The plane hits the ground with that gentle-violent jolt only airports know how to orchestrate, the kind that ripples through your bones like a reminder that gravity still owns you, and I blink awake from a dream I don't remember slipping into. The cabin lights feel harsher than usual, whiter than they were before takeoff as if someone upgraded the bulbs mid-flight, or maybe it's just my brain doing that thing again where it edits the world without asking for permission. People are already unbuckling even though the seatbelt sign is still glowing its strict corporate red, and their smiles — God, their smiles — stretch wider than the airline policy manual would allow. Too wide, too rehearsed, too crisp, as if they've been printed out and glued on. It makes my stomach curl.
I stand up slowly, pretending the turbulence is the reason my balance shivers for a second. The aisle moves like a conveyor belt of impatient bodies, all eager to escape this pressurized metal tube, but I feel like I'm walking through the minutes of a meeting I was never prepared for. I clutch my backpack to my chest, feeling the edges of things that don't matter but ground me anyway — a notebook, a pen, a pack of gum, a little bottle of perfume I don't remember buying but apparently own. My fingers drift over the zipper as if checking for secrets I might've hidden from myself.
Airport air hits me like a slap dipped in cold marble — sterile, recycled, smelling faintly of disinfectant and overpriced croissants. I keep walking, my legs moving on autopilot, weaving through crowds that look normal at first glance but flicker strangely whenever I blink too long. Sometimes people seem to repeat their gestures, like they're caught in a loop that resets when I look away. A man scratching his chin. A woman fixing her scarf. A child tugging a suitcase. Over and over again. Like GIFs set on autoplay inside my pupils.
I shake my head, hoping the motion will reboot whatever part of me is glitching today.
My aunt calls right as I'm walking toward the baggage claim, her name glowing on the screen like an obligation. I answer with a sigh that I hope she doesn't hear, but she always hears everything, especially the parts of me I don't want to voice.
"Mira? Did you land? Are you alright?"
Her voice is soft but tense, like she's trying to hold her worry behind her teeth. I lie through a smile she can't see.
"Yes, I landed. I'm… fine."
She exhales the way people do when they don't believe you but want to avoid the conflict for now. "Good. Go straight to Dr. Raman's clinic. Don't wander around. Don't get distracted. Please, Mira."
I want to say something dismissive, maybe something sarcastic, but the words feel heavy, slow, dragged through mud before they reach my mouth. So I just hum in agreement, disconnecting before she can ask me if I slept or if I saw anything or if I felt anything I shouldn't have.
By the time I get my suitcase — shiny, black, a little too new for someone who doesn't remember buying it — I feel the familiar fog rising behind my eyes, that soft, silent creeping of something I can't name. Like my brain is whispering behind a closed office door, holding meetings I'm not invited to. I swallow hard, grip the handle tighter, and make my way to the exit where the air outside tastes freer, messier, more real.
The cab ride is a blur of city noise, billboards flashing like intrusive thoughts and buildings stacked like filing cabinets overflowing with lives I'll never know. My reflection in the window looks off — not wrong, not monstrous, just… tired in a way exhaustion doesn't quite explain. The girl staring back at me has dark crescents under her eyes and a posture that says she's held herself together with expired tape.
By the time we reach the clinic, I feel like I'm walking into a performance review I didn't prepare any slides for.
The building is too white — painfully white — as though someone wanted to bleach the sadness out of it. I step inside, greeted by the soft hum of an AC unit and a receptionist whose smile… doesn't align. Literally. One side lifts higher than the other, stretched like poorly done animation. I blink again. It corrects itself. Or maybe I corrected it.
I check in, my name sounding foreign as I say it aloud, and after a few minutes of pretending to read a magazine, the door opens and a calm male voice calls, "Mira?"
I follow it.
Dr. Raman's office smells like old pages and something herbal, maybe lavender or something pretending to be lavender. He's sitting behind a desk that's too clean for someone who's supposed to deal with messy minds. He gestures for me to sit on the couch — the classic psychologist couch — and I sink into it like a tired confession.
"So," he starts gently, clasping his hands. "How have you been feeling since last week?"
A simple question. A dangerous one.
I shrug, but the gesture feels heavy, like lifting a boulder on one shoulder. "Fine. Or pretending to be fine. Whichever one counts."
He smiles — a normal smile, thank God — and nods slowly. "Your aunt told me you've been… seeing things again?"
The room seems to tighten around me. The air becomes denser, heavier, like a weighted blanket made of secrets.
"I don't know," I say, and my voice sounds small, like it's squeezing through a crack in my throat. "Sometimes things… shift. Or replay. Or show up wrong. Like the world forgets how to render itself."
He writes something down, pen scratching paper like it's judging me.
"And emotionally?" he asks. "Anything unusual?"
I laugh — a dry, brittle thing. "Everything feels unusual. Some days, I wake up feeling like I've lived a hundred lives. Other days, I'm convinced none of my memories are real. And then sometimes I get flashes of things that never happened. People I've never met. Places I've never been. But they feel like they belong to me."
He leans forward slightly. "Can you tell me an example?"
"No," I say too quickly, too defensively. "It's… blurry."
But it's not blurry.
It's vivid.
A burning house. A woman screaming. A child running into the dark. A man whispering my name like he owns it.But my mind — traitor, protector, prison guard — locks those images behind a steel door, refusing to let them out, even to me.
Dr. Raman watches me carefully, and there's something in his gaze that feels like he sees the shadows I'm trying to hide behind.
"Mira," he says softly, "you mentioned last time that sometimes you feel like your mind isn't letting you speak. Like something inside you edits your thoughts before you can express them. Is that still happening?"
I swallow, the motion sharp, painful."Yes. It's like… my brain is the company, and I'm the employee who's only allowed to see the sanitized version of the reports. There's a whole department inside my head working overtime, redacting everything before it reaches me."
"And what do you think it's hiding?"
I open my mouth.
Nothing comes out.
My throat closes, my chest tightens, my brain goes blank — not empty, but white-noise blank, like someone unplugged the power. I try again. Nothing. The words are right there, swarming behind my ribs, clawing to be voiced, but something — some internal force — holds them back with executive authority.
"I… I don't know," I whisper.
He nods like he expected that answer.
We talk for an hour — or rather, he talks and I drift in and out, answering what I can, dodging what I can't, fighting my own mind like it's a hostile acquisition. By the time I leave the office, the sun outside looks too bright, almost confrontational, and the world feels slightly tilted, like someone nudged reality a few inches to the left while I wasn't looking.
I step out, inhale deeply, feel the weight of everything I can't remember pressing on the back of my skull.
Something's wrong.
Something's been wrong for a long time.
And whatever my mind is hiding…It's getting impatient.
But something about him feels familiar.
Not in a good way.
Not in a normal way.
In a way that makes my skin crawl with a memory my brain refuses to unpack.
We ascend in silence, the floor numbers lighting up one by one.3.4.5.
My pulse climbs with them.
By the time we hit 7, I realize something horrifyingly strange — the man has no reflection in the metallic elevator door. I can see myself, faintly, curved and distorted, but I can't see him. Not even a shimmer of him. Not even a shadow.
When the elevator reaches 9, the doors slide open, and he walks out smoothly, disappearing down the hallway without a sound. My legs tremble as I follow the opposite direction to my room. My keycard fumbles in my hand, almost slipping, and when the door clicks open, I slip inside as though outrunning something.
The room is exactly as I left it — neat, precise, cold, impersonal. But something feels off, like the air itself shifted in my absence. I set my suitcase down and collapse onto the bed, not even bothering to remove my shoes.
Everything feels wrong.
My memories.My senses.My surroundings.Myself.
I pull out my phone, debating whether to call my aunt, but if I tell her what I saw, she'll just tighten the leash, drag me deeper into diagnosis and treatments and labels that feel too heavy for a girl who just wants to understand her own head.
Instead, I lie there, staring at the ceiling, tracing cracks that weren't there this morning, feeling the weight of something that has been following me long before I could name it.
My mind isn't just hiding things.
It's preparing something.
And for the first time, lying there in the stale dimness of that overly perfect hotel room, I feel the terrifying certainty that when the truth finally unfolds, it won't just rewrite my past — it'll ruin my future.
And maybe, just maybe…It already has.