She arrived at a hotel that didn’t match the listing — empty lot, dark windows, and a red neon sign buzzing against the dark.
Inside, a note waited: 'Room 413 awaits you.' She hadn’t seen it when she came in.
The hallway was still. The door to Room 413 stood open. A key hung on the wall, waiting.
The room itself looked untouched — too perfect. But the mirror above the dresser didn’t reflect her. Or anything, really.
Then the bathroom door creaked open. Something was in the mirror. Watching.
When she touched the glass, the reflection moved on its own. Grinning.
By the end, it wasn’t a mirror anymore. It was a door. And something had come through.
A man who lived quietly — from childhood playgrounds to silent TV dinners — finds himself reborn under surgical lights. In that moment, he sees the life ahead… and remembers the one just lived.
The light is familiar. The silence repeats. The signal has already started.
He returned every year. Same booth. Same pose. But the photo strip always showed someone else — an old man he didn’t recognize. As he aged, the photo stayed the same.
By the end, the booth was gone. Just a worn bulletin board remained, and a missing poster with the same old face from the strip. A little girl passed by and stopped. She didn’t know who he was. But she stared like she should.
It started with a shovel and a thought he couldn’t quite hold onto. He told himself it was just a few more minutes — just a quick break before coffee, before the day began. But the hole kept growing. The grass gave way to dirt. The sun rose, then fell. His slippers wore thin. And still, he dug.
The neighbors stopped asking. The beer went warm. The shadows grew longer — some of them not his. By the time the digging stopped, he was gone. The hole was gone too. In its place, a mound of earth — smooth, silent, recent. Now the yard is quiet again. But somewhere beneath it all, he’s still digging.
He didn’t remember starting it. Each morning, the painting had changed. Just a little at first — a smudge, a line, the shape of a window he hadn’t added. But the brushes were clean. The paints untouched. Still, it grew. And each day, it looked more like his studio. By the sixth morning, it was nearly finished. The easel. The chair. The shadow on the floor. All of it, rendered without him. Except for one thing — a rope. In the painting, it hung from the ceiling beam. In the real room, it didn’t exist. Yet. On the seventh day, the painting was done. So was he.
She didn’t know it was there.
The sun was out. The street was quiet. But just a few steps behind her, something followed — a shadow, close but never touching, shaped wrong in all the ways that mattered. It moved when she moved, but not like she did. Strangers noticed. Some stared. No one said anything. And she never looked back.
It followed her through shops, sidewalks, silence. Until one day, something else appeared: a second shadow, steady and still. It stood between her and the thing behind her. While she made dinner, they fought. When she went to sleep, only one remained — human-shaped and watching.
It wasn’t there yesterday. Just an ordinary street, an ordinary morning. But by sunrise, the package had appeared — no label, no markings, just quietly sitting at the curb. No one admitted to touching it, yet each day it moved: from the street, to the trunk of the car, to the porch, then inside. It never made a sound. No knocks. No footsteps. But somehow, it kept getting closer.
By the sixth day, it was on the kitchen table. She didn’t remember bringing it in. But there it was, waiting. She reached for the blade to open it — hesitant, but unable to walk away. What she saw inside wasn’t an item. It was a photograph. Of her. Right now. From behind. And someone else was in the frame.
It started like any vacation. A sunny resort, two people in love, and a stack of blank Polaroid’s waiting to be filled. They took one every day — outside the hotel, by the pool, over drinks and dinners. Nothing staged. Just moments. Smiles. Sunlight.
But someone else had been documenting too. A figure barely visible at first — a shape far behind, a blur beside a tree, a stranger two tables over. He never spoke. He never approached. But he was in every photo. And the last one wasn’t taken by them. It was taken by him.
