Initially, it was just whispers, those same murmurs that slithered between the walls when the lights went out.Then they started taking shape.
I saw Jules first. She was sitting on the edge of my couch, just as she used to in the early days, her knees tucked under her, hair messy, smiling that tired smile that meant don't ask me about him tonight.But when I blinked, her face began to blur, the smile remained, but her eyes were hollow, pupils spreading like ink stains across her face.
"Why did you stop writing about me?" she asked.Her voice echoed in layers, Jules, and then something beneath it. Kane.
I told myself it was sleep deprivation, that my mind was collapsing under the weight of guilt and caffeine. But then I heard footsteps in the kitchen.Heavy, deliberate, familiar.
I didn't have to turn to know who it was.
Kane leaned against the counter like he'd never left. The faintest smirk played on his lips. He looked too real, the faint scar on his cheek, the way he used to roll his sleeves to his elbows when he was about to argue.
Only this time, his shadow didn't match his body.It stretched across the floor, long, wrong, moving seconds before he did.
"I told you the story wasn't finished," he said. "You keep trying to rewrite it, but every word leads back to me."
I wanted to scream that he was dead, that he was gone, that none of this could be happening, but then another voice called my name.
Soft. Childlike.When I turned, I saw a faceless girl standing in the hallway.
Something about her posture, the tilt of her head — it was me.Or rather, the memory of me. The version that used to hide under tables when my parents fought, who scribbled words in notebooks she never let anyone read.
She reached out a hand.And I swear, I felt it, small, cold fingers brushing my own.
Reality isn't a clean break anymore. It folds in on itself. I walk from one room to another and find echoes of every life I've lived. Every person I've hurt. Every version of myself I tried to bury.
They sit with me.They talk.They accuse.
And when I finally cover my ears and close my eyes, I still see them, reflected on the inside of my eyelids, waiting.
Maybe they're not hallucinations at all.Maybe this is what truth looks like when you've hidden too much for too long.