Shadows that remember

I woke to a morning that wasn’t a morning. The sunlight didn’t enter—it leaked, oozing through the blinds in slivers that moved when I wasn’t looking. I blinked twice, then three times. Still, it didn’t seem right. Too sharp. Too eager. Too hungry.

I tugged on a sweater that smelled like someone else. Or maybe it was me. The texture scraped against my skin in a way that made me flinch—a memory of small hands clutching me, pressing me down, warning me I couldn’t understand. Outside, the city murmured, but not the way I remembered. Horns stretched too long. Footsteps lagged behind their owners. A laugh bounced off a building and somehow hit me before it even happened.

I walked. Or maybe I didn’t. The streets were familiar, yet wrong, folded in angles I didn’t remember seeing. Shadows lingered in the corner of my eye. They moved when I looked directly at them, but disappeared when I blinked. Was I too slow, or too fast?

By evening, I was in my apartment—or someone else’s. The walls seemed to breathe. The wallpaper shifted like liquid. I rubbed my arm and felt scars I didn’t remember getting, or maybe did. Or maybe they were echoes of smaller scars from earlier years—scrapes, pinches, slaps—that left marks in the hollows of my mind.

The clock ticked—or it didn’t. The radiator hummed—or it screamed. Something tugged at the edges of my mind, patient, insistent, waiting. It wasn’t a presence. It was me. Or it was someone else pretending to be me.

I whispered, “Hello?”

The room didn’t answer. Or maybe it did, and I wasn’t listening.

I blinked. The light flickered for a fraction of a second. And for a moment, I felt it smile.