It didn't begin with blood.
It began with forgetting.
Mom burned dinner.
That never happened.
Dad forgot Ivy's birthday.
He never forgot anything.
Ivy asked me one night,
"Leo… do you ever feel like we're repeating days?"
I laughed.
But I had noticed.
Small loops.
Dad saying the same sentence twice hours apart.
Mom dropping the same glass in the same way two days in a row.
Like we were rehearsing life.
And someone kept resetting the stage.
Then one night, I heard crying.
Not from Ivy.
From Mom's room.
I stood outside their door.
Dad wasn't home yet.
Mom was whispering something over and over.
"I don't want him to wake up."
I thought she meant Dad.
Or Ivy.
I opened the door slightly.
She was sitting on the edge of the bed.
Holding a photo.
Of me.
But I was older in the photo.
Thinner.
Hollow-eyed.
Standing alone in a white room.
She looked straight at the doorway.
At me.
But her eyes weren't seeing me.
They were seeing past me.
Like she sensed something beyond the frame.
"He's starting to notice," she whispered.
And I felt it.
That shift.
That awareness pressing against the back of my skull.
Like fingers.
Like pages turning.