**[CONTINUES...]**
The silence wouldn't let me move.
It pressed against my skin like cold hands, sliding under my clothes, settling into my bones. The more I breathed, the tighter it wrapped around me—like the air itself wanted to squeeze me out of existence.
I backed away from the empty lot, each step slower than the last. The ground felt wrong, too soft, like the pavement was turning into memory instead of concrete.
I didn't know where to go.
Every direction looked the same—washed-out streets, blurry buildings, people walking with that distant, puppet-like rhythm. Their movements were too smooth, too synchronized, like a glitch looping across a broken screen.
So I walked.
Not toward anything. Just away.
The city had a pulse now. A low thrum beneath the asphalt. The deeper I went, the louder it became. Not a noise—more like a vibration inside my skull.
I passed a cat sitting on a trash bin. Its head snapped toward something behind me… then stopped mid-turn, frozen.
Not looking at me. Not acknowledging me.
Its eyes slid over the space I stood in like I was a hole burned into reality.
I kept going.
A bus roared by, doors open, packed full of people. Every head inside turned in the same direction—toward a point on the street I couldn't see.
Not one person blinked.
Not one person saw me.
I shouted again—"HEY!"—but even I barely heard it.
The silence swallowed it whole.
---
After what felt like hours, I stopped under a flickering streetlamp.
My legs were shaking.
My breath came out in white wisps even though the air was warm.
I tried my phone again.
Black screen.
No reflection.
No battery icon.
Just a faint, pulsing glow at the edges—like something was trying to bleed through from behind it.
A notification popped up.
**"Can't Display User."**
I dropped the phone. It clattered onto the pavement but made no sound. None at all.
---
That's when I saw movement ahead of me.
A doorway I'd never noticed before, wedged between two buildings that shouldn't have had enough space for anything. Too narrow. Too dark.
Like a crack in the world.
Light leaked from it—gray, humming, alive.
I stepped closer.
And the hum turned into whispers.
Not words.
Just… impressions.
*Undo.*
*Rewrite.*
*Remove.*
My heartbeat synced with it. Thump. Thump. Thump.
Like the doorway was matching my pulse—or taking it.
I should've run.
I should've screamed.
But I felt something pulling me. Not physically. Deeper. In the place where my memories lived.
I reached the threshold.
Inside, reality buckled. The walls twisted like they were breathing. Shadows dripped down the corners like ink.
And at the far end of the narrow hall—
I saw him.
Tall. Thin.
Suit perfectly pressed.
Face smooth as wet porcelain.
No eyes. No mouth.
But he tilted his head slightly, like he was smiling at me without a mouth to do it.
The air tightened.
He lifted a single long finger…
and pointed behind me.
---
I turned.
The city was gone.
Not destroyed.
Not changed.
Just gone.
White space stretched endlessly—flat, blank, silent.
The edges of the world had been erased like chalk smudged off a board.
And the smudge was spreading.
The street cracked into pixels.
Buildings peeled away like wallpaper.
People dissolved into floating particles of color before vanishing entirely.
I stumbled backward into the hall as the nothingness devoured the street.
The suited figure didn't move.
Didn't speak.
Didn't breathe.
He just watched the world collapse and waited for me to understand.
I wasn't fading into the background anymore.
The background was fading into me.