07 Feb The Clockwork Hollow

PART I

Elena Vaughn had always been drawn to the things she shouldn’t be. As a child, she’d wandered into places marked KEEP OUT, collected things others had discarded, and listened too closely to stories she was better off forgetting. It was no surprise, then, that the first time she heard about The Hollow, she couldn’t let it go.

It started with her grandmother. She was staying with her for the summer, a quiet break from university life. Black Hollow, Colorado, wasn’t much of a town—just a scattering of buildings against an endless expanse of trees. The kind of place where the air smelled like pine and rain, where people still locked their doors at night despite nothing ever happening.

“Stay out of the forest,” her grandmother had warned over breakfast. “People go in and don’t come back out.”

Elena had laughed. “It’s a forest, Grandma. Not a haunted house.”

Her grandmother’s knife scraped against her toast. “You’d do well to listen. The Hollow takes what it wants.”

Elena didn’t press. She knew better than to argue when her grandmother’s voice took on that tone. But later, when she ventured into town, she made a point to ask around.

The locals were no better. Their explanations came in cryptic warnings, exchanged glances, and abrupt subject changes.

“I knew a boy who went looking for it,” the bartender at the diner told her. “That was thirty years ago. His mother’s still waiting.”

“Elena.” A woman who ran the bookstore frowned at her. “That tree’s been there longer than this town. It doesn’t need to prove itself to you.”

Still, no one could tell her where to find it.

That night, she dreamed of ticking. A steady, rhythmic click-click-click, like a hundred clock hands moving at once. It followed her through empty hallways, through streets she didn’t recognize. When she turned to run, she tripped, and she fell—

Elena woke with a start. The sound was still there.

Her first thought was that it had followed her from her dream. But as she sat up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she realized it wasn’t in her head. It was coming from outside.

The house was dark as she slipped out of bed. She moved carefully, avoiding the floorboards that creaked. Her grandmother’s room was silent, the door closed tight.

The clockwork noise was louder by the time she reached the front door. The moment she stepped outside, the air turned sharp, filled with the scent of damp earth. She followed the sound into the trees. It shouldn’t have been so easy. The forest wasn’t a small one, but her feet carried her like they already knew the way. The moon barely touched the ground, swallowed by the canopy overhead, but she didn’t need light.

The ticking pulled her forward.

And then she saw it—The Hollow. It was taller than the others, its trunk twisted into unnatural angles. The bark was gnarled and dark, as though burnt from the inside. But what struck her most was the massive opening at its base, wide enough to swallow her whole.

The ticking grew deafening. Elena stepped closer, a breeze pushing against her back. The earth beneath her tilted—no, she tilted. The shadows inside the tree rushed up to meet her.

She fell.

PART II

Elena plummeted into darkness.

The wind howled past her ears, but there was no sensation of movement—only the relentless, gut-twisting feeling of being pulled down. The walls of the tunnel stretched and shrank, warping like old film flickering in and out of focus.

Then came the whispers.

Not one voice, but many. Some were murmuring, others laughing. Some spoke in words she couldn’t recognize, while others mocked her in voices that sounded like her own.

“Curious girl. You had to know, didn’t you?”

“Tick, tick, tick, your time is slipping.”

“You won’t remember your name soon enough.”

She panicked, twisting midair, reaching out for anything to grab onto—but the walls of the tunnel weren’t solid. They pulsed like muscle beneath her fingers, damp and alive. Then, she slammed into something solid.

The impact knocked the breath from her lungs, and for a moment, the world blurred into a smear of muted color. The air was thick with dust, the scent of old wood and metal pressing into her senses. A steady tick-tick-tick pulsed in the background.

Elena groaned, pushed herself upright, and found herself in a room lined with clocks. They covered the walls, some small and ornate, others massive and imposing. Grandfather clocks, cuckoo clocks, pocket watches suspended from chains like hanged men. Some were pristine, polished to a mirror sheen. Others were rotting, their gears grinding together in slow, agonized turns.

She swallowed against the dryness in her throat. The floor beneath her was uneven, sloping slightly downward toward the center of the room. When she turned her head, she saw a figure standing among the clocks. It wasn’t a man. It wasn’t human. The figure was withered and skeletal, its body draped in layers of tattered fabric that might have once been a suit. A long chain of rusted clock hands hung from its neck, clicking together like bones. Its fingers were thin and elongated, the joints too many, each one ending in a sharpened point.

It watched her with hollow sockets, its face nothing more than a cracked porcelain mask, the edges melting into its flesh.

“You’ve come early,” the thing rasped.

Elena forced herself to speak. “Where am I?”

The figure cocked its head. “Where you were always meant to be.”

It stepped closer, and with every movement, the clocks around them jumped forward, their hands spinning wildly before snapping back into place.

Elena took a step back. The room tilted beneath her feet, as though it were an illusion barely holding itself together.

“Who are you?”

The thing paused. “I am The Timekeeper.” It gestured to the clocks around them. “I tend to the Hollow. I record its debts.”

A chill rippled down her spine. “Debts?”

The Timekeeper lifted one impossibly long hand and pointed at her wrist. She looked down. A blackened clock hand was now etched into her skin, embedded just below her palm.

Elena’s stomach lurched. She clawed at the mark, trying to rub it away, but it wouldn’t budge. It felt cold, pulsing faintly against her skin.

“Time is a currency here,” The Timekeeper said. “And you’ve already spent more than you realize.”

“I—I don’t understand,” Elena replied.

“You will,” The Timekeeper said cryptically.

The clocks shuddered. From the shadows behind them, something groaned, and Elena whipped around. The far end of the room was shifting, the walls peeling away like flesh splitting open. Beyond them, something moved, a shape too large and twisted to be human.

“You must leave,” The Timekeeper said.

Elena turned back to him. “Leave to where?”

The mask cracked wider, forming something like a grin.

“Forward.”

The room collapsed.

PART III

Elena stumbled forward, her footing giving way beneath her as the room around her dissolved. The walls of the clockmaker’s workshop peeled away like rotted wood, revealing a nightmarish version of the town she had left behind.

Black Hollow—or what remained of it—was twisted and wrong. Buildings slumped at impossible angles, their facades cracked and yawning like broken teeth. The streets were fractured, split apart by jagged chasms, exposing something beneath the surface—something that pulsed and churned, like a beating heart buried beneath the town.

And the people…

Elena clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from gasping.

Figures staggered through the streets, their movements stiff and unnatural, like puppets with severed strings. Their faces were half-erased, smeared as if someone had taken a wet brush to their features. Their eyes were hollow, dark pits of empty space. Some of them twitched, others moved with an eerie stillness, drifting without purpose.

The air hummed with the sound of ticking clocks. A faint voice rasped from behind her.

“Careful, girl. The more you forget, the closer you are to staying.”

Elena spun around to find a faceless beggar sitting hunched on the curb. His clothes were filthy rags, his hands gnarled and bent like tree roots. Where his face should have been, there was only a smooth, featureless expanse of skin. Despite that, he spoke again, his voice slurred as if struggling to recall words.

“Black Hollow…” he rasped, fingers trembling. “No, not Black Hollow. Not anymore.”

Elena swallowed hard. “What happened to it?”

The beggar gave a wet, gasping laugh. “You think this place is real?” He lifted a shaking hand, pointing a bony finger at her. “You’re slipping, girl. You don’t even feel it, do you?”

Elena opened her mouth to protest—but then it hit her. She had forgotten her mother’s face. The realization sent a cold shock through her body. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to summon the image—the way her mother had looked at her when she left for college, the color of her hair, the sound of her voice.

She remembered nothing. It was gone. All of it, gone.  But how? How had it just—slipped away?

The beggar chuckled. “Tick, tick, tick,” he whispered. “You’re running out of time.”

A new voice cut through the air. “She’s already marked, isn’t she?”

Elena turned sharply. A man stood at the mouth of the alley, half-concealed in the shadows. He was tall, dressed in an old-fashioned suit, the kind that looked expensive decades ago but had since fallen into disrepair. A cracked porcelain mask covered the left half of his face. The exposed skin was ashen, his features sharp and unnervingly symmetrical.

He studied Elena, his gaze lingering on the blackened clock hand branded into her wrist.

“You must be new,” he mused.

Elena took a step back. “And who are you?”

“Dr. Jasper Murk.” The man inclined his head, though his voice carried little warmth. “You could say I help people like you. The ones who… don’t belong here.”

Elena hesitated. “I—I just need to get back.”

Dr. Murk’s expression remained unreadable. “Then I suggest you listen very carefully. You don’t have much time before the Hollow takes the rest of you.”

A distant clock tolled once, the sound crawling through the air like an iron bell ringing underwater—and Elena shivered.

Dr. Murk motioned for her to follow. “Come with me. There’s someone I’d like you to meet, who might have answers.”

Elena hesitated, but the shambling figures in the streets were turning their heads toward her, their movements growing more focused. She hurried after him.

PART IV

Dr. Murk led Elena through the rotting streets, keeping to the alleys, away from the wandering, faceless figures. The ticking of the clocks had grown fainter here, but it never fully faded. It was in the air, a constant reminder that something was counting down.

Elena stayed close. “Where are we going?”

“To someone who might know how to get you out,” he responded.

The streets sloped downward, the cracked pavement giving way to warped cobblestones, as though the town had eroded into something older and stranger. The buildings here weren’t just abandoned; they were partially consumed, their edges curling inward like paper left too close to a flame. At the center of it all stood a banquet hall, its walls lined with massive cracked windows, light flickering within. The entire building leaned at an unnatural angle, as though one side had begun sinking into the earth.

Dr. Murk didn’t slow. “The Hatter’s expecting us.”

Elena nearly stopped walking. “The Hatter?”

Dr. Murk’s lips twitched. “You’ll see.”

The double doors groaned open under their own weight. The smell hit Elena first—something sweet, rotting, and wrong.

Inside, the banquet hall was crowded with guests—though guests might not have been the best choice of words.

A long table stretched through the center of the room, lined with fine china, silverware, and goblets filled with a writhing black substance. The figures seated there were contorted and decayed, their mouths locked in wide, unnatural grins, teeth gleaming despite the decomposing flesh stretched too tight over their skulls.

Elena’s stomach twisted. “What is this?”

Dr. Murk didn’t answer.

At the head of the table, a solitary figure rose.

The Hatter wasn’t like the others. His body was unnaturally thin, wrapped in a tattered coat that hung from his frame like discarded skin. His lidless eyes gleamed, glassy and too wide, never blinking. A cracked top hat sat on his head, tilting with each movement. He smiled, his teeth long and yellowed, too sharp for a human mouth.

“Elena,” he said, his voice oily and amused.

Elena stiffened at the sound of her name. She hadn’t told him who she was.

The Hatter’s grin widened, his teeth jagged and uneven, like shards of broken porcelain jammed into bleeding gums. He stepped around the table with a liquid grace, his coat dragging along the floor, whispering against the warped wood.

“I must say,” he continued, voice dripping with mock delight, “you are a curious little thing, aren’t you? Wandering so far from home. But then again, isn’t that how all good stories begin?”

Elena’s mouth felt dry. “You know who I am?”

The Hatter’s head tilted sharply, the sound of creaking bone accompanying the movement. “Oh, dear girl. I know everyone who winds up here.”

The seated guests let out a collective, hissing laugh, their heads jerking toward her in unison. Elena swallowed hard, resisting the urge to back away.

“Dr. Murk said you could help me,” she said.

The Hatter gave a mock gasp, pressing a long-fingered hand against his chest. “Help you? My, my, my, that’s a heavy request, isn’t it?” His fingers drummed against his ribs—a hollow, brittle sound.

Elena clenched her fists. “You know how I can leave, don’t you?”

The Hatter’s grin stretched impossibly wide, the corners of his mouth splitting, dark liquid beading along the cracks. “Of course I do.”

The banquet hall lurched suddenly. The seated guests shuddered in place, their grotesque grins tightening.

The Hatter stepped closer, his movements languid. “But the question, dear Elena, is—” He lowered his voice to a whisper, his breath reeking of decay and rusted metal. “—are you willing to pay the price?”

Elena’s fingers tightened at her sides. She didn’t trust him—every fiber of her being screamed against it—but she also knew she didn’t have many options.

Dr. Murk spoke before she could. “We don’t have time for your games, Hatter. Tell her what she needs to know.”

The Hatter sighed dramatically, rolling his head back. “You are such a bore, Doctor. Always so serious.” His expression sharpened, voice losing its playful edge. “But very well.”

He turned back to Elena, his glass-like eyes reflecting nothing. “To leave this place, you must find the Queen’s Heart.”

Elena frowned. “The Queen?”

The Hatter leaned in, his nose nearly brushing hers. “The Red Queen,” he murmured. “She rules what’s left of this wretched little kingdom. And she does not share.”

Elena forced herself not to recoil. “What does that mean? What is the Queen’s Heart?”

The Hatter chuckled, stepping back. “A riddle for you, my little wanderer. Find the heart, and you’ll find the way out.”

His teeth clicked together, his amusement sickly sweet. “But be warned—she doesn’t take kindly to thieves.”

In the distance, a clock tolled. The room shuddered. Elena felt it this time—a shift in the air, like something watching, listening.

The Hatter gave her a slow, knowing grin. “Oh, my dear,” he whispered, “I do hope you run fast.”

The walls of the banquet hall shook again, and the laughter of the seated guests morphed into wailing shrieks.

Elena turned and ran.

PART V

Elena bolted from the banquet hall. The walls behind her groaned and twisted, as if the building itself was collapsing inward, folding into something smaller, tighter, inescapable.

Dr. Murk ran beside her, his movements swift despite his stiff posture. “This way!”

She followed without hesitation. The street ahead was a labyrinth of shifting architecture, the town warping as though trying to swallow her whole. The sky above was split and cracked, like the pieces of a shattered mirror barely holding together.

“Where are we going?!” she demanded, dodging a faceless figure that lurched toward her.

Dr. Murk didn’t look back. “To the Queen.”

Elena’s chest tightened. The Hatter’s words rang in her head—”She doesn’t take kindly to thieves.”

Another clock tolled in the distance.

The street opened into a garden, but there was nothing natural about it. The trees were black and skeletal, their branches twisting in unnatural spirals. The roses—if they could be called that—were deep crimson, their petals heavy with a thick, glistening substance that Elena realized wasn’t dew.

It was blood.

At the center of the garden stood the Queen’s Dominion—a towering fortress of mirrored glass, its surface cracked and pulsing with a faint, sickly glow.

Elena stopped short. “You didn’t say we’d be walking into a damn nightmare.”

Dr. Murk’s expression was unreadable behind his mask. “You’re already in one.”

Before Elena could respond, a low, guttural whisper rippled through the air, like a voice being spoken through static—and a figure emerged from the fortress.

Elena went rigid.

The Red Queen was a towering abomination, her body stitched together from dozens of different figures, their limbs fused at unnatural angles. Her dress was woven from veins and sinew, the fabric pulsing with a sickening rhythm. Her face shifted, never the same twice—sometimes a hollow-eyed corpse, sometimes a girl Elena swore she recognized but couldn’t remember why.

The Queen’s many voices spoke as one. “You do not belong here.”

Elena took an instinctive step back. The air around the Queen crackled, distorting like heatwaves.

Dr. Murk was already moving. “Run!”

The Queen screeched, and the garden erupted. The ground split open, revealing gnashing mouths where roots should have been. The roses twisted, their stems lashing out like whips lined with teeth.

Elena sprinted, dodging the snapping vines.

The Queen’s shadow stretched toward her, growing larger by the second. “You cannot take what is mine!”

The fortress doors yawned open ahead, spilling forth a blinding red light.

Elena had no choice. She lunged inside, and the doors slammed shut behind her—

And the world went silent.

PART VI

Elena staggered forward as the fortress doors slammed shut behind her.

The air inside was stifling. The walls weren’t made of stone. They were glass, but beneath their fractured surfaces, something moved. Shadows flickered within them, but they weren’t reflections. They were trapped figures, their distorted faces twisted in silent screams, their hands pressed against the glass as if trying to claw their way out. Elena’s stomach churned.

A slow, wet heartbeat pulsed through the air. She followed the sound, stepping carefully across the uneven floor, where the cracks in the glass slithered under her feet like veins. Ahead, a grand staircase curled upward, spiraling into darkness.

Dr. Murk appeared beside her, his mask hiding his expression. “It’s at the top.”

Elena swallowed. “The Queen’s Heart?”

He nodded. “But it’s not what you think.”

Once more, a distant clock tolled. The walls shuddered.

“We need to move,” Dr. Murk muttered.

They ascended the staircase, their footsteps barely making a sound. The higher they climbed, the more the fortress seemed to warp, the walls narrowing, the glass darkening, something writhing beneath the surface, trying to break free.

A massive set of doors stood at the top of the stairs, black and pulsating, veins of crimson light seeping through the cracks. Dr. Murk hesitated, then pressed his gloved hand against the door. It shuddered beneath his touch, then groaned open.

The throne room lay beyond. It was vast and endless, its ceiling lost to black void. At the center of the room stood a throne made of fused bones, their surfaces polished to a mirror shine. And seated upon it was The Red Queen, her grotesque form illuminated in the blood-hued light.

She did not speak. She did not move—because she was already dead. The Queen’s body was hollowed out, her ribcage split open, her insides carved away as if something had been ripped from within her. And resting within her gutted chest, suspended like an offering, was a still-beating heart.

Dr. Murk exhaled. “The Queen’s Heart.”

Elena stared. “This is what I need?”

He nodded. “It’s your way out.”

Elena’s gaze dropped to the heart, its surface slick and glistening. Something felt wrong—everything felt wrong—but there was no time. She stepped forward—

The shadows behind the throne moved.

A voice rippled through the air, low and sickly sweet.

“Thief.”

The fortress trembled, the glass walls fracturing outward, splintering into a thousand wailing voices.

Elena’s fingers closed around the heart., and the world collapsed around her.

PART VII

The moment Elena’s fingers closed around the heart, the fortress screamed. The walls splintered outward, jagged shards of mirrored glass slicing through the air. The floor lurched beneath her, tilting as if the entire structure were unraveling.

Dr. Murk grabbed her arm, pulling her back. “Move!”

Elena barely had time to react. The heartbeat in her hands pounded violently, as though the organ—its surface unnaturally hot—were trying to escape her grip. Meanwhile, the shadows behind the throne coiled and twisted, growing taller and deeper until they stretched into a vaguely human shape, its body composed of tangled veins and hollow eyes.

The Queen was gone. Something else had taken her place.

“You have taken what is mine.” The voice rippled through the air, layered and inhuman, spoken in a language unintended for human mouths.

Elena backpedaled, gripping the still-pulsing heart tighter. Dr. Murk yanked her toward the exit. “We have to go. Now.”

The hallway ahead was collapsing, the glass walls shattering inward, exposing the writhing dark beyond them—something vast, waiting for them. Elena ran, the heartbeat growing louder, drowning out the shrieks and the endless grinding of shifting walls. The Queen’s presence was behind them, gaining.

Another clock tolled from the depths of the Hollow—a deep, shuddering sound that reminded her of funeral bells.

Elena’s vision blurred as something whispered at the edges of her mind, pressing against her skull like fingers probing through bone, but she didn’t look back. The fortress doors were ahead, now nothing more than a set of gaping, jagged edges, their once-grand entrance reduced to a jagged wound in the world.

Dr. Murk shoved her forward. “Go!”

Elena plunged through the threshold, her feet hitting solid ground—just as the fortress imploded. A deafening howl of rage and anguish tore through the sky, and the Red Queen’s domain collapsed into itself, vanishing into the Hollow.

Elena hit the ground hard. The heart was still in her hands, its pulsing rhythm slowing. For a brief, terrifying moment, she imagined it was syncing to her own heartbeat. She shuddered and forced herself to stand.

Dr. Murk was beside her, observing the ruins of the fortress with a quiet, unreadable expression.

Elena turned to him, breathless. “Now what?”

The sky above them shifted, the Hollow itself stirring in response to the Queen’s absence.

Dr. Murk exhaled. “Now,” he murmured, “you decide what you’re willing to lose to escape.”

Another clock tolled—and the world around them began to change.

PART VIII

The Hollow stirred. Elena felt it before she saw it—yet another shift in the air, a subtle tug at the edges of her sanity. The ground beneath her rippled, as though something vast and unseen had just exhaled.

Dr. Murk tensed beside her. “It knows.”

Elena’s fingers tightened around the Queen’s Heart, still warm and pulsing in her grasp. “Knows what?”

“That you’re trying to leave.”

Like words spoken through clenched teeth, a muffled sound unfolded in the distance. Elena turned—and saw the Hollow Man standing at the edge of the ruins. He was a void in the shape of a man, his body nothing but shifting darkness, flickering between existence and absence. His face was a blank expanse, but when he spoke, the words crawled through her skull like worms burrowing beneath flesh.

“You have come far, little wanderer,” the creature rasped.

Elena shivered. “You’re the Hollow Man?”

The figure inclined its featureless head. “I am the Gatekeeper of this place. And you—” His voice stretched in amusement. “—have taken what does not belong to you.”

Elena gritted her teeth. “I just want to leave.”

“Then a price must be paid.”

The heartbeat in her hands faltered, its rhythm stuttering.

The Hollow Man stepped forward, and the world around them dimmed. “Nothing leaves without sacrifice. This place does not give—it only takes.”

“What… what do you want?” Elena asked.

The Hollow Man stretched one hand outward, his fingers long and skeletal, each digit tapering into a needlepoint. “A piece of you.”

Elena’s mouth went dry. “What do you mean?”

Dr. Murk was silent.

“A memory,” the Hollow Man continued. “A piece of your past, a part of your name. Something small but true. You will not remember it, nor will it be returned.”

Elena’s grip tightened on the heart, nausea twisting in her stomach. “What if I refuse?”

The Hollow Man’s posture shifted, and though his face was featureless, she felt his smile. “Then you will stay.”

The air grew colder. The clocks in the distance ticked faster, their hands spinning wildly.

Dr. Murk finally spoke. “Elena, you don’t have a choice.”

Her chest tightened. A piece of herself. Gone, forever.

The Hollow Man extended his hand further. “Choose, little wanderer. Time is slipping.”

The final clock tolled—and Elena made her decision.

PART IX

The Hollow Man’s hand remained outstretched, waiting.

Elena clenched her fists, nails digging into her palms. “What will you take?”

“What you can afford to lose,” he replied.

The words slithered into her skull, cold and absolute. Dr. Murk was watching her, but he said nothing. There was no advice to give, no alternative to consider. He had known from the beginning—this was the price of leaving.

The Hollow Man tilted his head, his hand lowering slightly. “Shall I choose for you?”

A shudder crawled up her spine. “No,” she replied. The choice had to be hers.

The Hollow Man waited.

Elena closed her eyes and thought of her grandmother and Black Hollow before it became a nightmare. She thought of the people she had loved, and of the places she had been. And she chose.

She exhaled sharply and stepped forward, lifting her marked wrist toward the Hollow Man’s grasp.

“It is done,” the figure croaked. The moment his fingers brushed her skin, a sensation like teeth sinking into the soft tissue of her brain sent a violent tremor through her body. A soundless wrenching, like something was being yanked out of her, a thread pulled from the very fabric of her being. Elena gasped.

The Hollow Man pulled away, and she staggered back, lightheaded. Something was missing. Something had been removed, taken from her. She reached for it, for the shape of it in her mind—but there was nothing there.

The Hollow Man’s form flickered, beginning to dissolve into the shadows. “Go.”

The world lurched. The Hollow collapsed inward, the darkness caving in, rushing toward her like a tidal wave of ink.

Elena screamed—and woke up.

She gasped for air, her body jerking upright. She was lying in the dirt, just beyond the tree line of Black Hollow’s forest. The air was crisp and damp with the scent of pine and soil. The sky above was a murky gray, the first hints of dawn creeping over the horizon.

She was back.

Her hands shook as she pushed herself up. The mark on her wrist was gone. The Hollow had taken its due. But what had she lost?

Elena furrowed her brow, her thoughts stuttering. She had come back. She had escaped. Hadn’t she? Something inside her felt empty, a space that had once been occupied but was now hollowed out and forgotten.

She turned toward the forest—toward the gaping wound in the base of the twisted tree. The Hollow was waiting—it always would be.

Elena staggered back, something gnawing at the edges of her thoughts. An absence. A wrongness she couldn’t name.

She turned and walked away, never looking back. As she stepped beyond the tree line, she searched—reached—for something solid in her past.

A birthday party. Candles flickering. A cake waiting to be cut. Guests surrounding her, but their faces were blank, smudged like old photographs left in the rain.

Laughter—soft and distant—but the voices were wrong. Muffled. Hollow. She grasped for names, but they slipped through her fingers, dissolving before they could form.

She tried again. It was a summer afternoon, and the scent of cut grass was thick in the air. Someone was laughing beside her, their shadow stretching long against the pavement. But when she turned to look, there was no one there.

A road trip—she could remember the long drive, the way the headlights carved through the dark—but not who had been in the passenger seat.

A house, warm and familiar. Walls covered in photographs, frames lining the shelves. A place she had lived, had loved—but now, its location was a mystery. The people in those frames were faceless, their eyes scratched out by something unseen. Her stomach twisted.

She tried to picture her mother’s voice. Surely she had a mother—didn’t she?

She couldn’t remember.

She tried to recall a friend’s name. Certainly, she had friends, acquaintances, schoolmates—at least, she thought she did.

Again, she came up empty.

Had she ever been loved or belonged to anyone? She was certain she had loved something, someone—but who? And why?

The thought curdled in her chest, sending a sharp wave of nausea through her.

She kept walking, unsure of what had been left behind—

Only knowing it had been lost forever.