I—The space he didn't leave
He woke up standing.
That was the first wrong thing.
The second was the silence. Not peaceful silence—empty silence. The kind that feels like sound forgot this place existed.
“Hello?” he said.
His voice came back to him, intact, calm. Too calm. He looked down and saw the road slick with rain, the twisted metal of a car pressed against a guardrail, smoke curling lazily into the air. People were gathering. Someone was shouting.
Someone was crying.
That someone wasn’t him.
He stepped closer to the wreck and froze when he saw his own body. Head tilted unnaturally. Eyes half-open. Still.
“No,” he whispered. “No, no—wait.”
He reached out, instinctively, and his hand passed straight through his own chest.
A laugh escaped him—short, broken. “Okay. Okay. This is… this is shock. I’m hallucinating.”
“Sir! Don’t touch him!” someone yelled.
He turned toward the voice. “I’m fine,” he said automatically. “I’m right here.”
No one looked at him.
Minutes passed. Or maybe hours. Time felt loose, unfastened. Eventually, the ambulance left. The crowd thinned. The rain slowed.
He remained.
That was when it sank in—not as fear, but as a dull, spreading heaviness.
“I’m dead,” he said aloud.
The word didn’t echo. It didn’t mean much. It just sat there.
He didn’t see angels. He didn’t feel judged. No tunnel, no light, no voice calling his name. He waited for something to take him.
Nothing did.
Days later—he guessed days—he found himself standing outside her apartment.
He didn’t remember deciding to come here.
She was sitting on the floor, back against the couch, scrolling on her phone. Hair slightly messy. Alive in the quiet, ordinary way people are.
He swallowed. “Hey,” he said softly.
She didn’t look up.
He stepped closer. “I never told you,” he continued, voice tightening, “but I think about you more than I should.”
Still nothing.
He raised his voice. “Can you hear me?”
Silence.
Something in his chest—if he still had one—collapsed inward.
He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t heartbroken. Just… reduced.
“I’m not asking you to love me,” he said, almost pleading. “I just want you to know I was here.”
She stood, walked past him, and turned off the light.
In the dark, he whispered to no one,
“I died… and the world didn’t even pause.”
And that was when he understood the worst part.
He wasn’t haunting her.
He was haunting himself.
