Sam stopped checking his email for a few days. The stories had grown too close, too invasive, like handwriting that kept appearing in the margins of his life. But when he finally opened his laptop again, a new message was already waiting — unread, inevitable. Part Four – The Reflection. He hovered over it for a long time. The room around him felt still, unfamiliar. There were traces of his old life everywhere — clothes folded in drawers, mugs by the sink — but they seemed to belong to someone else. Even his handwriting on a Post-it looked like imitation.
When he spoke aloud, testing his voice, the sound startled him again. Softer, lighter, with an absent musicality he hadn’t learned. He told himself it was stress, just stress. But even that word felt strange now — distant, something that happened to other people.
He finally opened the story. The first sentence read: She had forgotten when exactly she stopped pretending. The line hit him like a memory. Each paragraph that followed described her thoughts — or his — as if transcribed directly from his mind. It told of her confusion melting away, replaced not by fear but by a calm, effortless cheerfulness. A simplification. A quiet erasure of all that used to trouble her. He tried to read critically, to distance himself, but the words refused to stay on the screen. They slipped loose, seeping into his thoughts. They sounded like his own voice narrating his own day.
Samantha went to make tea and forgot what she was doing halfway through. She caught himself humming tunelessly, something bright and trivial, though she didn’t know where she’d heard it. Her mind felt light — not empty, just… rearranged. The author’s phrasing had changed, too. Shorter sentences, simpler words. She liked her hair. She liked her smile. She didn’t worry so much anymore.
She had resisted, mouthing counter-thoughts — his real name, his memories, the logic of what had happened — but the effort only made her dizzy. The details of her old life drifted out of reach: the flat she’d rented, the job title, even the reason she’d started this commission in the first place. She found herself laughing, then forgetting why.
Later, standing before the mirror, she admired her
outfit. She counldn't quite recall buying it but she must have – it
squeezed her breasts just right making them appear as ripe fruit in
the lace-up corset. No way was something so perfect an accident. She
noticed the way the light caught her hair and felt a sudden fondness
for it. It shimmered so softly. She didn't remember deciding but
going blonde was the right choice. She glanced at the laptop, where
the final line of the story had appeared:
When the story was
finished, she smiled, and in that smile was nothing missing at all.
She read it twice, trying to feel what was wrong with it, but couldn’t. The words felt right. Complete. She closed the laptop and caught her reflection one last time. The woman in the glass smiled back easily, without searching. She pulled out her phone and snapped a picture, thinking how perfectly it matched the story...her story. And yet, she didn’t feel like a character in anyone’s story at all. She simply was.
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