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P A R A I D O L I A

Perceptual Contamination

Seeing meaning where none exists.

𖼿 ⟆ ⨙ ⌇

I The RED String

⧉ ⨀ ⩔⧉°

The rain was a relentless veil, smearing the city into a distorted dream. Lights bleeding into shadows, streets shifting like something half-remembered. It pounded against the pavement, rhythmic and deafening, a cruel metronome to the chaos in Simon’s skull. The taste of ash clung to the air, regret thick on his tongue. Water streaked down his face, mixing with sweat, maybe tears. Each drop stung. Sharp, cold, invasive, like tiny needles burrowing into his skin. He pulled his coat tighter, but the damp had already settled into his bones, the same way grief had since Sarah’s funeral.

The city exhaled smog, thick and greasy, warping neon signs into grotesque parodies of joy. Every fractured color sneered at him. Shadows stretched unnaturally beneath the streetlights, shifting, watching, twisting the familiar into something hostile.

His apartment loomed ahead. A crumbling relic of neglect, rising into the sky like a monument to every broken thing. The entrance gaped open, a black void swallowing what little light remained. Inside, the air was heavy. Stale linens, old cigarettes, the kind of loneliness that clings to walls. He climbed the stairs, every step an effort, every creak a reminder of something fragile about to give way.

A bottle sat waiting on the third step. A familiar presence.

Later, he told himself. Not yet.

His apartment was on the fourth floor. He stopped outside Sarah8s door first. A habit. Reflexive. A ghost limb twitching in memory. Nausea coiled in his gut. The bile crept up his throat. He reached for the flask. The metal was cold against his fingers, shaking. The whiskey burned. A brief reprieve. Then nothing. Just the dull ache settling back in.

Later, he told himself. Later, I’ll go through her things. Later, I’ll face the silence that still screams her name. When I’m ready. When I’m brave enough.

Home was an extension of his mind. Messy. Dim. Suffocating with Sarah’s absence. Books spilled from the shelves, their spines cracked, their pages whispering stories no one would finish. Paintings leaned against walls, vibrant once, now dulled by dust. Every canvas an accusation. Half-finished projects cluttered every surface. A life cut short.

The smell of stale cigarettes clung to everything. Thick. Stifling. It wove itself into his clothes, his skin, the marrow of his bones. Dust hung in the air, carrying a faint metallic tang. Regret tasted the same. From the bathroom, a dripping faucet kept time. An offbeat rhythm. A slow, mocking countdown to the moment he finally broke.

Sarah’s jazz records teetered in a careless stack by the player. The grooves were smooth, worn down by time, by love, by too many nights spent lost in the melody of each other. Each note now was a ghost he could never escape. He moved without thought. His body knew the way. The bottom drawer. The bottle. His knees ached as he knelt, but the sharper sting was in his chest. The whiskey swirled in the glass, catching the dim light like a dying ember. A cheap imitation of warmth.

Beneath some old books he noticed an edge sticking out. Tucked away under years of distraction. He instinctively pulled at it and a photograph slid out. A photograph….of Sarah, mid-laugh. Eyes bright. A moment frozen in time, pristine. Untouched by the absence she left behind. And that was his cue, he raised his glass, the whiskey trembled at the rim,

“To you… love.” A pause. Silence between the cracks in his voice. “I still don’t understand...”

The whiskey trembled at the rim, just a tilt away from its oblivion. Just a shy away… When something snagged his attention. Not too loud. Not too obvious. Subtle. Dilute. Wrong. Misplaced. His grip faltered. The glass wavered.

There was something scrawled on the back of the picture. The ink was smudged, like the letters had been written in a hurry. But before the weight of that ⊗ could settle in his mind, something else happened.. A thin crimson thread, stuck flat against the back of the photograph, detached itself. Not peeled away. Not tugged loose. It simply…fell off. Like it had been waiting for him to see it. Like it had been held there by something unseen, no glue, some invisible charge. And the second his gaze landed on it… his breath stilled. Time folded in on itself. The thread drifted, weightless, caught in the golden haze of dust motes swirling through the light. Falling slowly, deliberately. The room itself held its breath.

Had it been there before? The thought clawed at him, violently in its urgency. The police had scoured every inch of this place, combing through Sarah’s absence with clinical precision. If this had been here, they would have logged it. Tagged it n8 Bagged it. Right? His pulse quickened with every new question, a sluggish dread seeping through his veins like ink in water. Just a thread. Just a stray fiber. Nothing more.

He forced himself to look away, to shove the unease into the same locked room in the back of his mind, where he kept grief, and doubts, the unanswered questions. Just his mind playing tricks. Just the weight of too many sleepless nights. Except it was too stark. Too clean. Too unique to be random. A single, careful cut of color in a world leeched of it. The weight of it pressed into his skull, nameless and immense. It wasn’t a chance. It wasn’t an accident. This didn’t belong here. A thread with intention. A message? A promise?

His fingers twitched at his side. His mouth was dry. The silence felt heavier now, like the apartment was listening… Watching. Neat could really help now. A shudder curled through him, deep and marrow-cold.

Who had been in Sarah’s apartment? And Why?

He hesitated. His hand hovered over the photograph, fingers trembling, breath uneven. The air felt thicker now, charged with something unseen, something waiting. A war raged beneath his skin. Grief, exhaustion, fear.

Let it go. Forget. Drown it in whiskey and let the world blur at the edges.

His eyes scour for the bottle and then… something else. A whisper of defiance, a buried instinct clawing its way back to the surface. Follow the thread. See where it leads.

Simon was always impulsive, so he reached out, even knowing that he probably shouldn’t. The moment his fingers brushed the thread, his skin crawled, a visceral, sickening sensation like touching something not meant to be touched. The fibers were coarse, biting into his fingertips, almost... resisting. It had no weight, was smooth, and had zing against its pattern. Unraveling right before his eyes and slipping free like it had been waiting to.

A thread, yes... but not just a thread. A piece of a puzzle, pulled loose, frayed at the edges. A severed line in an unseen pattern. A lifeline cut short. It reminded him of the loss that scars. It reminded him of Sarah. He lifted it, held it up to the dim light, heart hammering in his chest. It glowed. Not a reflection. Not a trick of the eye. A soft, pulsing luminescence of a dying fire. His breath hitched. His ears rang with the weight of silence, a silence so thick it felt…wrong.

Then…

A whisper. Close. Too close.

Not sound, not exactly. More like an imprint, something brushing against the edges of his mind, thin, fractured, distant. Trying, struggling…to reach him. Screeching through tinnitus, a broken voice wrapped in distort, slipped between the cracks and into his reality.

—------------wrong—----------- loo—----------–

A jolt of pure electricity shot through him, every nerve ending burning white-hot. His grip tightened on the thread.

The hell was that? Wrong loop? What loop?

He gasped, dropping the thread as if it had burned him, his hand recoiling in shock. The whisper was gone, leaving only the relentless monotone of his mind and the thrashing rain echoing through the silence of his apartment. The oppressive weight of his grief and the gnawing certainty that he was no longer alone. What was that? He glanced around, his eyes darting from shadow to shadow, every corner of the room suddenly looked menacing, every familiar object transformed into threat. The grief, the whiskey, the exhaustion, they were all getting to him, conjuring phantoms from the depths of his despair. It had to be.

But deep down, he knew it was more than that. Sarah’s death, the thread, the whispers, the growing sense of unease. They were all connected somehow. Something was happening, something sinister and inexplicable and he didn’t understand it. He turned the thread over in his fingers, feeling it. It didn’t pulse, but it made his stomach churn. Ridiculous. It didn’t hum with anything unnatural. And yet, holding it, he felt... watched.

His jaw tightened. He set the thread down, exhaling low, steady. The whiskey called to him, a promising silence, erasure, even if not closure.

Maybe later.

He sat there stuck in thought, and just stared at it, the thread resting against the desk like a loose nerve waiting to be pulled.

I The Last Recording

⊡ ⨀⊡ °

A tiny thread lay coiled on Simon's desk like a giant sleeping serpent, a silent challenge. Its red fibers gleaming under the dim light of his desk lamp. He swiveled in his chair, the worn leather creaking beneath him, his gaze fixed on his laptop, the screen reflecting the anxious lines etched onto his face. Sarah’s voicemail. Sarah's last voicemail. Simon couldn’t shake the feeling that it was vital to something, that it could somehow grant him some kind of closure. His gut wouldn’t let it go.

The clock on the wall read 1:07 am.

Then, without any sound, the minute hand pulled backward. 1:06. Simon blinked, rubbing his eyes. Had he imagined that? When he looked again,

It read 1:07 am.

Fatigue, he thought... Just fatigue.

His apartment had become something else. A makeshift lab. A sanctuary of grief and obsession. Dust motes drifted in the air, illuminated by the glow of the computer screen. The hum of standby machines pressed against the silence, the acrid scent of burnt-out desires clinging to the pale walls.

Sarah’s recording loomed on his laptop. A digital ghost. A fragmented echo of the woman he loved. He ran a hand through his hair, the strands dry and brittle from too many sleepless nights, too much time lost in the blur between memory and obsession. Fatigue gnawed at him, warping the edges of his perception, making it difficult to think, to breathe.

He clicked on the audio file, bracing for the static, for the broken words, for the sound of her voice crawling its way out through the interference. But instead a ssssssssshsssssssassssssssshsssssssssassssssssshsssssssssssssasssssssssssssssssssssssss filled the room, sharp and endless, stretching out like something alive, something laughing. The sound crackled against his ears, a wall of white noise swallowing everything.

And then…

A flicker. A voice. Sarah’s.

Almost.

Simon pressed play again.

“Simo^%E%E^%E^^%^%I%^$&^* they*^&(*^&$#%*it’s co|________________

Then, nothing.

The silence that followed was worse than the static. Worse than the gaps. Because it wasn’t just absence…it felt…deliberate. A void sculpted with intent? Something had cut her off, not just in the message, but before the words had even formed.

His jaw clenched. His fingers dug into the wood of the desk, nails scraping against the grain. The frustration was familiar now, a dull, corrosive thing that had been eating through him for weeks, but this was something else. This was anger. Raw. Unfiltered. The kind that made his hands tremble, his breath catch, his vision tunnel.

He slammed his fist down, a hollow, unsatisfying sound against the desk’s surface. The apartment absorbed it, swallowed it whole, and gave him nothing back. Not even an echo. The silence here wasn’t natural. It was something deeper. Hungrier. His gaze flicked to the thread still coiled near the laptop, red against the dark wood. He picked it up again, rolling it between his fingers, feeling its texture, its weight. There was nothing remarkable about it. Nothing at all. But it had been stuck to Sarah’s picture. It had fallen the moment he saw it. And now, it sat here…ordinary… Meaningless.

Except it wasn’t. Simon didn’t believe in coincidences. Never did. The message wasn’t enough. It couldn’t be a plea or a farewell. It didn’t sound anything like it. It must be a message.

Something was missing. Something had been erased. Was she trying to tell me something?

That very moment made him realize he wasn’t looking for closure anymore. He was looking for the hole where the truth used to be.

Simon leaned in, jaw tight, breath shallow. The words weren’t just sounds. They were artifacts. Echoes of something that should have been whole, now shattered, scattered in the static like bones beneath shifting sands. He pushed the software harder, stretching the limits of clarity, dragging sliders past their intended thresholds. His laptop’s fan whined in protest, the screen flickering under the weight of the demand. He barely noticed. Every second, every adjustment, felt like prying open a locked door with bare hands.

"They know&%#^%$about the|_____|the%^*&%$&"

A hitch in her breath. A pause too deliberate to be…meaningless.

"Don^ trus^&%#^%^yone#%dam&^%&^%^*&$&%#$%^^&*^*&*^$#@$##^"

Then the static surged back, violent and absolute, swallowing her voice whole. His heart pounded against the insides of his ribs.

Simon closed his eyes, rewinding the message in his mind, playing the fractured syllables over and over, dissecting the gaps, the hesitations, the urgency buried beneath them. The missing pieces weren’t lost. They had been…taken. Scrubbed clean.

By who?

His fingers hovered over the controls, itching to keep going, to dig deeper, to drag every last syllable back into the light. But another voice, one far quieter, one far closer, whispered at the edge of his thoughts.

Some things aren’t meant to be found.

Simon hit play again.

And then he heard it. A second voice, buried beneath the static and Sarah’s own terrified words, a subtle anomaly that sent a shiver down his spine, like a discordant note in the symphony of terror. It was low, guttural, and distorted, almost inhuman, in violation of natural order. He isolated the frequency, got rid of the whitenoise, amplifying it until it became a grotesque parody of speech, a monstrous whisper that seemed to emanate from the very walls of his apartment.

And then he noticed something else. Something…impossible. The timestamp was wrong.

Sarah’s call had come through at 2:37 AM. He remembered the moment with absolute certainty, remembered jolting awake to the vibration of his phone, the way her name, blurred with sleep, had filled his screen. But the metadata told a different story.

4:12 AM.

An hour and thirty-five minutes after the call had already happened. After Sarah was already dead. Simon’s pulse spiked. His mind scrambled for an explanation, but none of them made sense. Voicemails didn’t time-travel. Data didn’t rewrite itself. Yet, there it was. Cold, clinical proof that something wasn’t right.

He checked again. Re-downloaded the file. Compared it to the backup he’d stored on his laptop. Same discrepancy. Same impossible gap in time.

His breath became shallow, his fingers tightened around his phone. The screen flickered as he scrolled back through the call log, his breath slowing. His fingers hovered over the screen, a sickening chill settling in his gut. He blinked. The voicemail was… gone. Not archived. Not moved. Just didn’t exist.

His pulse thudded in his ears. His mind racing, grasping at explanations, but none of them held. He just listened to it. He had pulled words from it with his own ears. It was real.

Wasn’t it?

He searched again. Nothing. His backup storage, his cloud sync, nothing. No trace. Like it had never existed. A sharp, electric pain shot through him.

Did he delete it by mistake? No, impossible. He was careful. Methodical. Even if he had, there would be a record, a fragment left behind, some history. But there wasn’t. His thoughts turned inward, spiraling. Had he imagined it? Could exhaustion play tricks that vivid? He shut his eyes, trying to recall the exact moment he first played it back. The static. The tremor in her voice. The way it felt like she was speaking from the other side of something vast and unknowable.

They know.

Sarah had left him that message. And now, someone…had taken it away. Had to be someone else. Simon slowly placed his phone on the desk, careful, as if it might shatter under the weight of the realization settling over him. The room suddenly felt too small, the walls pressing in, the air thick with something he couldn’t name. This wasn’t just about some lost voicemail…someone was listening.

Sarah’s voice had reached him from the past. But somewhere, in the black box of unknown forces, somehow…the record had changed. Probably just a glitch, he thought, rubbed his eyes, trying to squeeze the exhaustion out. But as he scrolled through his call history, the unease grew. Her last real call was the next morning. And the voicemail… disappeared. I am too tired for this, he thought to himself, rubbing his eyes, trying to ignore the nagging feeling that something was terribly wrong, that the universe was covertly morphing around him. Sarah had died on the 14th, the next day.

The world around him seemed to lurch, as if reality itself had buckled under the weight of that impossible fact. Sent after she died. Simon’s vision blurred for a moment, a surge of a series of vertigo dips darting through him. His fingers tightened around his phone, the cold glass grounding him, anchoring him against the unraveling thread of logic in his mind. He forced himself to think, to dissect, to rationalize. But every notion he had, every path he could sought led him back to the same impossible conclusion. Sarah had sent him a message from beyond the grave.

No. No, that’s not possible.

He exhaled sharply, rubbing his temples, forcing his pulse to steady. There had to be an explanation. A delay in the system, a quirk in the carrier’s servers…something. But the rational part of his mind was already crumbling under the weight of the creeping, primal certainty that nestled in the pit of his stomach. Something had changed. Not just the message. The record itself. He understood data loss but this…this didn’t make any sense.

A memory surfaced unbidden. He had seen the metadata. Not now, but when he first transferred the file. A fleeting glance, the timestamp barely registering as he moved it between devices. He hadn’t questioned it then, hadn’t needed to. But now…? It was gone. Erased. The voicemail itself had vanished, swallowed into some void where proof of the impossible doesn’t get to exist. His pulse hammered in his ears.

If the past could be rewritten, even in something as small as a voicemail…

what else had changed?

The room suddenly went cold and quiet. Too quiet. The kind of silence that presses against your eardrums, that lets you hear the slow, rhythmic drum of your own heart. He swallowed hard, his gaze flicking toward the darkened window. For the first time since Sarah had died, Simon felt truly, utterly alone. Or worse… Watched.

Suddenly, a realization crashed into him with the force of a collapsing star, stealing the breath from his lungs, twisting his insides with an icy grip. It wasn’t just impossible. It seemed deliberate. Someone…had orchestrated this. Planned it. The implications were there. They clawed at his sanity, threatening to tear it apart.

What had Sarah been involved in? What had she known?

A pit yawned open in his stomach. This wasn’t just grief twisting his perception. This was real. Calculated. His mind spiraled into a labyrinth of unanswered questions, each more sinister than the last. Had she left him breadcrumbs? A message she knew someone would try to erase? A message from the grave? He felt the walls closing in, suffocating, as the unease in his gut solidified into certainty. He wasn’t supposed to have heard that voicemail. Simon’s grip on his phone tightened. And then…

A sharp [KNOCKNOCK]. His breath caught. His body froze.

The sound sliced through the silence like a scalpel, precise but wrong. His head snapped up, heart slamming against his insides. Someone was at the door. Paranoia hit like a bullet train. His pulse roared in his ears. His eyes flicked to the shadows stretching long across the walls, his mind racing through a million possibilities.

The knock came again. Louder. Harder. It wasn’t polite. It wasn’t a question. It was a demand. And as the sound reverberated through his apartment, it hit him. It matched the rhythm of the distorted voice in the recording. And before he could finish wrapping up that thought…

The door handle began to turn.

II The Empty Canvas

⧉ ⨀ ⌖ ⧉ °

Simon’s pulse pounded in his ears. He swallowed hard, his mind whirling, the whisper of something impossible still clinging to the edges of his thoughts. The voice in Sarah’s message, the distorted rhythm of the knock, was it all connected? Or just trick of a tiring mind? Or had something followed that thread beyond the grave, crawling underneath the skin of his reality?

His fingers tightened. Slowly, carefully, he cracked the door open, the hinges groaning like a reluctant confession. A dim sliver of hallway light bled through, illuminating the shape of a figure standing just beyond.

Mrs. Abernathy… The tension in his shoulders worsened.

She stood there motionless, swaddled in an oversized floral housecoat, its clashing colors an assault on his already frayed nerves. The sight was jarring, almost surreal, a lurid patchwork of normalcy in a night that had twisted away from it. Her steel-gray hair was pinned into a severe bun, each strand meticulously in place, a stark contrast to the deep lines carving her face. A roadmap of decades spent watching, listening, collecting unspoken sins of the neighborhood.

In her hands, she cradled a plate wrapped in plastic. The crinkled cellophane caught the flickering light, warping the reflection into something jagged and unreadable, obscuring whatever lay beneath.

Simon’s stomach tightened. The unease was irrational…this was just Mrs. Abernathy, the same woman who scolded kids for running too fast in the hallways. Who overwatered her ferns, who always had something warm to offer when someone was grieving. And yet…the way she stood, so still, so expectant. Something about her gnawed at him. The silence stretched. Then, in a voice barely above a whisper, she said,

" You should not have opened that message, Simon. "

His breath caught. His lungs locked. The air between them seemed to shift, growing heavier, pressing down on him. And then…just as suddenly…it was gone. Her face smoothed over in an instant, her expression brightening like a flicked switch. The change was so abrupt, so unnatural, it sent chills down his soul.

Cutting through she asked, “Simon, dear, are you alright?” seeming genuinely worried. The softness in her tone seemed like a perfect mask, so warm, so gentle. As if she hadn't just uttered something that sent ice curling through his veins. If it was an act, it was well rehearsed.

Simon barely found his voice. “I…I’m fine, Mrs. Abernathy.” It felt like a lie. Like a test he hadn’t realized he was taking. Her thick lenses caught the dim hallway light as she peered past him into the apartment, her gaze darting over the mess—the overturned books, the tangled thread coiled on his desk. Cataloging. Searching. “Sarah was such a lovely girl,” she murmured. Simon barely swallowed the residual shock from her whisper still rattling through him, but she continued as if nothing had happened, her voice dripping with a saccharine sweetness that set his teeth on edge.

“Always so quiet, so polite. But lately…”

She leaned in, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial hush. The scent of lavender and mothballs coiled around him like a shroud. “Lately, she’d been acting strangely. Talking to herself. Muttering about things I couldn’t understand.” Simon’s fingers curled into his palm. “And always looking over her shoulder,” she went on, her eyes catching his, her voice dipping just slightly. “Like someone was watching her.” Then, A pause. Too long. Too precise. And almost an accusation, “You noticed that too, didn’t you?” The question hung in the air for a while, heavy with implication, a subtle accusation that lodged itself deep within Simon’s subconscious. The seed of doubt.

A knot tightened in his stomach, a cold numbness spreading through his limbs like poison. A creeping, insidious thing. Perhaps a premonition.

Was it true?

Had Sarah been hiding something? Burdened by a secret she couldn’t share? Or was Mrs. Abernathy simply embellishing, feeding on the neighborhood’s endless appetite for gossip and twisting the truth to fit their own narratives?

Simon felt something shift inside him. A slow unraveling. He was beginning to question everything, to doubt the very fabric of reality, to lose his grip on the world around him. Slowly. But surely.

No. No, that’s ridiculous.

“I think… she was just stressed, Mrs. Abernathy. She had a lot on her plate.” His voice was even. Measured. A carefully constructed lie, designed to protect himself. To protect Sarah’s memory. To cling to normalcy, to pretend that things still made sense.

“Thank you for your concern, Abby but I’m fine...really…I'm ok. Thanks again..”

He started to close the door, eager to shut her out, to escape her prying eyes, to retreat into the suffocating safety of his apartment. “Oh, well, alright, dear.” Her voice was sweet, but there was something else beneath it, something unsatisfied. She hesitated. Then, just as the gap was narrowing she thrust a plate forward. The plastic wrap crinkled with a mischievous rustle. “Here. I baked you this pot pie.” Simon stared at it. His hands hesitated before accepting it, if only to end this interaction already. The cellophane felt strangely slick against his skin. Mrs. Abernathy smiled, but her eyes flickered past him, trying to catch one last glimpse of something over his shoulder. Like I was hiding her body. Sarah’s decaying body. Sarah… “Just in case you get hungry while you’re… working.” breaking his thought, “Though, I don’t know what someone would be working on so late.” A saccharine chuckle. “So good to see you getting back on your feet!” Simon said nothing. He closed the door quickly, the click of the lock echoing in the silence.

Simon placed the pie on a nearby table, deliberately avoiding it, as if it were contaminated. As if merely looking at it might taint him in some unseen way. Or perhaps if he let his gaze linger too long his sorrow would bleed into the simple, quiet joy of a warm meal, corrupting it. Before he could finish that thought, something caught his eye. A painting. Sarah’s. His breath hitched as his gaze locked onto it. A chaotic swirl of color and texture seething against the pale sterility of the room. It felt like an intrusion, a rupture in the fabric of space and time, as though it didn’t belong to this world at all.

The last thing Sarah had worked on. Her final expression. A testament to her talent, her creativity. Or so he thought. He stepped closer. His fingers hovered over the surface before pressing lightly against the paint. A sharp prickle ran up his arm. A vibration. A buzz barely there, but undeniable.

The texture felt... wrong. Thicker than it should have been. As though the paint had hardened into something denser, unnatural. More like a shell than pigment on canvas.

Something was beneath it. Hidden. Concealed. A thought took root. A spark of reckless, desperate curiosity.

What if this wasn’t just a painting? What if Sarah had left something behind? Buried in the layers of color, perhaps a message locked beneath the chaos on the surface. His pulse quickened. Simon swallowed hard.

There was only one way to find out.

The palette knife felt cold and sharp in Simon’s trembling hand as he pressed the edge against the painting. A single, hesitant stroke. Then another. A layer peeled away like dead skin, flaking off in thick, brittle curls.

Beneath it…nothing.

A smooth, untouched surface stared back at him, pristine and unmarked, mocking his anticipation. His heart pounded, a violent rhythm of excitement and dread.This was a lie. A facade, meticulously constructed to conceal something…or erase it.

Simon’s movements grew desperate, aggressive. He scraped harder, faster, dragging the blade across the canvas with controlled fury. Paint crumbled, disintegrated, fell away like the remnants of a shattered illusion. His arm burned with exertion, his breath ragged. Still, nothing. A void stretched before him. Taunting, hollow. Sarah hadn’t just painted something. She hid it.

He staggered back, his pulse a frantic drumbeat of confusion. What had she hidden? Why erase it? Simon turned sharply, tearing into Sarah’s supplies. Drawers slammed open, their contents spilling out in a chaotic mess of brushes, tubes of oil paint, half-finished sketches. His hands clawed through everything, grasping, searching, shoving aside useless scraps.

Nothing.

Absolutely. Nothing. A bare, worn, measly canvas.

His chest tightened. No. There had to be something here. What is this canvas? Why is it so different? His fingers brushed against its edges feeling the wood, when…

“..click..”

an edge dislodged and revealed a panel. A compartment. Too big for art supplies. Simon’s breath hitched. This wasn’t a canvas at all. It was a wooden box. With a trembling hand, he pried it open. Inside, tucked away in the darkness, was a single scrap of paper. But the paper was old. Ancient in some books. And on that paper,

A sketch..

He pulled it out with reverence.. The graphite lines were jagged, uneven, hurried, desperate. On the paper was a hastily scrawled image, drawn with an unsteady hand. Not her finest artwork.. Not even good enough to store from her own standards.

The sketch depicted Sarah and himself standing before a building he couldn’t comprehend. Simon’s breath hitched. He blinked, shook his head…tried again. A towering structure, its angles impossible, its geometry unnatural. Every line defied the laws of physics, a grotesque mockery of architecture. It wasn’t even just unfamiliar—it was wrong. A place that could not exist. Not in this realm, to say the least. The air around it seemed to twist, distort, suffocate. The atmosphere was heavy, crushing weight of an unseen menace, an unspoken tale woven into every chaotic stroke of Sarah’s pencil.

Yet… he didn’t remember this place. And he didn’t understand what she was saying.

He and Sarah had spent years together. Every moment. Every memory shared.

…So why didn’t he recognize it?

A gaping hole yawned in his past where familiarity should be. No recollection. No context. Just a gaping void of nothing. Like a piece carved out of his mind, leaving only the chill of something deliberately erased. Had Sarah known something he didn’t? Or worse… maybe he just couldn’t remember it.

Panic coiled in his gut as he dove into architectural books, online databases, archives. Searching. He scoured and devoured everything. Clawing through pages, flipping through images, hunting for anything that resembled the impossible structure. To no surprise, there was nothing he could find on it. Obviously. Look at it. It should not exist. Is Sarah showing me something… or mocking me?

No records. No history. Not a single mention of this style, this design, not even anything close to what's considered acceptable for art these days. And if that place was real, it wasn’t here on earth. And it also couldn’t be in a place that shared our universe’s dynamics. And now that didn’t make any sense.

His head began to throb now. His vision started to swim. The edges of his reality frayed like with a thousand orbs eating away the tapestry of his reality in slow, silent dissolution. His world began to tilt, like a ship through some rough seas. Mrs. Abernathy’s words surfaced in his mind, a whisper, then doubt slithered beneath his skin. "You should not have opened that message". Over and over like the end of a record. Was he falling apart, or was she? Too far gone for the both of them.

He pressed his eyes shut, trying to clear his head, to dispel the growing unease that gnawed at the edges of his mind. He needed to focus. To make sense of these things. These clues. To find a way out of this labyrinth of loss and unraveling reality. The empty canvas. The impossible building. The lost voicemail. The unresolved messages, the unhearing sounds. They were connected…somehow. Pieces like a puzzle just beyond his comprehension. Mrs. Abernathy’s words lingered in his thoughts.

That happened? Right?

The doubt began festering, refusing to settle. He placed the red thread carefully on his desk, watching as it caught the dim glow of the lamp, its crimson fibers gleaming like something alive. Something intelligent. A trick of the light can only go so far, he told himself. But then… it moved. Not much. Just the faintest, a pulse like a heartbeat, as if something unseen thrummed beneath its surface.

His breath hitched. He wanted to reach out, to test it, to know for sure. But exhaustion settled over him like a leaden weight. His mind was frayed, thoughts sluggish, eyes heavy, gut wrenched in curiosity. But curiosity warred with fatigue, fatigue always wins. That night just on the cusp of unconsciousness…

A rustling. Faint. Subtle. Fabric dragging against wood.

He stirred, still half-dreaming, his senses sluggish but alert. A soft scraping noise. A shift. Something moving. His desk. His pulse spiked. For a moment, he lay frozen, heart hammering in his throat, listening. Then… it stopped. Silence. Thick. Suffocating. Unbroken. When he finally pulled the courage in himself to turn over, the room went absolutely still. The air stopped. Dust seemed like it just hung suspended. Like a still frame. Shadows clung hard to the corners, undisturbed. Breathing. Now almost like a memory. Felt like deja vu only that…it wasn’t. It couldn’t have happened before. Could it? Unease lingered, a wrongness settling deep in his gut but eventually, sleep overtook the strongest of him. And under those circumstances, and all those pieces lying around, rest was, indeed, of grave necessity. Especially for the surprise that awaited him at the crack of dawn.

The thread was gone. Not misplaced. Not moved. Gone. There was no draft between those godforsaken walls. There was no breeze that cleaned out the sorrow. It was not there. He looked through every nook and cranny of his room, even outside the room. Nothing. It was gone. ‘Vanished into thin air’ began to make a lot more sense.

Panic clawed its way up his throat as he tore through his apartment. Rummaging through books, overturning boxes, pulling out each drawer, cleaning out each crevice. His fingers shook as he checked the desk again. The floor. The bed. His pockets.

Nothing. What thread?

And what lingering illusion that you are not losing your mind?

III The Missing Package

𐬶 ⨀ ⍥ ⌖ ⫷⫸

August 10th began with an unsettling normalcy for Sarah Mercer. Sunlight, fractured by the sheer curtains that striped her apartment, illuminating the familiar dance of dust in the air. She woke to the comforting ritual of Debussy playing on her vintage record player, the gentle melody of "Clair de Lune" a fragile shield against the growing sense of dread that had taken root in her mind, a subtle discord that disturbed the harmony of her life. As she prepared her morning coffee, the rich aroma usually a source of solace and inspiration, she found herself jumpier than usual, her hands trembling as she measured the grounds, glancing nervously at the windows, feeling eyes on her that weren8t there, the unsettling sensation of being watched intensifying with each passing moment. She picked up her sketchbook, hoping to ground herself in the familiar act of creation, to lose herself in the world of lines and colors, but her hand trembled, the lines wavering and uneven. No sense of Any resolve.

Around midday, a sharp knock echoed through her apartment, shattering the fragile peace and sending a jolt of adrenaline through her veins. Sarah frowned, her heart skipping a beat. She wasn8t expecting anyone, no unwelcome intrusions into her increasingly isolated world. She cracked the door slightly to peer through, a figure standing in the hallway - a young man dressed in a nondescript grey uniform that seemed too generic to be real. He held a small, square package, its plain brown cardboard tied with rough twine, and a picture of unremarkable anonymity. No logo, no return address, nothing to indicate its origin or purpose.

She hesitated, her hand hovering over the doorknob, her mind racing with possibilities, each one more unsettling than the last. The courier shifted uncomfortably, his posture stiff and unnatural, his eyes darting nervously away from the door as if he were afraid to be seen. The silence stretched, amplifying her apprehension, the ticking of the clock on the wall seeming to grow louder with each passing second. Finally, steeling herself, she opened the door a crack, her hand trembling as she reached for the latch. The courier thrust the package towards her, avoiding eye contact, his movements jerky and unnatural, as if he were a marionette controlled by unseen strings. He didn8t say a word, no greeting, no signature request, just turned and hurried away, his footsteps fading quickly down the hallway with a strange lightness, leaving her with a sense of unease that lingered long after he was gone. It was unnerving, like a scene from a poorly acted spy film. She briefly wondered why there was no digital trace of this delivery, no notification on her phone, no record in her building8s log, as if the delivery had occurred outside the bounds of normality, but she tried to brush it off as a quirk of the delivery service.

Sarah carried the package inside, placing it gingerly on her kitchen table as if it were a ticking bomb, its presence radiating an unsettling energy that filled the room. She circled it warily, a knot of apprehension tightening in her stomach with each rotation, her eyes scanning the package for any sign of its origin or purpose, any clue that might unravel its mystery. Who would send her an unlabeled package, shrouded in such secrecy? And what could it possibly contain that required such clandestine delivery, such a blatant disregard for normal protocol? She picked up the package, testing its weight, her fingers gingerly probing its surface. It was surprisingly light, almost empty, yet something about it felt wrong, a subtle imbalance that set her teeth on edge, a discordant vibration that resonated deep within her bones. A cold dread washed over her, a premonition of something terrible lurking beneath the ordinary exterior, a sense of impending doom that threatened to overwhelm her [].

With trembling hands, she retrieved a kitchen knife and carefully cut the twine, her movements slow and deliberate, as if disarming a bomb, each snip of the blade amplifying her anxiety. She peeled back the cardboard flaps, revealing a bed of shredded paper, the fragments obscuring the contents beneath, a protective layer designed to conceal the object within. Inside, nestled within the protective layers, was a metallic sphere. It was about the size of a baseball, perfectly smooth and seamless, with a dull, silvery sheen that seemed to absorb the light around it, casting the surrounding area in shadow. There were no markings, no buttons, no discernible features, no indication of its purpose or origin, a blank slate that offered no clues to its true nature [].

She placed her fingers against the sphere8s cold surface, and a faint tingling sensation ran up her arm. At first, it was subtle, like static electricity, a barely perceptible vibration that she almost dismissed as a trick of the mind. But as she held it, the tingling became a pulse, almost like a heartbeat beneath her skin, a rhythmic thrumming that resonated with her own pulse, creating a strange and unsettling connection.

The record player in the background skipped, then again, static creeping into the melody. The moment her fingers brushed the sphere, the noise intensified, the needle jumping in the groove, interrupting the flow of the music. Then again, the skipping became more frequent and erratic, as if the sphere were interfering with the delicate mechanics of the machine. The room suddenly felt… off, the atmosphere subtly altered, the air growing thick and heavy. Not wrong, exactly, but as if something imperceptible had shifted, as if the laws of physics were momentarily suspended, creating a sense of unease that she couldn8t quite articulate.

She pulled her hand away, breaking the connection with the sphere, but the sensation lingered, the tingling sensation slowly fading, leaving behind a residual unease. The record needle scratched violently before going silent, the music abruptly cut off, plunging the room into an unsettling quiet.

The hum intensified, filling the room with a subtle but persistent drone that seemed to burrow into her skull, amplifying her anxiety and making her head spin. Sarah8s heart pounded in her chest, a frantic drumbeat against the rising tide of fear, a desperate attempt to drown out the insidious hum. The initial curiosity had vanished, replaced by a primal dread, a certainty that she was in the presence of something alien and malevolent, something that defied human understanding. The sphere felt alien, dangerous, radiating an invisible energy that pricked her skin and raised the hair on the back of her neck, a silent warning of the impending darkness. She recoiled, dropping it back into the box as if it were burning hot, the metallic thud echoing through the silent apartment, her fingers tingling with a strange residual energy, as if she had been burned by an invisible flame [].

She backed away from the table, her eyes darting around the room, searching for an escape, a safe haven from the object8s unsettling influence, her mind racing with possibilities, each one more terrifying than the last. She had to get rid of it, destroy it, eliminate its presence from her life, to banish the unsettling object from her reality. But no, that would draw attention, raise questions, make her a target, alerting them to her knowledge of their plans. She had to hide it, conceal it, bury it where it couldn8t be found, to protect herself from their prying eyes. But where? It was then she began to question if putting it into the box was going to be enough, if its influence could penetrate the cardboard barrier, if she could truly contain its insidious power. She was seeing things in the corner of her eye, fleeting glimpses of shadows that vanished when she turned her head, whispers in the silence that might have been the wind, the subtle beginnings of the hallucinations that would soon consume her [].

Driven by a surge of adrenaline, she grabbed the package and hurried to her bookshelf, her movements frantic and disorganized, her mind racing with a desperate need for concealment. She scanned the titles, her eyes darting across the spines, searching for a suitable hiding place, a sanctuary for the unsettling object. Her gaze landed on a thick, leather-bound volume of classic literature, a forgotten relic from her college days, a book she had never read and never would, its pages untouched, its secrets unrevealed. With trembling hands, she retrieved the book and, using a craft knife, hollowed out a cavity in the center of its pages, carefully concealing the metallic sphere within its literary tomb, burying the darkness within the words of the past [].

She placed the book back on the shelf, disguising it amongst the other volumes, hoping it would remain unnoticed, its secrets undisturbed. But even hidden, she could still sense the sphere8s presence, its faint hum vibrating through the walls of her apartment, a constant reminder of the danger that lurked within her home, a subtle vibration that permeated every corner of her existence. Her paranoia rose to an unbearable level, twisting her thoughts, amplifying her fears, turning her apartment into a prison of her own making, a gilded cage from which there was no escape [].

She began to implement new routines, elaborate rituals designed to protect herself from the unseen threat, desperate attempts to regain control of her life. She started taking extra precautions, checking her surroundings obsessively, scanning the streets for suspicious figures, avoiding mirrors, convinced that something was watching her from the other side, and being wary of strangers, seeing menace in every face, every encounter a potential threat. She felt like she was re-living the same day over and over, trapped in a loop of anxiety and fear, her sense of time dissolving into a meaningless blur, a terrifying premonition of the fate that awaited her.

She pulled out her phone, her hand shaking so violently she almost dropped it, the device feeling alien and unfamiliar in her grasp. She scrolled through her contacts, hesitating over each name, weighing the risks and benefits of confiding in someone, anyone. Who could she trust? Who would believe her? Who could help her navigate this nightmare? Finally, she settled on a number, a familiar name that offered a glimmer of hope, a lifeline in the darkness, and pressed the call button. She let it ring and ring, but the voicemail picked up, her call unanswered, her plea unheard. She left a message, but the content was never retained, the words lost in the digital ether, her voice silenced. Her voice trembled as she spoke [].

"I think they know. I don8t know what to do," she whispered into the phone, her words barely audible above the pounding of her heart, her voice thick with fear and desperation, tears streaming down her face. "Please...help me..."

Later that night, sleep eluded her, her mind racing, her senses on high alert, her body tense and rigid. She finally rose from her bed, driven by a restless energy she couldn8t control, a desperate need to escape the confines of her apartment. Sarah stood in front of her bathroom mirror, her eyes wide with fear, her face pale and drawn, the image of a woman on the verge of collapse. Her reflection turned its head a second too late. A lag, a glitch. Then another shadow moved—a presence behind her. But when she spun, the room was empty.

But then, she saw something else, someone else, standing behind her in the mirror - a shadowy figure lurking just beyond the edge of her perception, a dark presence with eyes that burned like embers, piercing the darkness with malevolent intent, a glimpse into the abyss that awaited her [].

She screamed, a primal cry of terror that echoed through the apartment, shattering the silence and sending a flock of pigeons scattering from the nearby rooftops, a desperate attempt to ward off the evil that was closing in. She grabbed a heavy glass vase, a wedding gift from a happier time, a symbol of the love and joy that had been stolen from her, and hurled it at the mirror, shattering the reflection into a million jagged pieces, a desperate attempt to destroy the horror that lurked within, to break free from the nightmare that had consumed her. The illusion of safety was gone, replaced by a chilling certainty: she was not alone, she had never been alone, and the forces that were closing in on her were far more powerful and terrifying than she could have ever imagined, their influence permeating every aspect of her existence [].

V The Altered Journal

⊗ ⌖ ⨀ ⊗°

Sarah8s death had cast a long, dark shadow over Simon, a suffocating blanket of grief and confusion that threatened to smother him. He desperately needed to make sense of it all, to untangle the complex threads of the mystery that were slowly unraveling his sanity, threatening to leave him adrift in a sea of madness. He clung to the journal entry timeline that was provided earlier, a fragile lifeline in the swirling chaos, hoping it would guide him through the labyrinth of his investigation. He decided to start a journal, a private record of his thoughts, a sanctuary where he could document his findings and piece together the fragmented truths that lay scattered before him [].

He found a simple, leather-bound notebook tucked away in a dusty corner of his apartment, its blank pages beckoning him like a confessional, offering a space for his secrets and fears. The paper felt smooth beneath his fingertips, a tactile comfort that soothed his frayed nerves. The scent of old leather filled his nostrils, a comforting aroma that momentarily eased his troubled mind, reminding him of simpler times, before the darkness had taken root []. Writing, he hoped, would be his anchor, a way to stay grounded in the swirling chaos, a means of imposing order on the increasingly disordered world around him.

He sat at his desk, the faint glow of the desk lamp casting long shadows across the room, transforming familiar objects into grotesque shapes, amplifying his sense of unease. He uncapped his pen and began to write, his hand moving across the page with a newfound purpose, driven by a desperate need to understand, to remember, to make sense of the senseless. He chronicled the events of the past few days: Sarah8s death, the unsettling discovery of the red thread, the distorted voicemail, the eerie painting, and the chilling revelation of the missing package []. As he wrote, he felt a sense of catharsis, as if he were expelling the darkness that had taken root within him, purging the poison that threatened to consume him.

The next morning, Simon reread his entry, eager to see if his words had brought him any clarity, if the act of writing had illuminated the path ahead. But as he scanned the page, a knot of unease tightened in his stomach, a cold dread spreading through his limbs. Something was wrong, subtly, disturbingly wrong. There were sentences he didn8t remember writing, foreign phrases that seemed out of place, subtle alterations to his words that twisted their meaning, subtly shifting his perspective.

He stared at the page, his brow furrowed in confusion, his mind struggling to reconcile the words before him with his own memories. Had he been more tired than he realized, his mind playing tricks on him, blurring the lines between reality and imagination? Had his subconscious mind inserted these foreign phrases, revealing hidden desires or repressed fears? Or was something else at play, something more sinister, more insidious? His eyes landed on a name, scrawled in the middle of a paragraph: "Adam." It was mentioned in a context he didn8t recall, as if he had known this "Adam" for years, a casual reference to a long-standing relationship.

Who was Adam? The name was unfamiliar, alien, a discordant note in the symphony of his life. He searched his memories, desperately trying to place the name, to conjure a face, a voice, any shred of recognition, but it remained elusive, a phantom echo in the corridors of his mind. He felt a chill run down his spine, a sense of violation, as if someone had trespassed into the sanctuary of his thoughts, leaving behind a trace of their presence, a subtle contamination of his memories.

Despite the unsettling anomalies, Simon resolved to continue journaling, determined to press on, to uncover the truth, no matter the cost. He couldn8t let these strange occurrences deter him from his quest for the truth, to allow the darkness to consume him. He would be vigilant, he told himself, carefully scrutinizing each entry for any signs of tampering, any further intrusions into his thoughts. He would not allow his mind to be invaded, his memories altered, his identity stolen.

But as the days passed, the alterations became more frequent and more noticeable, more blatant and more disturbing. Sentences were rearranged, words were replaced with their antonyms, and entire paragraphs were inserted, twisting his thoughts and distorting his memories, turning his world upside down. He found himself questioning his own sanity, unsure of what was real and what had been manipulated, doubting his own perceptions, his own recollections. Was he losing his grip on reality, descending into madness?

Then came the day when everything changed, when the subtle alterations escalated into a full-blown assault on his mind, shattering his sense of self. Simon sat at his desk, pen in hand, ready to chronicle the latest developments in his investigation, to document the strange occurrences that had plagued him. He wrote about his visit from Mrs. Abernathy, the unsettling encounter with his neighbor, the unsettling feeling that he was being watched. As he formed the letters on the page, he felt a strange disconnect, as if his hand were moving independently of his will, as if he were a mere observer, watching his body perform a task he couldn8t control.

He glanced down at the journal and his blood ran cold, his heart stopping in his chest. His handwriting had changed, subtly at first, then more dramatically, transforming before his very eyes. Mid-entry, the familiar slant of his letters had morphed into something subtly different: a slight curve, a different pressure, a unique way of forming certain letters []. It was still recognizably his handwriting, but it was also…not his, a distorted reflection of his own identity.

He tried to regain control of his hand, to force it back into its familiar rhythm, to reclaim his own agency, but it was no use. His hand continued to write in the altered style, as if guided by an external force, a puppet dancing to the tune of an unseen puppeteer. Panic welled up inside him, threatening to consume him, to drown him in a sea of fear and despair. He was losing control, not just of his mind, but of his own body, his own identity, his own existence [].

The altered writing seemed to express the thoughts and intentions of "Adam," a voice that was both familiar and alien, a presence that resonated deep within his subconscious. It claimed that Simon was being manipulated, that his memories were being altered, and that he was a pawn in a larger game, a player in a drama he didn8t understand. It spoke of a hidden reality, a world beyond human comprehension, where time and space were meaningless, where the laws of nature were suspended, where anything was possible.

"You think you are seeking the truth, Simon," the altered writing declared, its words mocking his efforts, belittling his intelligence, "Your memories are not your own. Your thoughts are not your own. You are a puppet."

The writing ended with a cryptic warning, a chilling prophecy that sent a shiver down Simon8s spine, a premonition of the darkness to come. "The closer you get to the truth, the more dangerous it becomes. Turn back, Simon, before it8s too late. Or face the consequences.”

Overwhelmed by panic and despair, Simon slammed the journal shut and hurled it across the room, desperate to distance himself from the source of his torment, to sever the connection to the entity that was invading his mind. It landed with a thud, its pages fluttering open like the wings of a wounded bird, its secrets exposed to the cold, uncaring air. He stared at the journal, his chest heaving, his mind reeling, struggling to comprehend the enormity of what was happening to him. It was no longer a sanctuary, but an enemy, a weapon turned against him, a tool of manipulation in the hands of an unseen adversary.

He sank to his knees, his head in his hands, his body wracked with sobs, his grief mingling with terror and confusion. Who was Adam? What did he want? And why was he invading his mind, stealing his memories, twisting his reality? Was he losing his mind, descending into madness, trapped in a nightmare from which there was no escape? He questioned his own identity, wondering if he was who he thought he was, if his memories were real, if his life was his own. His apartment was filled with a feeling that he was losing his mind, that the very foundations of his existence were crumbling around him.

The journal lay open on the floor, its pages filled with his own words and the words of "Adam," a testament to his fractured reality, a visual representation of his inner turmoil. It beckoned to him, a siren8s call that he knew he couldn8t resist, a promise of answers, a glimpse into the truth. He was torn between his desire to understand the truth and his fear of what he might discover, trapped between his thirst for knowledge and his instinct for self-preservation. He was caught in a web of deception, and he didn8t know which way to turn, who to trust, or what to believe.

Despite his fear, he reached for the journal, his fingers trembling as he grasped its worn leather cover, his touch tentative, as if he were handling a venomous snake. He opened it to the last entry, his eyes scanning the altered writing, searching for a clue, a glimmer of understanding, a hint of the truth that lay hidden beneath the layers of deception. He had to know who Adam was, to confront the entity that was haunting him. He had to know what he wanted, what his purpose was. Even if it meant losing himself in the process, sacrificing his sanity in the pursuit of the truth.

End of Part 1