LULLABAY
The alarm screamed like a heart monitor flatliningâŠit always did.
High. Sharp. Unnerving.
It didnât just wake her. It ripped her out of sleep.
Kirtika opened her eyes to the same celling she stared at every morningâŠit was how her mornings began.
Alone. Quiet. Sterile.
Her bedroom was pristineâŠbooks stacked in perfect symmetry, a single orchid on the windowsill, and not a trace of warmth in the air.
She lived alone. By choice.
At least, thatâs what she told herself.
But sleep had never been kind to her. It wasnât the absence of dreams that haunted herâŠit was their presence.
It felt like a dark corridor lined with locked doors. And each night, something knocked from behind them.
Every night brought a different nightmare. Faces she didnât recognize. Sounds she couldnât name. Places she had never seen. Moments that slipped away the second she opened her eyes.... and yet somehow remembered.
She didnât call them dreams anymore. They were too realâŠtoo familiar.
She wasnât just dreaming. She was remembering something she was never meant to remember.
It began after her 24th birthday.
The dreams.
The unease.
The strange hum behind her thoughts, like a second heartbeat that didnât belong to her.
But why now? And why did it feel like parts of her were vanishing, piece by piece, like someone was erasing her from herself?
She didnât know if it was trauma or time.
But something was wrong.
She moved a long time before. Far from the chaos of her homelandâŠmaybe far from the people who spoke her name like a diagnosis.
Amsterdam was quiet. Foreign. Unfamiliar enough to hide in.
She rented a modest apartment in the heart of the city and joined an asylum on the edge of it, treating minds that had unravelled in ways textbooks never prepared her for.
By day, she healed strangers.
By night, she tried to forget herself.
A steady job. Clean apartment. A city that didnât know her name.
Dr. Kirtika SinghâŠknown to a rare few as KirtiâŠwas a psychiatrist. A mind-healer.
Kirti was a name that belonged to another life. One with bandages and birthdays that ended in hospital corridors.
She didnât drink. Didnât smoke. Didnât dance or laugh too loudly.
Her life was a ritual of silence, stitched together by discipline.
And still⊠she was unravelling.
There is a kind of loneliness that only women know.
The kind that doesnât scream.
Like an alarm only she could hear. No vices. No chaos. Just long days filled with fractured people and longer nights filled with fractured sleep.
It just watches you in the mirror while you brush your teeth and asks:
Are you surviving or just pretending to live?
Though she carried it allâŠthe discipline, the calm, the lonelinessâŠlike so many women do.
Silently.
Beautifully.
Exhaustingly.
Kirti knew the answer. She just didnât want to say it out loud.
And then he came.
The first time she saw him; she thought he was a shadow.
A trick of the streetlamp outside her window.
But shadows donât have eyes that follow you.
He stood across the road, always near the flickering lamp, where the fog gathered thick and golden in the early morning.
Still. Composed. Watching.
He didnât flinch when her lights came on.
Didnât wave. Didnât move.
Just staredâŠevery morning while she buttoned her coat.
Every night when she stood near the curtains, afraid to pull them back.
She told herself he wasnât real.
That he was a figment. A metaphor.
But metaphors donât show up at 6:00 a.m. with the same coat, the same stance, the same haunting patience.
No one else ever saw him.
And when she looked too long, he was gone.
Like a glitch in the air.
Like a thought she wasnât supposed to have.
She never quite liked the presence of menâŠnot out of hatred, but discomfort. The kind that lingers in the spine long after the threat has passed.
So, when she noticed the man for the first time, she ignored him.
He stood across the street. Near the old, flickering streetlamp.
Mornings.
Evenings.
Always when she was most vulnerable.
Just standing thereâŠlooking up at her window.
She told herself he was a fluke. A stranger with nowhere else to be.
But as days passed, he didnât vanish.
He remained. Watching.
He wasnât old. In fact, he looked young. Almost⊠radiant.
Too calm to be a creep. Too consistent to be innocent.
And when she finally looked out at the streetâŠreally lookedâŠthere was nothing.
Gone.
No footprints. No clue. No man.
He came and went like the dreams. Like the alarms. Like her missing past.
She told herself not to care. She had patients. Reports. Morning rounds.
But curiosity is a dangerous thing.
Especially when youâve spent years pretending youâre not afraid of your past.
And on the 43rd morning, when he appeared againâŠright on timeâŠ
Kirtika didnât look away.
She didnât hide behind her curtains. She didnât blink.
She stared back.
And for the first timeâŠHe smiled.
Just once. Small. Deliberate. Like he knew she would finally notice.
That was the moment she decided to chase him.
Not for closure. Not for comfort. But because something about him felt like a door she forgot she closed.
And maybe, just maybe,
He wasnât watching her window.
He was watching her remember.
Kirti didnât wait for second thoughts. The moment he smiled, something inside her cracked like glass under heat. She snatched her coat off the hanger, slid her phone into her pocket, and bolted toward the stairs.
Enough. No more staring contests. No more hiding like some fragile bird. Today, you talk.
Her boots struck the wooden steps with sharp, deliberate thuds, echoing through the stairwell like a war drum. Every beat fuelled her anger, every breath sharpened her resolve.
âIâm asking him. Today. Right now. Whatâs your deal, mister? You think this is cute? Standing there like some creep out of a bad thriller? You think staring makes you mysterious? Try explaining that in a police report, you perverted freak.â
