Your Handwriting

I woke up because someone was knocking.

Not loudly.

Three slow knocks.

I kept my eyes closed.

For a few seconds, I thought it was part of a dream. The kind that disappears the moment you wake up properly.

Then

Knock. Knock. Knock.

I opened my eyes.

My room was still dark.

The rain outside had turned the morning grey, and for a moment, I couldn’t tell how long I had been asleep.

Another three knocks.

I looked at the door.

“Yeah?”

Nothing.

I waited.

“Hello?”

Still nothing.

I reached for my phone.

10:37.

There were three missed calls.

I stared at the screen for a moment before sitting up.

The knocking didn’t happen again.

I got out of bed and opened the door.

The hallway was empty.

Of course it was.

I stood there anyway.

My apartment wasn’t big. From where I was standing, I could see most of it.

The kitchen.

The living room.

The front door.

Nothing looked different.

Nothing moved.

The silence felt ordinary.

That was the strange part.

If someone had actually been standing outside my door seconds earlier, I imagined there should have been something left behind. A sound. Footsteps. A door closing.

Anything.

But there was nothing.

I went back into my room and shut the door.

I didn’t think about the knocking again until I was making coffee.

It wasn’t that I forgot about it.

I just decided it wasn’t important.

Buildings made noises.

Pipes knocked.

Wood expanded.

People heard things when they were half asleep.

There were reasonable explanations for almost everything if you looked for them hard enough.

I poured the coffee into my favourite mug and leaned against the counter.

The rain tapped against the kitchen window.

I watched it for a while.

The building across from mine looked blurred behind the water running down the glass. I could see a few lights through other people’s windows. Someone moving past a curtain. A shadow crossing a room.

Normal things.

People waking up.

People living their lives.

For some reason, that made me feel better.

Then I noticed the second mug.

It was sitting beside the sink.

I looked at it.

Then at mine.

Then back at it.

For a moment, I couldn’t remember where it had come from.

It was blue.

Plain.

Not mine.

I knew it wasn’t mine because I didn’t own blue mugs.

That was a stupid thing to be certain about, but I was.

I had two mugs.

One was white and chipped near the handle.

The other had a tiny crack running down the side that I kept meaning to throw away.

Neither of them was blue.

I picked it up.

Still warm.

I almost dropped it.

I put it down again.

My first thought was that someone had come over.

My second thought was that I would remember if someone had come over.

I looked around the kitchen.

Nothing else looked unfamiliar.

There was no second coat hanging near the door.

No shoes.

No bag.

No evidence that another person had been there.

I touched the side of the mug again.

Warm.

Not hot.

But definitely warm.

I stood there for a while.

Waiting for the memory to come back.

Maybe someone had visited the night before.

Maybe I had invited someone over.

Maybe we’d talked until late and I had forgotten because I’d fallen asleep.

The more I tried to remember, the less I could.

I remembered coming home.

I remembered changing out of my clothes.

After that, everything felt blurred around the edges.

Not missing.

Just... unclear.

Like trying to remember a dream after you’ve already been awake for too long.

Then I did something that, later, I would think about far too often.

I washed it.

I don’t know why.

Maybe I didn’t want to deal with it.

Maybe I was tired.

Maybe the fact that there was a strange mug in my kitchen wasn’t as strange as it would later become.

I washed it, dried it, and placed it beside my other two.

Then I forgot about it.

Mostly.

My phone rang while I was getting dressed.

I didn’t answer.

It rang again.

I ignored it again.

By the third time, I was annoyed enough to answer without checking who it was.

“Hello?”

There was breathing.

I looked at the screen.

Unknown number.

“Hello?”

Nothing.

“Who is this?”

The breathing stopped.

Then the call ended.

I stared at the phone.

“Okay,” I said to no one.

I blocked the number.

For a second, I considered calling it back.

Then I remembered how ridiculous that would be.

Someone had called.

They hadn’t spoken.

The call had ended.

People did strange things.

I put my phone on the bed and continued getting dressed.

By noon, the rain had stopped.

I left the apartment because I needed groceries and because staying inside suddenly felt unbearable.

I didn’t have plans.

I didn’t need anything urgently.

But I left anyway.

I locked the door behind me and checked it twice.

Then, after walking halfway down the stairs, I went back up and checked it again.

I stared at the lock.

Turned the handle.

Nothing.

Locked.

I laughed quietly at myself.

“Get a grip,” I muttered.

The hallway was empty.

No one answered.

Outside, everything looked washed out.

Cars moved through puddles. People walked quickly beneath umbrellas even though it wasn’t raining anymore.

The air smelled like wet pavement.

I pulled my jacket closer and started walking without really thinking about where I was going.

I passed the corner shop and almost walked straight by.

Then I stopped.

Someone was standing across the street.

I didn’t recognize them.

I knew that immediately.

And yet

they were looking at me like they did.

I stared back.

They didn’t look away.

Neither did I.

It was probably five seconds.

Maybe ten.

Long enough for me to become uncomfortable.

They were too far away for me to see their face clearly.

I could tell they were watching me.

That was all.

Then someone stepped between us, and when they moved again, the person was gone.

I crossed the street.

There was nowhere they could have disappeared to that quickly.

I looked down the road.

Nothing.

I looked behind the bus stop.

Nothing.

There was an alley between two buildings nearby, but I could see straight through it.

Empty.

I stood there for another moment before realizing how stupid I probably looked.

I told myself I was being dramatic.

Then I went into the corner shop.

The cashier barely looked at me while I wandered through the aisles.

I bought things I didn’t need.

Bread.

Milk.

A packet of biscuits I knew I wouldn’t finish.

By the time I reached the counter, I’d almost convinced myself that I hadn’t seen anyone watching me at all.

Maybe they had been looking past me.

Maybe they were waiting for someone.

Maybe I had imagined the whole thing because I was already unsettled by the knocking.

I paid.

The cashier handed me my change.

Then she paused.

“You okay?”

I looked up.

“What?”

She was staring at me.

“You look pale.”

I touched my face without thinking.

“Oh.”

She smiled awkwardly.

“Sorry. None of my business.”

“No, it’s fine.”

I took my bag.

“Just didn’t sleep well.”

“Ah.”

She nodded as if that explained everything.

Maybe it did.

I left.

On the walk home, I kept thinking about the blue mug.

I tried not to.

That was the problem.

The more I told myself to stop thinking about it, the more clearly I could picture it.

Blue.

Plain.

Warm.

Not mine.

By the time I reached my building, I was annoyed with myself.

It was a mug.

That was all.

Maybe I’d bought it months ago and forgotten.

Maybe someone had left it behind weeks earlier.

Maybe I was tired.

Maybe

I stopped at my apartment door.

For a moment, I couldn’t remember whether I had locked it.

I stood there, staring at the handle.

Then I remembered.

Of course I had.

I’d checked it twice.

Three times, if I counted going back upstairs.

I unlocked the door.

The blue mug was back on the counter.

I stood in the doorway for a long time.

The grocery bag slipped slightly from my hand.

I remembered washing it.

I remembered drying it.

I remembered placing it beside the other mugs.

But there it was.

Still on the counter.

Still blue.

Still not mine.

For a moment, I wondered if I’d simply put it there after washing it.

Maybe I’d remembered wrong.

Maybe I’d thought about putting it away and my brain had turned the thought into a memory.

That happened, didn’t it?

I wasn’t sure.

I set the groceries down.

Slowly.

I walked toward it.

There was something underneath it.

A small square of paper.

I stopped.

For a second, I didn’t breathe.

Then I picked up the mug.

The paper was blank.

I turned it over.

Blank.

I stared at it anyway.

It was ordinary paper.

A little rough around the edges, like it had been torn from somewhere.

I looked around the kitchen.

At the counter.

At the cupboards.

At the floor.

Then back at the paper.

Nothing.

I laughed.

Not because anything was funny.

Just because I didn’t know what else to do.

I threw the paper away.

Put the mug back in the cupboard.

This time, I watched myself do it.

I opened the cupboard.

I placed the mug beside the white one.

Then I closed the door.

I stood there.

Staring at it.

“Happy?” I asked myself.

The silence didn’t answer.

I unpacked the groceries.

Made another coffee.

Sat on the sofa.

And for the next hour, I tried very hard to do normal things.

I scrolled through my phone.

I watched half an episode of something I wasn’t paying attention to.

I checked the time.

Checked it again five minutes later.

Every now and then, I looked toward the kitchen.

The cupboard remained closed.

I told myself that tomorrow, I would probably remember what had happened.

I didn’t.