Patchwork Throat by Ghost In Ink at Inkitt

Summary

After ignoring a desperate late–night call from the one person who really needed them, the narrator whispers a simple wish into the dark: “I don’t want to remember this.” Something listens. Now every time that sentence is spoken, the same night “reboots.” The room resets: crooked shelf, static–hissing TV, phone face-down on the floor, her name lighting up the screen. Only the strange book in their lap seems to remember what came before, filling its pages with warnings, crossed-out scenes, and cold “patch notes” from some unseen system treating their grief like a software bug. As the runs pile up, reality fractures. Conversations double, time slips out of order, and the house fills with versions of the same fight: her asking for help, them disappearing into silence. Each reset makes it clearer that the curse isn’t random at all. It was born from the narrator’s own wish to erase what they did. To escape the loop, they’ll have to do the one thing they used the curse to avoid: remember the night honestly, admit how their “pain” was used to hurt someone else, and choose to carry the guilt instead of feeding it to the static.

Genre: Horror

Author: Ghost In Ink

Status: Complete

Chapters: 16

Rating: n/a

Age Rating: 16+

Chapter 1 – The Sentence Out Loud

PART I – RUN 1: STATIC

You read the first sentence out loud.

You shouldn’t have.

The room doesn’t change, so you pretend nothing happened.

The shelf is still crooked.

The TV still mutters white noise in the corner like it’s chewing on dead channels.

Your phone still lies face-down on the carpet, cracked in the corner from the last time you promised you were done.

It’s a normal night.

You’re lying, and you know it.

Your throat aches. Not from talking. From swallowing things you should’ve said.

There’s a book in your lap.

You don’t remember picking it up. Don’t remember owning it. Don’t remember seeing it earlier today. But there it is, heavy and warm, like someone else’s skin, blank cover, no title.

Your fingerprint trails through the dust on the front. Your fingertip stings. Red smears across the matte surface.

Paper cut. Except the book is still closed.

Your phone buzzes on the carpet.

You ignore it.

You know the name that’s lighting up the screen. You know the tone her voice will have. You know she only calls like this when she’s not okay.

You tell yourself you’ll call back when you’re “in a better headspace,” because you’re very good at dressing cowardice in therapy words.

The buzzing stops.

The static rises.

You open the book.

There’s no author, no publishing info. Just one sentence, printed dead center on the first page:

You do not want to remember this.

Your mouth moves before your brain does.

“You do not want to remember this,” you whisper.

The air tightens. The TV screen snaps to pure black, static gone like someone flipped a cosmic mute button. The house exhales into silence so thick your ears ring.

On the page, the sentence crawls, letters rearranging themselves.

Stop reading out loud.

You freeze.

A board creaks in the hallway.

The exact weight and rhythm of someone walking carefully to avoid the loud spots.

You know that sound.

Your phone screen glows from the carpet. ONE MISSED CALL. ONE NEW VOICEMAIL.

You don’t look at the name. You don’t have to.

Something in your legs throbs, a phantom ache, like you’ve already stood up too fast, already walked this hallway, already knelt on something hard and cold. Your body remembers a future you don’t.

A new line inks itself into the page:

This is Run 1.

We might still fix it.

You turn the page with fingers that don’t feel entirely like yours