The Rhythm

I was born silent, but my brother made me fluent.

We spoke in a secret rhythm; his fingerprints traced on fogged glass and my Morse code tapped through walls so softly, only longing could decipher it. He turned my muteness into a language, creating a secret world just wide enough for the two of us.

We were inseparable, even together in our mother's womb. Our connection was pure; it transcended sight and sound. Others recognized him by his face or voice; I, by an unknown rhythm. Once, when we were children, he fell near the creek. While Mama screamed his name in a panic, I simply knew his location. I was always attuned to his presence or his absence.

Somehow everything changed two months ago. The lake in front of my house boiled, not with heat, but with a riot of impossible geometry – red, blue, and yellow lights vibrating not just on the water, but impossibly in the air. Since that day, my brother lost his rhythm. He began to drift to the shore each night, rain soaking him, his eyes empty save for the reflected light. Mom and Dad don’t see the emptiness.I do.

The first crack in our world was barely visible, but everything shifted because of it. I pounded our code against the windowpane: three short, two long – the rhythm of worry, our signal for "Come home."

He returned, drenched and distant. When I pressed our signal into his palm, his fingers didn't return the touch. They were frozen like ice. Those colours did something unexplainable; they changed the rhythm.

Now his presence is synonymous with his absence. Though he stands before me, I do not recognize his rhythm. He moves through the rooms like a body without breath. The warm gaze has turned to tundra. He looked like my brother, moved like my brother, breathed like my brother. But when I tapped the rhythm, the silence told me the truth: this was only his shadow.

A month ago, I hid behind the terrace door, nudging a broken sliver of wood aside to peer out. I saw him, soaking wet in the pouring rain, staring at red, blue, and yellow that blinked in a hypnotic sync. Then he turned, his gaze utterly vacant, and passed right by the door, missing me entirely. He evaded me then, and the lights evaded me when I turned to look for them.

Tonight, the atmosphere is planning a murder. The continuous rain has led to a chilling coldness. Thunder knocked out a few electric poles, leading to a blackout. The only light visible came from the periodic crackle of lightning. I catch a flash of him slipping through the hallway, a silhouette only visible due to lightning. I follow, my heart stuttering Morse against my ribs. I trail him, stopping at the door. I remove the block of wood that Mom had used to plug the peephole he’d carved. Mom had joked that who would need a peephole in a terrace door; tonight, I do.

I look through the hole, and all I can see is darkness. Then, lightning flashes like a torch, tearing the darkness like fabric, but I freeze when I look at the light-covered area. The terrace should be a torrent, but the space beyond the door is empty of falling rain. I can hear the downpour and see the water collecting, yet no drops touch the surface. For a second, I forget him, absorbed by this inexplicable mystery of missing rain.

I have to know.

I step out.

Once I step out, a sharp light ignites the area, and I witness a black disk hanging silently beneath the storm; its rim deflecting the rain, humming a note that feels less like sound and more like a haunting. The lights stutter, then a single, unbearable beam split the night, cocooning me in pure colour.

A smaller, oblong disc emerges from the larger vessel, drawing closer. It stops, bathing me in those strobing, mesmerizing colours.

I try to run, but my legs lock. The small disc starts scanning me with red, blue, and yellow light in a random, hypnotic manner. It scans each part of my body as if downloading information.

Is this what happened to my brother?

I feel a dizzying rush, a momentary loss of consciousness, a terrifying sense of floating. I fight it, calling on the desperate thought of my brother. I open my eyes, finding myself back on the ground.

I scramble back inside, panic driving me.

I turn to go back to my room. A shadow falls across my bed.

Someone is already there.

My heart pounds a frantic, uneven rhythm.

I creep closer, pull the sheet...

My own face stares up at me. Eyes open. Unblinking.

The person rises, moving with my body, my gestures, but without a rhythm. I back away. It advances. And then, the horror hits: the person walks right through me, as if I am a mirage.

I try to breathe, but the air is stuck in my chest. I turn around to watch her rushing towards my brother’s room.

She finds my brother, and the house pulses with a familiar laugh. A laugh I longed for, like a deserter longs for human touch.

I try to scream but no sound comes. I try to tap a message on the wall, but my fingers pass through the surface, translating our rhythm into nothingness. As I move my hands closer to my eyes, I realise the hollowness of my body, like a static signal of a television wrapped around a glass mannequin. I look at my feet and see that I’m hovering slightly above the surface.

Suddenly, a sharp tune rings through my head, causing pain. I start feeling the universal pull as I drift toward the disk, drawn along with a hundred other lights, pulsating a unique rhythm. A barrage of lights and sounds on the black canvas of tonight’s painting.

I try to fight the force – this unknown pull – but it drags me toward the disk with other light beams.

My body constricts, thinning into a narrow stream of light. I’m pulled forward like data through a wire, dragged toward the black disk’s opening.

I am frozen, but aware. Hundreds of frozen figures surround me; people trapped in glass bottles.

I observe my surroundings; all I see are glass bottles containing humans in an endless space. Fear floods me in this void of light, glass, and confusion. I try to focus on the sound, but a constant, painful tune keeps piercing my ears.

I think I hear a faint signal beneath the violent ringing in my ears. A small tap. I focus.

And then I hear knocking from above – three short, two long.

A sound I longed for months.

I try to find the source.

Above me, my brother presses his palm to the vibrating glass.

He repeats the signal. I hear it clearly in my mind, as if I tuned into a new frequency. This time, it is not "Come home." It is a command, as if we developed a new language. The meaning crashes into me: "Listen, sister. You are not alone."

I answer.

I pour my lifetime of silence, my love, my loss into my fist, tapping the glass. My rhythm weaves around me, soundless yet seismic. The bottles pulse. The disk pulses. The surrounding rhythms flicker, attempting to absorb my noise.

But my brother smiles. He looks at me, a new confidence blazing in his eyes.

He raises his hand and knocks once more: three short, two long. The signal echoes, not as a message to me, but as a message within me, a declaration of our bond.

And I understand now – this experience has transformed our rhythm.

The lights called him, abducted him, replaced him, but they did not rewrite him or his rhythm. They took the wall between us, but they gave him a new glass wall to tap against.

We are a part of a story: two people, standing on opposite sides of the universe, tapping a language no wall can silence.

We are replaced but not erased.