Chapter 1: The Door
“Maybe I’m not invisible.
Maybe I just live in the wrong reality.”
Lina sat on her bed, wearing socks with little planets on them, nervously twisting her fingers.
Above her hung a Pink Floyd poster; beneath it, on a dusty shelf, sat a row of old DVDs — films about witches, ghosts, and parallel worlds.
Her small refuge inside a family house on the outskirts of Trnava.
Outside, night had already swallowed the streets, but the house was alive.
Laughter spilled from the kitchen, tangled with music and the clinking of plastic cups.
The party was for her — she had just turned eighteen.
For the first time, an adult.
And yet, she didn’t feel like one.
Or celebratory.
She had quietly slipped away from the living room before anyone noticed the blush on her cheeks and the dull, familiar pain in her lower belly.
Her period. Perfect gift.
Now she lay in her room, listening to the muffled laughter of relatives and the rhythm of songs she never liked.
Slovak songs grated on her nerves — but so did the traditional Romani songs.
She didn’t belong there.
Not here. Not anywhere.
Too smart for a Romani girl.
Too wild for the “proper” white world.
Her father wished she’d become a doctor or a lawyer.
Her mother dreamt of seeing her married — to some decent, smiling man who would “fix her.”
But Lina knew the truth:
She wanted neither.
Not men. Not their world.
She was asexual.
And full of anxiety.
Inside, she often felt like a broken compass — spinning without direction.
Panic attacks came without warning. Sometimes at school. Sometimes at night.
No one knew.
She feared her family would see it as weakness.
So she pretended. Pretended to be normal.
But tonight… something inside her cracked.
“What if I could split in two?”
One version would be the obedient one — the good, smiling girl. The one her mother could hug, the one her grandmother would praise.
And the other?
Free. Defiant. Strange.
The one who read Lovecraft and dreamed of other worlds.
“What if I could exist in both forms?”
She closed her eyes. And dreamed.
---
Winter.
Emptiness.
A different light. A different air.
When she woke, it wasn’t silence she knew — but a foreign one.
A silence so perfect it hurt.
She stared at the ceiling. White. The flat lights flickered above like muted stars.
She tried to move — something felt wrong.
Her body didn’t respond.
Her hands were heavier. Her skin… different. Wrinkled.
She touched her face.
Not hers.
Older.
“What the…?”
She wanted to scream, but only a strange sound came out —
“Uhnr…”
Unknown syllables. Unknown language. Even to herself.
The door opened.
A woman entered, wearing a uniformed coat.
She spoke — the words flowed like water striking metal.
Lina didn’t understand a single one.
Then a man approached, holding a tablet. He showed her a photograph.
On the screen: a name.
Mary Dismay.
For a moment, her mind flashed with a memory — her grandmother.
Mary.
The only one who never judged her.
Coincidence?
Or something more?
When she tried to stand, the world tilted.
Pressure. Terror. Breath catching in her throat.
Panic attack — stronger than ever before.
She fell to the ground, gasping. The world blurred into fog.
Doctors surrounded her.
A needle.
Numbness.
Darkness.
---
Later.
She woke in a different bed — this time restrained.
Different language on the walls.
No Trnava. No posters. No rock music.
Only her.
And the sense of being trapped inside a body that wasn’t hers —
in a world that didn’t speak her language.
In a world that called her Mary Dismay.
And where, as she would soon learn,
people who felt anxiety were said to see more than others.
---
“I wanted something supernatural.
Maybe I should’ve been careful what I wished for.”
“I wanted another world.
I didn’t expect that world to be without them.”
---
Day 1
Fear.
A body that isn’t hers.
Words she doesn’t understand.
A needle. Silence.
Day 2
When she woke again, she was inside.
Thick glass doors. A bed that squeaked with every breath.
People in white coats spoke a language she didn’t know — but she listened.
She’d always been perceptive.
Quick to learn. Self-taught in English.
But this… wasn’t English.
The words sounded almost familiar — like English twisted with hard consonants, part German, part machine.
Sharp, cold syllables.
Breaking like ice.
Something whispered inside her:
“This isn’t Slovakia. This isn’t even Earth.”
But she refused to believe it.
No. No. It had to be a dream.
Just last night, they were dancing — well, the others were.
She had sat quietly with a cup of raspberry tea, pretending she was tired.
She had gone to sleep with cramps and the thought:
I wish I could split in two.
One Lina for them.
Another Lina for herself.
Falling asleep with such a wish was dangerous.
---
Day 3
On the third day, she understood.
The foreign words began to take shape.
“No-riska patient.”
“Neuropa phase.”
They repeated them constantly.
Every time someone looked at her, they smiled — not kindly, but with pity. Fear, even.
She observed others.
Some patients looked normal.
Some were silent.
A few screamed — they ended up attached to machines.
A red triangle on their doors.
“Dangerous.”
That’s when she realized — she wasn’t misunderstood here.
She was a threat.
Hope cracked inside her.
---
She sat on the bed, wrapped in a blue blanket, staring at the wall.
Tears slid down her face where no one could see.
She thought of her grandfather — the one who’d survived a concentration camp.
He never spoke of it, but whenever he heard German on TV, he froze.
And now her — in a world where that cold, mechanical tongue was the default.
“What kind of sick joke is this?”
“Grandpa wouldn’t last a day here,” she whispered.
“And I… I have to.”
---
From that moment, she made a decision.
She’d pretend to be fine.
Forget the panic, forget the trembling.
She’d talk when expected.
Smile when required.
Survive.
And maybe — when she woke again — she’d be home.
Maybe it was a phase.
Maybe she was being tested.
Maybe she was still dreaming.
But that night, as she lay awake, she heard two orderlies whispering.
She didn’t understand all of it — just one word.
Clear. Sharp.
“Obverse.”
And something deep inside her stirred —
as if she had always known that word.
Even though she had never heard it before.
---
“I thought I was out of place.
But maybe I’m just on the other side of the mirror.”
