It’s noisy.
It’s the sensation of a scream—not a sound yet, not a cry, just the awful, violent build of one. A scream so massive it has to root itself in bone before it can be born.
I can’t breathe.
I try. My mouth opens and my lungs stretch, but nothing fills them.
The sound inside me grows louder.
The lights flicker.
My knees hit tile. Cold floods through me, yet it doesn’t anchor. I curl in on myself, head to the floor, hands over my ears like that’ll block out the inside.
There’s no blocking this.
It’s coming from the part of me that remembers something I don’t.
My jaw locks. My back arches. My body reacts to something I can’t name. A warning. A pull. A knowing. I open my mouth wider, as wide as I can, willing the sound out—willing anything out—but there’s nothing.
Not yet.
Only the silence between lightning and thunder. Only the beat before the world gives way.
And then I see it in the mirror behind me.
A figure. A man, maybe. Tall. Pale. Smoke drifting off his shoulders in thin threads like heat distortion. His face is shadowed, mouth a dark line, eyes unreadable.
I blink once.
He’s gone.
The mirror is empty.
Except for me.
Still open-mouthed.
Still wide-eyed.
Still hollow.
I stay on the floor a long time.
The pressure fades, eventually. Slowly. Like it’s backing off…not because it’s gone, because it’s waiting.
Waiting for something I haven’t given it yet.
My throat feels bruised. My limbs are trembling.
I stare at my reflection again, this time from the floor.
She’s still looking past me.
Still quiet.
Still not done.
And I know… I know… this isn’t over.
