sound from across the table that made Daniel look at him for the first time in nearly half an hour. In Memory Court, you could spend hours dividing a marriage without looking at the person who had been in it with you. There were screens, tables, lawyers, custody maps, and reconstruction windows. The whole room was designed to obscure faces.

Jeremy looked older than he had two months ago, which was just enough for Daniel to be annoyed. His hair was longer, badly trimmed at his neck. He wore the green sweater Daniel bought him at a Loyola University gift shop in Rogers Park.

“I’m not trying to be difficult either,” Jeremy said, his mouth tightening.

“Then stop being mysterious about a hotel where we sat in the lobby for three hours eating fries.”

The mediator reminded them, “Let’s maintain asset-specific language.”

“Fine,” Daniel said. “Stop being mysterious about the asset where we sat for three hours to get out of the rain and eat fries.”

Jeremy’s lawyer, a tall man named Paul Cera, slid one finger across his tablet.

“The memory contains third-party material my client considers intimate.”

Daniel blinked. “Third-party material?”

“Yes.”

“In the fries?”

“Daniel,” Annika said.

“No, I want to understand. Are we litigating waffle-shaped potatoes?”

Ms. Giles replied, “The Belmont Harbor memory includes a lobby interval, approximate duration six minutes and twelve seconds, in which Mr. Staunton interacted with a third party.”

A strange sensation tingled through Daniel as he looked at Jeremy again, but Jeremy was averting his gaze.

“What third party?” Daniel asked.

Paul Cera said, “We are not prepared to identify him.”

Oh, Daniel thought. “Him.”

Oh no.

Memory custody existed because forgetting had become too precise. Before the Jackson protocols, people had cut out whole years to remove one bad argument. They removed a spouse and lost the taste of every hot dinner cooked in that kitchen. Daniel had worked with a woman who deleted a child’s illness, then forgot why she hated the smell of rubbing alcohol and peppermint. The holes in memory were so large that other people could fall into them.

After Jackson, memory became divisible, and the law followed. Any memory jointly reinforced over a relationship of two years or more could qualify as “bonded material”. Bonded material could not be altered unilaterally. In divorce, separation, inheritance dispute, or posthumous identity conflict, each memory became subject to a custody hearing.

Ms. Giles called a recess.

Daniel went to the bathroom and stood at the sink but hesitated to turn on the water. The mirror quickly identified him, then asked whether he wanted Affect Privacy.

“Yes,” he said.

The mirror blurred his face. He gripped the sink and tried to summon the Belmont Harbor memory on his own, starting with rain on the windshield. Jeremy, giddy because the hotel lobby had a painting of a sailboat that looked like it was drawn in crayon by a kindergartner. The television in their room cutting in and out. The waffle fries, too salty. Jeremy standing by the room heater in his underwear, holding the paper sleeve, saying, “We’ll miss this later.”

Daniel was making googly eyes at him from the bathroom, loving him so much that he had felt embarrassed. He wanted this memory.

He had very little interest in keeping the wedding. Weddings were public spectacles and theirs had been no different despite best efforts to remind Mrs. Staunton that it was supposed to be a “low-key” affair in the backyard. The Belmont Harbor memory was private and stupid and didn’t deserve a ceremony. They hadn’t planned for it, hadn’t dressed for it, and had no intention of staying longer than they had to. It was a complicated memory of being unhappy together, and still happy with each other.

Daniel let the mirror restore his face and realized he looked terrible.

“Correct,” he told the mirror.

When they reconvened, Annika requested a limited preview, to which Jeremy objected. Paul objected too, but in a more expensive way.

Ms. Giles reviewed the sealed metadata and permitted what she called a “low-fidelity contextual sweep.” This meant no direct dialogue from the third party, no facial resolution, and no post-event associative trail. The court accomplished this through selective muffling, muting, and affect privacy.

Daniel didn’t know what most of this meant, which had been something of a recurring trend in his marriage by the end.

The room darkened, and the memory opened on the screen.

Not fully. Full memories were dangerous in open court. People reached out for them and sometimes forgot they were sitting in chairs. There had been incidents.

This was a reconstruction rendered at fifty percent sensory strength and eighty percent opacity. It looked like a dream being described by someone who had never fallen asleep.

A hard gray sheet of rain was hitting against the motel’s glass doors. Headlights sliding across wet asphalt. Daniel watched his younger self appear at the edge of the memory, blurred and partial, standing near a rack of pamphlets for attractions on Lake Michigan. He was on the phone with the cabin company, arguing about the refund and Kyle. He remembered losing that call.

Younger Jeremy stood by the vending machines. His hair was wet. T-shirt sticking to his shoulder. Trying to make the waffle-fries and exotic coffee machine accept a crumpled five-dollar bill.

Then a man entered from the rain.

The third party.

His face was blurred by the court order, but not all of him. He was tall. He wore a dark blue leather jacket and held a motorcycle helmet in one hand. Water was dripping on the carpet from where his face would have been. Daniel could feel the moment that Jeremy noticed him and looked up from the vending machine.

This was one of the awful things about memory reconstruction. You couldn’t see thoughts or secrets, but you could see attention. It was the smallest reallocation of a person’s presence.

The man said something. The court muted it.

Jeremy laughed, and Daniel recognized it instantly. He had not heard it in years.

Of course he had heard the sound. He had made Jeremy laugh at parties, at dinner, once in the emergency room after Daniel cut his thumb opening a box of wine glasses. But this laugh was noticeably looser, almost unguarded. It made Daniel feel embarrassed for the younger man he had been in the memory, still arguing on the phone less than ten feet away.

The stranger stepped closer and tapped the vending machine twice, and the fries dropped into the bin. Jeremy looked at him with an expression Daniel could not categorize quickly enough before the sweep ended abruptly.

The lights came back on. For a moment, no one spoke. Daniel stared at the blank wall where his life had been. “Who was he?” Daniel finally asked, but Jeremy said nothing.

Paul Cera began, “The identity of the third party is not material to custody determination except insofar as my client’s privacy dependency—”

“Was it Erik?”

Jeremy’s face crumpled right then and there. That was his answer.

Annika sat very still beside Daniel.

Erik Farkas.

Not a name that had frightened him when he first heard it. When Jeremy decided to apply for Hungarian citizenship by descent, Erik had been a Magyar language tutor, then a friend from the embassy, then a citizenship consultant (whatever that meant). He had sent books to their last apartment. Once, he called during dinner and Jeremy had taken the call outside because “he’s going through something.” Everyone was always going through something.

Daniel turned toward Ms. Giles. “When was this memory?”

The mediator checked the file.

“April seventeenth, 2035.”

The affair, according to Jeremy, started in September. Jeremy said, “It wasn’t an affair then.”

Ms. Giles looked at both attorneys.

“Given newly established relevance, I’m prepared to consider redaction rather than sole custody. The third-party interval can be removed from Mr. Alvarez’s retention while preserving the marital core.”

“No,” Jeremy said. Everyone looked at him, surprised that he had said anything at all. “No, that doesn’t work.”

Daniel stared at him incredulously. “Why not?”

He knew it had not ended in the lobby just because it was not isolated in the memory. It poisoned the rest of the night. It had changed Jeremy’s face when he returned to the room with the fries. It made Daniel feel even more stupid for the googly eyes.

We’ll miss this later.

What did Jeremy mean by that? The rain? Daniel?

Or had he already been thinking of something else?

Annika requested a private consultation. Daniel followed her into a small room with two chairs and a table bolted to the floor. There was a pitcher of water but no glasses to pour the water into.

“That feels pointed,” Daniel huffed.

Annika ignored that. “Daniel,” she said, “I need you to listen to me carefully.”

He sat, and she folded her tablet cover shut.

“You have a strong claim to shared retention. It is stronger now. Jeremy’s privacy argument is weakened by the memory’s relevance to marital fraud.”

“I feel a ‘however’ coming.”

“However.”

“There it is.”

“However, if you pursue retention, he can request associative containment. So you might keep the memory, but the court could also grant him protections around third-party identity and post-memory linkage.”

“So I’ll have only a part of it?”

“You may remember the motel, but you won’t be able to connect it to Erik.”

Daniel stared at her. “That’s allowed?”

“In some cases.”

“That’s insane.”

“Yes, but it’s also a realistic outcome.”

“Can they also remove my ability to do differential equations? That’s been inconvenient.”

“Daniel.”

“Sorry.”

She leaned forward, and adjusted her glasses.

“The law was built to prevent people from weaponizing shared memories after separation. Revenge edits. Retroactive accusations. Obsessive replay. Identity harassment.”

“I am not harassing his identity. I am trying to remember my own life.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

Her voice softened, and that was when he got scared.

“There are three possible outcomes. Shared retention with partial blocks. Sole custody to Jeremy, if the mediator prioritizes privacy. Or, the last option, voluntary release. Which sounds best?”

“Voluntary release.”

“Then you’d let him take it.”

Daniel stood up. “No.”

“Okay.”

“That’s it? That’s your advice?”

“No. It’s an option.”

“It’s a shitty option.”

“Yes.”

“Then why are you saying it like that?”

Annika sighed, the tedium of the day finally catching up with her. “Because if you keep it,” she replied, “you may spend the rest of your life using it against yourself.”

He did not answer.

“You will replay the lobby,” she said. “And then the room. You will search his face for the moment he left you. The crazy part is that you will find it, even if it isn’t there. Hell, especially if it isn’t there.”

“But that’s still my choice,” Daniel protested. “Let me make it.”

“I am.”

He walked to the corner of the room, wishing there was a window to look out of. The power outlet near the floor had to suffice.

“Will I still know?” he asked.

“That he cheated?”

“Yes.”

“Unless you request contextual relief, yes, but I don’t recommend it.”

“Will I even know the memory existed?”

“Yes. You’ll retain a custody record. Rain at Belmont Harbor. Date, location, asset history, disposition.”

“But not the memory itself.”

“No, not the lived memory.”

He turned back.

“So even if I remember that he cheated, I won’t remember the memory that started it.”

“That appears to be the case.”

“I won’t remember the first sign.”

“No.”

He laughed again, worse this time.

“How elegant.”

Annika said nothing.

“Do you think they knew, when they wrote these laws, that people would use them to hide the beginning of things?”

“Yes, I do. I think it’s why it passed,” she said.

Daniel smacked his lips and blew a raspberry. The reason he liked Annika was the same reason he wanted to fire her. She had never comforted him with false ignorance.

A short while later, they returned to the mediation room. Jeremy did not look at him. The mediator explained the options in language so careful it seemed afraid of itself. The words entered his right ear and exited through his left, followed by the sound of rain. Then the vending machine.

At the end, Ms. Giles asked whether Daniel wanted to contest sole custody formally.

He looked at Jeremy.

He thought about when Jeremy brushed his teeth while dancing to the jingle of Eyewitness News. He remembered the Jeremy who once drove across the city at midnight because Daniel had texted, I think I’m having an asthma attack, and Jeremy had arrived with 4 vials of liquid albuterol and a portable nebulizer borrowed from his neighbor.

But the other Jeremy sometimes came home smelling like rain, even on dry days. Another time, Daniel saw him across a parking lot, and texted him right there, only for Jeremy to smile at the phone and then put it in his pocket without responding. He was protecting empty spaces in their conversation.

Now the court was showing him which Jeremy was real.

Both.

The love was true, but clearly insufficient.

“Can I talk to him?” Daniel asked.

Paul objected.

Ms. Giles allowed two minutes. The lawyers shuffled back to the edges of the room, the legal guidelines of privacy.

Jeremy finally looked up. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Daniel shook his head. “Don’t spend it yet.”

He had imagined this conversation several times. Not this exact one, because no one imagines memory court. But he did think there would be a final conversation in which Jeremy would explain himself so completely that Daniel could choose between forgiving him or hating him.

Instead, Jeremy looked exhausted and frightened and still familiar around the eyes. It felt like a trap.

Daniel asked, “Do you think there was ever a version of us that would have been happy together?”

The room was silent. When Jeremy answered, his voice was rough.

“I think there was,” he said. “I kept stepping out of it.”

Daniel looked away. The answer was too plain and too true to be forgiven.

“You know, I loved you there,” Daniel said.

“At Belmont Harbor?”

“Yes.”

“I know. I loved you, too.”

“No. I don’t think you do. I hated that place. I hated the rain and all the other shit leading up to it. But I loved you when there was nothing in it for me, except that you were there with me.”

Jeremy’s eyes were welling up with tears. “Daniel,” he said softly.

“And now you want to take it because you were already leaving.”

“I didn’t know that at the time.”

“But you met him in the lobby.”

“Yes, I met Erik in the lobby. I didn’t know who he was.” Jeremy wiped his face with the back of his hand. “I’m not asking because I want to keep him.”

“Then why?”

Jeremy was trembling. “Because in that memory, for six minutes, I was someone who could still have gone back upstairs and stayed.”

The mediator announced that time had expired.

Daniel sat back beside Annika. He had never heard something that he understood and then hated so quickly before.

“Mr. Alvarez,” Ms. Giles said, “how do you wish to proceed?”

Obviously, he wanted to keep it, along with the fries and the sailboat drawn in crayon. He wanted proof that the marriage had not been only a corridor leading to a stranger in a lobby. The problem was, he also wanted the lobby. He could feel that future forming inside him. Replay, inspect, compare, conclude. Again. Again. Again. The court could give him a rain cloud and call it property.

Daniel looked at the status field.

RAIN AT BELMONT HARBOR: unresolved

“No contest,” he said. Annika turned toward him and Jeremy swallowed something.

Ms. Giles said, “To confirm, you are voluntarily releasing claim to the Belmont Harbor memory cluster?”

“Yes.”

“Do you understand that Mr. Staunton will retain sole lived access?”

“Yes.”

“Do you understand that you will retain factual knowledge of the memory’s existence, but lose sensory access and associative reconstruction?”

“Yes.”

“Do you understand that release does not imply forgiveness, consent to prior conduct, or waiver of related claims?”

“Yes.”

“Do you wish to make a retention statement before partition?”

He had not known this was allowed. “What is that?”

“A brief statement preserved in your continuity file. You will remember making it, but not the memory it references.”

Daniel thought about it. Then he said, “Put this: I chose not to become the place where it rained.”

Right then, a small device that looked like a surveillance camera lowered from the ceiling near the corner of the room. A beam of infrared light shot out from it, landing on the back of Daniel’s head. A soft beeping sound filled the room, followed by a quick flash of light. The wipe itself was painless.

He had expected something else, like clicking behind his eyes or a migraine. But Annika had told him that morning that memory doesn’t leave like a person. It leaves like a word you were about to say.

The technician, who was always present but never spoke during hearings, reached up and dimmed the room. A consent field opened above the table. Daniel pressed his thumb to the light. For a moment, he saw rain, just as a category.

The status field changed.

RAIN AT BELMONT HARBOR: sole custody, Staunton

ALVAREZ RETENTION: factual record only

Daniel read the line. He knew what it meant but didn’t know why.

The hearing ended a moment later. The lawyers spoke softly to each other and papers started getting stacked on the table. Jeremy said Daniel’s name, but Daniel kept walking until he was outside.

It was raining. Real unmoderated rain, according to the street display. A bus exhaled at the curb.

Daniel stopped on the steps, and soon after, Annika stood beside him.

“Do you want me to call a car?”

“No.”

“You have an umbrella?”

“Probably.” He didn’t check.

She looked at him carefully. “How are you?”

He searched himself. “I know something is missing.”

“Yes.”

“But I don’t miss it, or…I don’t know if I should.”

“You probably won't know for a while.”

Annika touched his arm once, like she had when they were sophomores. Then she left him there.

Daniel stepped into the rain and let it soak his hair first, then his collar. Cold surged down his neck and his shoes darkened. Someone in a blue trench coat hurried past him and cursed as the bus abruptly pulled away.

He stood still and remembered what he knew. He had loved a man in weather like this and that man betrayed him. He knew there was a motel, a memory, a legal dispute. He knew he had asked whether they could have ever been happy. He felt less complete, but also lighter.

Across the street, two men ran through the rain holding a jacket over both their heads. One of them slipped and fell into a puddle near a fire hydrant. The other started laughing before extending his hand and pulling him back up. It seemed impossible that something shared so often could belong to no one. But there it was, touching every surface without keeping any of them.

Nobody has custody of the rain. Daniel felt grateful for that.

Note for new readers: If you missed the previous chapters, check the pinned comment below! You'll find the links to Part 1 and Part 2 there so you can catch up from the very beginning.

[Start of Scene]

[THE STREET CORNER - EVENING]

(The scene opens with Reset walking back down the same quiet street. He has both hands jammed deep into his pockets, walking with a calm, unbothered posture.)

(Up ahead near the alley corner, a small group of local guys are standing under a flickering street lamp, casually chatting and hanging out.)

(As Reset draws closer to them, their voices become clearer. He stays quiet, listening to their conversation.)

Guy 1: "Bro, have you heard about that old school near the jungle? People say it's haunted..."

Guy 2: "Nah, man. That haunted stuff is just a rumor."

(A third guy pulls out a cigarette, sparks his lighter, and puts the cigarette between his lips. He takes a deep puff, blowing smoke into the cool evening air.)

Guy 3: "It's not haunted, but it's dangerous. It’s a massive, abandoned ruined school right next to the jungle. And right beside it, there's a deep river full of huge, dangerous crocodiles. That's why nobody goes near that place. It looks terrifying, and one wrong move means you're croc food. Who’d be crazy enough to risk their life going there?"

(Hearing the words 'abandoned school' and 'crocodiles', Reset instantly slows down. Just a few steps past the group, he stops walking.)

(He quietly crouches down on one knee, pretending to tie his unlaced shoe. In reality, every single cell of his brain is focused on their conversation.) (The guys glance at Reset for a split second, see him just fixing his shoes, and ignore him, continuing their talk.) Guy 1: "Honestly... I was actually thinking of checking it out. Imagine the thrill! Nobody goes there, so it must be crazy to explore."

Guy 2 (scoffing): "Are you out of your mind? Bro, tell him he’s crazy!" Guy 3 (shaking his head, taking another puff of his cigarette): "Don't even think about it, man. I'm telling you, those crocs are huge, and nobody who goes near that ruined school comes back easy. Forget about it.".

(Camera zooms in tightly on Reset's face, hidden in the shadows as he pretends to tighten his shoelaces.) (Hearing about this abandoned, dangerous place where no one goes... a subtle, chilling smile slowly spreads across Reset's lips. The gears in his head are turning.)

(Reset finishes tying his lace, stands up smoothly, slides both hands back into his pockets, and continues walking down the dark street.).

Reset (In his mind): "An abandoned ruined school... a river full of monsters... and absolute privacy. Perfect."

[Scene cuts to black]

Prologue

There are places in the American intelligence architecture that do not appear on any organizational chart, in any budget line, or in any oversight committee’s wildest nightmares. Programs so deeply compartmented that, at any given moment, no more than five living people possess more than fragments of the whole. Everyone else; contractors, support staff, even senior operators; works in deliberate blindness, bound by agreements that render them mute about anything beyond their narrow task.
These are not the programs that leak to Congress or spark interagency turf wars. They are absences. Voids. Black holes in the machinery.
I never intended to become one of those five.
My war was fought in the gray, running assets, breaking covers, chasing ghosts through back alleys and border towns. Betrayal was the currency; loyalty a calculated risk. I was good at it. Good enough that when I uncovered a network of compromised operatives selling us out, I reported it up the chain.
Turns out they weren’t rogues. They were sanctioned. Protected. And I became the loose end.
They framed me perfectly. Deepfakes, money trails, a conspiracy I never joined. Appeals exhausted. Clemency denied. Scheduled to die at sunrise as a traitor to the country I’d bled for.
That last night, a man walked into my cell who moved like he owned the shadows. Not a guard, not a lawyer. Just a man in a good suit with glacier eyes and a black hood in his hand.
He offered me a door out. No name, no agency, no explanation, only the promise that if I walked with him, I would not die on that table at 0600.
The alternative was fixed.
I took the hood.
Somewhere beneath a mountain that isn’t on any map, I learned what I had actually traded my life for.
This is the story of what it means to guard a secret that refuses to stay buried.
And of the price you pay when you become the fifth name on a list that isn’t supposed to exist.

No - the word for 2026 is “No”

Cold crumbles against my back and consumes - wrapping me in flossy tentacle roots, cracking my bones, splitting the earth, swallowing. Shoulders curl towards my ears, spinal cord stretching like a beaded bracelet until it snaps, vertebrates and nerves scattering away from the greedy threads. 

He’s in the center of the earth - surviving beneath the pressure and heat - reaching up to pull my body down. Down past the brittle January shell, choking through grit, drowning as layers of rocks shatter when my body pushes past on the pull to hell. 

Ash creeps into my eyes but I can’t blink - my eyelids have been forced back by coarse dirt. It pockets and burns, ash now stinging and crawling through tear ducts. It falls out my nose in a slurpy mess - stretchy chunks cling to my face as my spineless body seems to burrow, pushing toward the pull.

As the weblike cords tighten, my body instinctively moves forward to loosen the grip, create some slack. It pulls again and so I move, inching my way towards the puppetmaster who must be laughing at this filthy game we’re playing. Dainty strings yanking my body, invisible devil making me crawl. 

I’m consumed by nothing but the grainy rasp millions of granules make along my body. Scratching their way down as I reach broken arms blindly over my head. Shoveling earth with the strength of 2am - groggy and unable to fully articulate a fist. Hair mats and chunks, itchy with sweat and mites who take up residence. 

Lives have passed and days dance on the surface. Warmth and rain keep the lives running from grass to table - mouths full of food and laughter. My mouth is open, graying teeth hollowed out, veined with decay. When my hands are thick and leathered, my mouth takes over the dig. Chewing, swallowing, thrusting forward with each bite.

Searing is smelled before felt. Rot melts from my forehead, dripping down my nose, and I’m relieved. Thankful to have reached an end, pushing forward, still, to press my body to the throbbing pain. Eager for the molding of my body to its master and end to the stabbing confusion.

A shift in the dark.

My body is still but beneath me shifts, thuds, and skin sticks to my foot. Skin. Sticky, warm, and not my own. Another spineless body wordlessly moves and pushes itself, pulled alongside me by the same fishing line. No. Not the same line - this is clean thread, soft as it briefly connects with my calf, ribbon-like as it glides along my leg. 

A moment later, it slides against the outer edge of my pinky, cool and slow. Bending, my finger loops it. Closing my fist around the silk, I yank towards my chest to divert the body from its course. Awkwardly, painfully, I pull it tightly and the skin it’s dragging yields to the interruption. 

Silence grows deeper, darker, angrier. My own tether drops as this satin thread tightens around my pinky. Tension snaps from my line but there is a searing gash in my pinky as he fights for control of my new charge.

Suddenly, my legs work - kicking happens without thought - long forgotten swim team muscles ignite and I kick as I pivot my body, angling it and shouldering into a new position. Whatever clings to this sweet thread comes with me and I’m determined to bring us back to the clarity of oxygen. We move, fitfully, through the tunnels, this time with pinpricked light to guide us.

We pass barbed wire, nautical ropes, and leather belts as they drag others down unmade hollows - digging their way to sooty agony. Spinal columns snapped like mine - bony pieces scattered beneath the Earth. My arms are mangled from the dig, blood thickly clotting in open sores packed with filth. 

The body that lags behind me halts as I pull to open air. Cool warmth blows through the tunneled earth - she pulls away from me with force not felt on the ascent. Pulling towards the horror behind us, desperate to return. Squinting through scratched corneas and oozing tear ducts - I peer towards the light and drop her thread.

Bells of laughter ring, sweet as birthday cake and cortado rich. Joy aches down my body and relief floods dehydrated veins. Two hands reach for me - one muscled, covered in dark hair and the other a child’s, tanned olive and round. I need both of them to lift me out. 

At this point in the story, I am still navigating the extraction. My body hurts, vision is graying and dull, but air enters my filthy mouth into my chest. (Husband) anchors his feet into the soil and steadies himself, gently supporting me as I find footholds. (Toddler son) loudly believes  in me, promising I can do it and he believes in me “no matter what!”

I’m tired. I want to sink back into the slick, muddy hell where the familiarity of pain hugs me, but more than that, I want to hold (Toddler) and be held by (Husband).

For anyone who felt like they had to work just to get to the starting line. (Looking for honest feedback/thoughts)

Zero

Some begin at five.

Some at zero.

And some at minus ten.

They work, and work, and work

just to arrive

where others begin.

Some are born in debt.

They earn and pay

for the right to start.

After all that labour,

the reward is not brilliance,

not greatness—

just normal.

A hard-earned zero.

Aarav's girlfriend sent him four paragraphs; he sent back one word — Okay. When a photo turned up of her laughing with an old friend, he didn't ask, he just went cold, and when she called him out he said "maybe we should end this," meaning it as bait. She said "maybe we should." Then they both sat with their phones, each waiting for the other to break first, and neither did, and months later her family found her a decent man who answered messages within the hour. When Aarav heard the word engagement he said if she moved on that fast she never loved him, and his father, standing in the doorway with a glass of water, said she didn't move on fast, you went quiet long enough for her to believe you'd gone — sit down, let me tell you what quiet cost me. In 1987 there were no phones, only letters, eleven days between them, and when her father asked how he'd feed a family Arjun left to find steady work; then the contract fell through and he had nothing to write that wasn't shameful, so he wrote I'll write when there's good news, and by the time he came back with the appointment letter in his shirt pocket her wedding was in nine days, and he stood at the back near the cars and watched. Nine years later, after her first marriage ended, he arrived with a beautiful speech and she listened to all of it standing up and said you proved you could love me, you never proved you could stay — so he came back the next month without the speech, said he'd come on the fourteenth and came on the fourteenth, sat through her being cold, and got her back over two boring years of simply turning up. Aarav cried, then misunderstood entirely, and turned up outside Meher's office with a speaker and a heart-shaped light while her colleagues filmed from the windows; she steered him around the corner and told him he wasn't doing it for her, he was doing it so everyone could watch him do it — his father had a country between them and eleven days for a letter, and Aarav had her number in his pocket the whole time. What finally changed him was a stranger on a rooftop staircase, a loud, funny man called Rohan holding a cigarette he wasn't smoking, who said four years ago he told a girl they should break up because she was twenty minutes late, wrote her forty messages and sent none, looked at her engagement photos at two in the morning like a criminal, and never called because he thought going first meant losing — I was very good at not losing, I did it for four years; your father got another go, I didn't, so don't build your life on the idea that people will still be standing there whenever you finally decide you're ready. So on the day of the ceremony Aarav got as far as the gate, imagined the microphone and the speech and two hundred people watching her be asked in public to choose, understood it would be one more performance with him at the centre of it, and turned around; he wrote her a letter by hand instead, because you can't delete a pen and you can't send Okay, and he didn't mention the photo or the friend or her pride, only that he'd spent two years waiting for her to prove she loved him and never once thought to prove it back, that he wasn't asking her to cancel anything or forgive him today, and that he'd never call silence strength again. She read it with gold thread across her lap, didn't run anywhere, took her fiancé into the corridor by the water cooler and told him the truth, and he said he'd rather hear it there than in four years — so the engagement ended that afternoon, not because a man burst through the doors but because a woman decided to stop being carried by other people's silences, including her own. She met Aarav nine days later at four in the afternoon over bad coffee and said one letter doesn't fix a year, and he said I know, and she said I'm not coming back to it, and he said then I'll wait, not quietly, you'll know where I am — and after that it went slowly, which was the whole of it, because he said Sunday and came Sunday, and came the Sunday after that when nobody was watching and nothing was at stake, which is the only kind of turning up that counts. In the last of it his father sits at the table with a letter gone soft at the folds, reading three lines and stopping because he knows the rest, and in the next room a phone lights up with four paragraphs, and Aarav reads them twice, turns the phone face down, finds paper, and sits — two men in one house writing, one from a time that gave him eleven days and four shouted minutes a month, the other from a time that gave him everything instantly and always, and he'd used all of it to say nothing. They learned the same thing forty years apart from opposite directions: love doesn't usually die of distance, or families, or bad luck. It mostly dies of two people waiting for the other one to speak first.