Sarah sat frozen, her pulse thumping in her ears like a rhythmic warning. She didn't look behind the monitor. Instead, she forced her gaze down to her own hands. They were stained with graphite—dark, jagged smudges across her fingertips.On her desk sat a stack of notebooks she didn't recognize. She opened the top one. It wasn't a digital log; it was a handwritten diary. The handwriting was hers—neat at the top, devolving into a frantic, sharp scrawl by the bottom of the page.The entry from "today" was already finished. It detailed her exact movements: how she'd made coffee at 9:00 PM, how she'd sat down at 10:15 PM, and the exact words she thought she had just typed into a defunct forum.According to Cleveland Clinic's overview of Dissociative Identity Disorder, individuals may experience "lost time" where another part of their personality takes control.Sarah looked back at the monitor. The screen was dark. It wasn't just asleep; the power cord was neatly severed, the copper wires exposed like raw nerves. There was no "Echo.txt." There was only the silence of her own room.The "wet, unfolding sound" hadn't come from a monster. It was the sound of her own joints popping as she stood up after hours of catatonic stillness.She turned toward the mirror on her wardrobe. Taped to the glass were dozens of Polaroid photos of her sleeping, taken from the very corner of the room she was standing in now. On the back of the most recent photo, her own handwriting delivered a final, chilling command:"Don't look in the crawlspace, Sarah. You're still in there."
