A Soul Waiting for Tomorrow

A soul Waiting for Tomorrow ( Chapter 1)

She disappeared without a sound. I didn’t know that at the time. I only heard about it later: how quiet it was, how strange and clean her apartment looked, how everything was so perfectly placed. But when I finally stepped inside that room, the silence felt familiar, as if it had been waiting for me. Her blanket was folded the way she always did it: precise, gentle, almost shy. Her mug from the night before still sat on the table, the coffee inside holding the faintest warmth. Her slippers were neatly aligned, pointed toward the door, as if they expected her to slide into them any second. Nothing suggested she left suddenly, but nothing indicated she meant to return, either. The police walked past her desk without a second glance. Her friends stayed nearby, whispering her name under their breath.

But I___ I saw it instantly.

The sketchbook.

The one she never showed to anyone. The one nobody knew about. It lay open on her desk, as if she’d been drawing moments before she vanished. But when a detective touched the last page, the ink smudged.

It was fresh. Too fresh for someone who’d been missing nearly sixteen hours. The drawing chilled me.

It was the cliff she had told me about, the one from her dreams. She mentioned it once, almost laughing, but her eyes didn’t match her smile. It was a cliff she had never seen in real life, yet described in disturbing detail. In this sketch, she wasn’t standing at the edge. She was stepping forward into a bright, blank space.

A space that looked like a doorway. Or an erasure. Or an ending. And underneath, written in handwriting that wasn’t hers, were the words:

A story doesn’t end when a girl disappears. It ends when the author decides to stop writing.

Everyone asked the same question: If she didn’t write it, who did? The truth was, I didn’t know.

But something inside me tightened when I saw that slanted script, because it looked familiar. Not identical, just familiar enough to unsettle me. I didn’t say anything then. I should have.

Maybe everything would’ve been different. But the real fear came later when readers began noticing the impossible:

I had written details in my book that only she could have known about her dreams, her midnight whispers, the cliff, the fear she kept tucked beneath her jokes, even that last sketch.

People started asking online:

How does the author know her secrets? Why does the handwriting in the book match the one in her sketchbook? Is the author confessing something? Or is the girl telling the story through the author?

And the final line of the book, I don’t even remember typing it:

“Some souls don’t die. They change writers.”

I wish I could say I understood what was happening. But the truth is, I was just as afraid as everyone else. Maybe more.

How She Entered My Life..?

I didn’t plan to write about her. She wasn’t a character; I barely knew her. We met twice: once at a literary event and once at a cafe where her laugh tugged at something in me I didn’t recognise.

Yet, the first time I sat down to write a new story, she appeared on the page. Not as an idea. Not as inspiration. As if she had walked in and sat down. I remember staring at the screen, wondering how her voice slipped between my thoughts so easily. Her fears aligned weirdly with the direction my plot wanted to go. Her dreams carved themselves onto my pages without my permission.

I thought I was imagining her. But the manuscript kept changing when I wasn’t writing. Scenes rearranged, sentences appeared, and entire paragraphs formed while I slept in her voice, not mine.

At first, I blamed exhaustion. Then coincidence. Then my mind. But when I saw her private memories on my screen memories, she never told me the excuses had stopped working. Someone knocked on my door... Detective Arnav Singh showed up at my door on a grey Wednesday. His eyes reminded me of a scalpel, quiet until cutting.

“You knew her?” he asked. “Not well,” I said. “Just briefly.” He flipped open his notebook. “You described her apartment layout in your new book.”

“I did?”

“The chipped corner of her desk,” he said. “The only person who’s been inside would know.”

My throat tightened. I had no memory of writing that.

“She told you her dreams?”

“No.”

“But they’re in your story.”

“I... I don’t know how.”

He didn’t write a word. He didn’t need to. His silence felt like an accusation. Before leaving, he said the last thing I wanted to hear: “Until she’s found, don’t leave the city.”

I nodded. But my fear wasn’t that he suspected me. I feared that. Somewhere inside me, I knew the ending before he did.

Two days later, a package appeared at my door. It had no name and no return address. Inside was her sketchbook, the original, the one I saw on her desk, the one the police still had in evidence. A note sat on the first page:

Return what isn’t yours. Finish what you didn’t start.

My hands shook as I flipped through the sketches. Her drawings felt alive, too. Her nightmares felt like movements beneath the paper. Then I reached the last page. The blank space the girl in the drawing stepped into... was no longer blank. A shape had formed.

My silhouette....

I’m holding a pen, facing the void she vanished into. And beneath it, in my handwriting:

“You wrote to me. Now write the truth.”

I dropped the sketchbook. I swear it exhaled when it hit the floor. Every time I resisted writing about her, the story pulled me back. Whenever I attempted to write another chapter, the cursor would slide back to her name. If I slept, I’d wake to new pages in the manuscript pages I didn’t write.

And every night at 3:11 a.m. The time she disappeared, I would wake up. Sometimes, I would hear a whisper. Other times, I sensed movement. At times, it felt as though someone was reading over my shoulder.

Readers began to notice the unnatural occurrences, too:

How does the author know new details before the police release them? Why does this feel like the girl is telling the story? Is the author being haunted?

I didn’t have answers. But I had an unsettling feeling, a terrible, impossible feeling that she wasn’t gone. She had found another way to communicate. And she was using me. The night I finished the book, I wasn’t alone. I felt her presence behind me. Not breathing and not touching. Just a present. Watching. Waiting.

The sketchbook lay open. My laptop glowed. The cursor blinked like a heartbeat. I picked up my pen. My hand moved, but the words weren’t mine:

“Some souls don’t die. They change writers.”

I tried to stop. I couldn’t. My hand continued writing. Her story poured through me, relentless, cold, and certain.

In that moment, painfully and clearly, I understood: I wasn’t her author. I was merely the next vessel—the next chapter. The subsequent disappearance was waiting to happen.

The Question That Haunts Everyone

When the book was published, it ended suddenly. Readers still message me every day:

Did you hide something? Is the girl writing through you? Are you next?

I don’t answer them because I don’t know. Because every night, I still hear her whisper: “Not yet.” Because the last page of my manuscript changes when I look away. And because sometimes... sometimes I think the story isn’t finished. Sometimes I believe she’s waiting for me to disappear the same way she did. Quietly. Without a sound.

And the story will continue, with someone else holding the pen.

Story By Urjeeta Kumawat