By Theva Kiruba
The knock was soft, barely more than a whisper against the stillness of the night. It came as a rhythmic tapping, oddly liquid, like the sound of raindrops striking glass—but there was no rain.
I hesitated, staring at the door. It was old, wooden, unremarkable, yet as I approached, the grain seemed to ripple, as if sighing under unseen fingertips. My heart tightened with a strange recognition—I had never been here before, but I had. This was my home, yet something inside me stirred as if waking from a long slumber.
When I reached for the handle, the air in the room thickened, becoming dense—like wading through honey. The walls pulsed gently, breathing in a rhythm I couldn't match. With every second I delayed, the knock continued, patient yet insistent.
I opened the door.
The stranger stood there, his form shifting at the edges, as though reality had forgotten how to hold him together. His coat shimmered between deep emerald and pure shadow, his face stretched between familiarity and oblivion. I felt as though I had seen him before, yet I couldn’t place where, or when.
“You left the window open,” he said, though I had no windows. His voice sounded like my own thoughts—like a memory I had yet to make.
I should have asked who he was, what he wanted, but the words lodged in my throat like marbles. Instead, he stepped inside, moving through the space as if it were liquid, his presence bending the air itself.
“This house remembers,” he murmured, trailing his fingers along the walls. They responded to his touch, warping, shifting, exhaling a scent of damp earth and forgotten lullabies.
I swallowed hard. “What do you want?”
He tilted his head, watching me as if trying to recognize something within me. “It’s not what I want,” he replied. “It’s what you lost.”
A slow tremor ran through the floor. I stepped back, but it no longer felt like wood—it felt like the surface of a lake, calm but pulsing beneath me.
He gestured toward the darkness that stretched beyond the threshold, and suddenly, the walls peeled back like pages of a book, revealing what lay beyond. It was not the street, not the familiar night I had expected. It was a corridor made of shifting light, lined with doors that hummed.
“You must choose,” the stranger said.
I looked at him, then at the doors. Each pulsed with a different rhythm, a different scent, a different feeling. Some dripped with ink, others glowed with the soft luminescence of distant stars. One whispered my name in a voice I had never heard before.
“What happens if I choose wrong?” I asked.
“There is no wrong choice,” he said, though I wasn’t sure I believed him.
I reached toward one of the doors. The moment my fingers touched it, a flood of sensation overtook me—a childhood memory, crisp and clear. A swing swaying on a tree that had never existed in this house. A voice humming a tune I never learned, yet somehow knew. The feeling of raindrops on my skin from storms that had never come.
I staggered back, my breath stolen.
The stranger watched me with something like patience, something like expectation.
“You are not supposed to be here,” I whispered.
He smiled—a flicker, barely there, as though he wasn’t sure how. “And yet, here I am.”
I looked back at the corridor. The doors. The memories that dripped between them like ink bleeding into water.
Somewhere, deep inside me, a truth I had long buried stirred.
I had knocked first. The silence stretched between us. The corridor hummed, flickering like a heartbeat that belonged to someone else. The stranger did not move, did not force me toward a choice. He only waited.
A windless force swept through the space, carrying a scent—petrichor, ink, burning candles, something like the breath of a book that had never been read. My fingers tingled. Somewhere in the distance, laughter rang out, though distorted, echoing from a time I could not name.
I turned back to the stranger. His form was less distinct now, smudged at the edges, as though the space around him had grown weary of containing him. His presence filled the room like an idea half-formed, a word nearly spoken.
“What happens if I don’t choose?” I asked, my voice thinner than I expected.
His expression darkened—not with anger, but with something deeper, something like understanding. “Then you remain,” he said, “as you are. As you have always been.”
My breath caught. The weight of his words settled into my bones, into the marrow of a truth I had refused to acknowledge. I looked at the doors again, their pulsing light growing fainter, as if time itself was withdrawing its offer.
The stranger stepped back. The corridor dimmed. The world tilted slightly, just a fraction, enough to remind me that it was slipping away.
I reached out.
And the door swallowed me whole.
React
