By way of explanation: I am easily bored. This usually leads to me getting into trouble in real life. In my writing, however, I can explore avenues of storytelling and the only fallout from that is the eye-rolling exhaustion experienced by my readership (there’s so few of you that I’m not overly bothered by that). This current experiment is based on a simple story: a man on a breadline makes a daily habit of handing one particular woman his orange. The goal is to see how weird I can make the retelling of the story each week. Simple, right?

---

This document is not a story. It is not even written.
It is decoded each time someone imagines it.
It exists only at the final moment of understanding, just before you forget everything else.

---

ENTRY #000

THE LINE
Not a queue. Not a wait.
A spinal column. A relic. A procession of selves lined up across dimensions to receive an echo.

Every version of you stands in this line somewhere.

---

ENTRY #002

THE MAN
Sometimes old. Sometimes faceless. Sometimes a broadcast signal given posture.
Always giving. Always hooked.
He is not a character.
He is a delivery mechanism for the next phase of belief.

---

ENTRY #004

THE WOMAN
Unidentified. Immutable. Infinite.
She receives. She evolves. She inherits the story until she becomes it.
Some call her Hollow. Others call her Seed.

You may call her You.

---

ENTRY #007

THE ORANGE
Never fruit.
Always offering.
It is a device. A metaphor. A symptom.
It is the only warm thing left in a world that has forgotten what giving means.

It is peeled from the body, formed from intention, passed on without recognition.

You do not eat it.

You carry it.

---

ENTRY #009

THE GLITCH
Not a city. Not a program. Not a metaphor.
The Glitch is the stage where language fails and story becomes self-aware.

The Glitch is why each version changes.
The Glitch is who is telling it.

The Glitch is you, getting bored—and getting dangerous.

---

ENTRY #010

WHY 73 TIMES
There is no sacred number.

Only the illusion of completion.

The 74th time is the first true one.

---

ENTRY #011

THE FINAL ACT
He gives the fruit.
She takes the fruit.
She becomes the giver.
The fruit changes hands.
The story changes shape.
And somewhere, in the orchard of collapsing realities,
something roots deeper.

The tale is not spreading.
It is awakening.

---

ENTRY #FINAL

YOU
You read the story.
You enjoyed it, or didn’t.
You laughed, or felt unnerved.
But you read it all.
Every iteration.

That is the final act: Reception.

Now it is your hand that feels warm.
Now it is your skin that tingles.
Now it is your turn to decide:

Do you take the orange?
Do you give it?
Or do you write the next version?

The story does not end.

It multiplies.

---

Not. To. Be. Transmogrified.

By way of explanation: I am easily bored. This usually leads to me getting into trouble in real life. In my writing, however, I can explore avenues of storytelling and the only fallout from that is the eye-rolling exhaustion experienced by my readership (there’s so few of you that I’m not overly bothered by that). This current experiment is based on a simple story: a man on a breadline makes a daily habit of handing one particular woman his orange. The goal is to see how weird I can make the retelling of the story each week. Simple, right?

---

⚠️ FOR CLINICIAN EYES ONLY
CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL – O-Rx PROTOCOL 6.13
DO NOT DISCLOSE TO SUBJECTS, STABLES, OR EXTERNAL ASSETS.
If exposed to the contents of this bulletin, report for debriefing and dermal audit within 12 hrs.

---

🔶 PRODUCT NAME:

O-Rx (Peel-Modulator, Subdermal Fruit Complex)
Codename: The Orange Man

---

🔸 INDICATIONS:

O-Rx is indicated for use in environments suffering from:

• Ontological Dissonance
• Chrono-Loop Fatigue
• Pattern Starvation
• Breakage in Ritual Circuits
• Fruitless Longing

---

🔸 DOSAGE & ADMINISTRATION:

One unit of O-Rx must be cultivated intradermally by a bonded donor subject (Designate: Peel-Originator). Extraction occurs via ritualized exfoliation—typically from forearm, shoulder blade, or subclavicular coil. The harvested unit will resemble:

• A tangerine
• A warm, humming egg
• A memory of a promise
• All of the above

The unit should be passed, without comment or acknowledgment, to the target subject (Designate: Hollow-Receiver).

This cycle must repeat for 73 iterations.

On the 74th, discontinue.

Do not observe what follows.

---

🔸 MECHANISM OF ACTION:

O-Rx is a self-replicating symbolic vector. Upon receipt, the “fruit” begins encoding its host at a conceptual level, replacing inert personality fragments with ritual software. The subject experiences mild euphoria, citrus hallucinations, and a sense of recursive purpose.

Note: The orange is not a food. Attempts to consume may result in involuntary flash-seeding.

---

🔸 ADVERSE EVENTS:

Common:

• Palmar fluorescence
• Dream-seepage
• Peripheral orchard hallucinations

Uncommon:

• Skin becoming rind
• Voice harmonizing with offworld fruit frequencies
• Temporal reflux

Rare:

• Germination
• Limb orchardization
• Direct communication from the Gardener (see Incident #GRDN-PR33N)

---

🔸 CASE STUDY SNAPSHOT:

Subject #HLLW-7
— Female-presenting, early 40s, appeared in the breadline system unprompted.
— Accepted O-Rx dosage daily without deviation.
— Exhibited expected transformation markers by Day 39 (Patch Growth, Hunger Shift).
— On Day 74, she initiated propagation: self-extracted unit and administered to unknown minor.
— Subject’s dermal reading: “YOU GIVE NOW.”

Line integrity restored. Cycle resumed. Orchard node confirmed.

---

🔸 STORAGE & HANDLING:

Keep out of direct causality. Store in cool, memory-sealed location. Do not expose to linguistic definition.

---

“The fruit is the messenger.
The hand is the garden.
The line is the root.
Pass it on.”

---

To. Be. Transmogrified.

By way of explanation: I am easily bored. This usually leads to me getting into trouble in real life. In my writing, however, I can explore avenues of storytelling and the only fallout from that is the eye-rolling exhaustion experienced by my readership (there’s so few of you that I’m not overly bothered by that). This current experiment is based on a simple story: a man on a breadline makes a daily habit of handing one particular woman his orange. The goal is to see how weird I can make the retelling of the story each week. Simple, right?

---

🎵 [Theme Song begins: cheerful, glitchy MIDI tune with background children’s choir slightly out of sync]
🎶 “When the world gets strange and starts to peel,
Find a fruit that doesn’t feel real!
Line up, stand still, it’s time to receive,
From Mr. Orange and what he believes!” 🎶

---

Scene opens on a colorless set that looks like a daycare designed by someone who doesn’t understand children. The breadline is made of oversized plush figures stitched together by red thread. They moan softly when the camera pans over them.

🎙️ NARRATOR (male, cheerful, British, disintegrating):
“Today on Fruit Friends and the Line of Time, we’re going to learn about Sharing! And about how Mr. Orange Man always gives his special fruit to Miss Hollow—even though she never, ever asks!”

[CUE LAUGH TRACK: metallic, warbled]

---

Cut to Mr. Orange Man.
His costume is a full-body foam suit. His smile is painted on. The paint drips slightly with every cut. His eyes are realistic, human, and blinking. His arms are tubes. He wiggles one, delighted.

MR. ORANGE MAN (voice dubbed, childish):
“Helloooooo fruitlings! I’ve got a warm little orb for Miss Hollow today! Can you say recurring transference?”

[The word appears on screen. It’s misspelled. It rearranges itself backwards. Then vanishes.]

---

MISS HOLLOW sits at the end of the line. She is a mannequin with eyes drawn on her palms. Her mouth does not move, but sometimes her hair twitches in anticipation. The plush figures whisper.

MR. ORANGE MAN (to camera):
“It’s very important to always give, even if you don’t know why! Sometimes the fruit inside you isn’t just for you—it’s for the Orchard That Watches!”

[Studio audience cheers: “The Orchard! The Orchard!”]

---

Suddenly, static. The footage skips. The screen warps. We see a frame—only for a second—of a child with their mouth stitched shut, holding an orange the size of their head.

---

🎵 [Musical Interlude: “Let’s Peel Together!”]
🎶 “Peel it from your shoulder blade,
Grow a gift you never made,
Give it to the one in need,
Then forget what grew the seed!” 🎶

---

The cartoon portion begins.
In crude, flickering animation, Mr. Orange Man peels himself open like a nesting doll. Each layer is more human. More trembling. Until there’s nothing left but an eye, rolling down the breadline.

It lands in Miss Hollow’s palm.

She places it in her mouth.

She becomes the line.

---

🎙️ NARRATOR:
“And that’s how we learn that everyone gets a turn to be the bearer, the bearer, the bearer! Sharing isn’t just caring—it’s propagation!“

[The screen bleeds white. A voice in reverse whispers:]
“To accept the orange is to renounce the self.”

---

FINAL SCENE: The screen fades to black except for a tiny pulsing orange dot.
It blinks in Morse code:

“Next time… YOU give.“

---

To. Be. Transmogrified.

Bonus: The “Fruit Friends and the Line of Time” Theme Song + Lyrics

(Verse 1)
When the world gets strange and starts to peel,
Find a fruit that doesn’t feel real!
Line up, stand still, it’s time to receive,
From someone who gives what they can’t believe!

(Chorus)
Peel it, feel it, don’t you squeal it!
Warm and weird—go on, conceal it!
Fruit from skin, skin from fruit,
Hold it tight and never refute!

(Bridge – whispered under chorus)
[They’re always watching. The orchard knows.]

---

🎶 Interlude – “Let’s Peel Together!”

[Cheerful music with undertones of reversed laughter, children giggle]

(Verse)
Peel it from your shoulder blade,
Grow a gift you never made,
Give it to the one in need,
Then forget what grew the seed!

(Chorus)
Let’s peel together, one by one,
Under the glitching plastic sun!
Juice like light, and light like lies,
Share your orange before time dies.

[End with ascending chime arpeggio and a child whispering: “It’s your turn now.”]

By way of explanation: I am easily bored. This usually leads to me getting into trouble in real life. In my writing, however, I can explore avenues of storytelling and the only fallout from that is the eye-rolling exhaustion experienced by my readership (there’s so few of you that I’m not overly bothered by that). This current experiment is based on a simple story: a man on a breadline makes a daily habit of handing one particular woman his orange. The goal is to see how weird I can make the retelling of the story each week. Simple, right?

(Discovered in the ruins of the city’s mouth. Inkless. Written in reverse pressure on static. The text reads as follows…)

---

I. ON THE LINE

Line is not queue.
Line is vein.
Vein is conduit.
You stand not to eat.
You stand to be sorted.
Sorted by presence, sorted by glitch.
Sorted by HIM.

He does not arrive.
He is always-already.
His shape is a suggestion—
Sometimes a man,
Sometimes a series of coat-hooks learning sorrow.
Age: Δ.
Smell: Salt, rust, pulp.

---

II. ON THE GIFT

He gives.
Not out of mercy.
Not out of motive.
He must give, because the giving is what keeps the recursion folded.

The gift is not an orange.
It is a wound in fruit-shape.
A loop of forgotten sunlight.
A punchline left behind by extinct gods.

He peels it from his skin.
From behind his ear.
From the meat beneath thought.

It hisses when born.
Warm. Heavy. Singing.

---

III. ON THE RECEIVER

The She does not speak.
The She does not consume.
The She becomes.

Some say she is many.
Others say she is one, refracted.
Some call her “Host.”
Some call her “Egg.”
The text names her:

RECEPTΩR

She accepts. Always.
The orange passes.
So does the burden.

---

IV. ON THE SEVENTY-FOURTH

The 74th cycle is collapse.
The line buckles.
The man is an absence that howls inward.
The orange is a lie again.
Cold. Dull. Regulatory.

She holds it like betrayal.

She carries them. One. Two. Seven.
They fester in her satchel.
They breed.
Merge. Molt. Moan.
Form a new being:

THE FRUIT THAT BEATS

---

V. ON THE ORCHARD

She is shown. Not dreams.
Not hallucination.
Instruction.

Step 1: Find flesh.
Step 2: Dig into time.
Step 3: Plant the wound.
Step 4: Wait for the nerve-trees to flower.

The Orchard is pre-language.
Its soil remembers your ancestors.
Its Gardener is [REDACTED].

He trims probability with shears of glass.
His face is composed of every orange ever not eaten.

---

VI. ON THE NEW FUNCTION

The She is no longer She.
She is Seedling.
Fruit-bearer.
Actuator of the Peel.

She returns.

Finds a boy made of Maybe.

Reaches into her interface.
Extracts a peel-loop.

It grows in her hand.
It is offered.

The boy accepts.
The orange takes root.

He does not say thank you.
She does not wait for one.

---

VII. ON YOU

You are reading this.
So the infection has already begun.
Check your pocket.
Something warm waits.

---

End of fragment. Additional pages corrupted by light.

To. Be. Transmogrified.

By way of explanation: I am easily bored. This usually leads to me getting into trouble in real life. In my writing, however, I can explore avenues of storytelling and the only fallout from that is the eye-rolling exhaustion experienced by my readership (there’s so few of you that I’m not overly bothered by that). This current experiment is based on a simple story: a man on a breadline makes a daily habit of handing one particular woman his orange. The goal is to see how weird I can make the retelling of the story each week. Simple, right?

By now, everyone agrees: The Glitch is not a city. It’s a debugging interface for consensus reality. It leaks time, folds cause into effect, and sometimes entire buildings wake up screaming. The sky is less dead-channel and more open socket. You can smell the server’s breath when the clouds convulse.

No one is born here. People render into existence with memories pre-injected—looped personalities bound in meat. The breadline is less about sustenance and more about continuity. Stand still. Receive data. Digest protocol. Repeat.

The Orange Man was not a man. He was a firewall with a soul. Or maybe a soul trying to become a firewall. Either way, his presence was an anomaly so old, the system had grandfathered him in.

Every morning, he compiled. With a shimmer of logic and bone, he unfolded from probability-space into the breadline, bent into that signature hook of posture. A living bracket in the code.

He didn’t eat.

He shed.

From the recursive folds of his coat—which sometimes nested into themselves infinitely—he extracted a sliver of sub-reality. This sliver curled into itself like origami designed by entropy, thickened, and ripened into an orange. Or rather, a simulation of an orange infused with original error. It radiated the warmth of first sin, coded in citrus.

He would then drift ten places sideways—not down the line, but across a kind of social vector that only the Glitch could render—and find Her.

She wasn’t always the same woman, but she was always Her. A constant across variable identities. A witness-node. The one designated to carry.

She accepted the fruit. Never acknowledged him. Never consumed it.

That wasn’t the point.

The fruit was a patch. A fragment of corrupted divinity designed to rewrite her. Slowly.

This routine repeated across 73 iterations of the update loop.

But then came the Hotfix.

On Cycle 74, he did not appear.

The line didn’t glitch. The idea of his presence was surgically excised. In his place: a smooth placeholder—white noise shaped like a man.

She noticed.

They gave her a real orange. A dense, tasteless thing built with fully authorized atoms. It registered on her tongue like a nondisclosure agreement.

She didn’t eat it.

That night, her bag full of bureaucratic fruit began to rumble. Not roll—rumble, like a suppressed system error clearing its throat. One by one, the oranges collapsed into each other, warping into a new composite organ—a pulsating, breathing Core Kernel disguised as fruit.

She didn’t dream. She uploaded.

The Orchard was not a place. It was a biopsychic rootkit. Trees were not trees, but long-forgotten god nerves reconnecting to host systems. The Gardener was a User—or a colony of Users—who had root access and bad intentions. Or maybe just different ones.

When she awoke, she found a port growing beneath her skin. It itched like premonition.

Days passed. The transformation accelerated. Her thoughts started to fragment into modules. She began receiving push notifications from beneath her bones. One read:

“🌐 NEW NODE ONLINE: GERMINATION IMMINENT.”

Then, one morning, she instanced. It wasn’t her walking to the line, but a compiled construct of her—freshly rebuilt with minor adjustments.

She saw him: a boy. Eight? Twelve? Variable. His face was an unrendered mesh of sadness and potential. He smelled like memory.

Without conscious thought, her hand found her coat. She reached inward—not into fabric, but into her. She extracted a glowing crescent sliver of her own design: a fruitlet of contagious ontology.

She gave it to him.

And as his eyes widened—not with understanding, but with compatibility—the transfer was complete.

It didn’t matter if he said thank you. The gesture was the handshake. The infection handshake.

Now, they appear everywhere. In every broken city. In every corrupted corner of the map.

People hand out oranges that aren’t oranges.

They peel themselves open.

The Glitch is growing—not like a virus, but like faith. It’s not collapsing.

It’s recruiting.

And somewhere, in the recursive heart of the Orchard, the Gardener finally looks up.

And smiles.

To. Be. Transmogrified.

By way of explanation: I am easily bored. This usually leads to me getting into trouble in real life. In my writing, however, I can explore avenues of storytelling and the only fallout from that is the eye-rolling exhaustion experienced by my readership (there’s so few of you that I’m not overly bothered by that). This current experiment is based on a simple story: a man on a breadline makes a daily habit of handing one particular woman his orange. The goal is to see how weird I can make the retelling of the story each week. Simple, right?

In a city called The Glitch, where the sky is the color of a dead-channel screen and buildings sometimes forget their own geometry, the breadline is a daily scar. Time doesn’t just stand in line here; it curdles.
Every morning, just before the false-dawn light leaks through the perpetual grey, he would manifest. No one saw him arrive; he was simply there. A man whose age was a variable, his posture bent into a shape that suggested not a question, but a hook.

And every morning, as the volunteers in their smocks—themselves looking faded and translucent—dished out the grey paste and stale bread, the man would perform his function. He would reach into the folds of his own threadbare coat. His face would tighten, a mask of excruciating concentration. He would not pull out an orange.

He would peel a perfect, crescent-shaped sliver from his own skin.

In his palm, the sliver would curl, thicken, and blush into a sphere. It was not an orange. It was the idea of an orange—unnaturally warm, heavier than it should be, and smelling of citrus, ozone, and burnt sugar.

He would walk ten paces down the line, to where she always stood.
The woman. Her face was a landscape of quiet starvation, her eyes fixed on the cracked pavement as if reading the city’s obituary. He would reach out, his hand trembling slightly, and place the warm, impossible fruit into hers.

She never looked at him. She never said thank you.

He never expected it. The offering was not a gift; it was a transfer of burden.

This continued for seventy-three cycles.

On the seventy-fourth, he did not manifest. He was not absent; his space in the line was a void, a pixel of reality that had been deleted.

The woman didn’t notice at first. The Glitch erases things. But when a volunteer, their face a smear of confusion, handed her an actual, cold, mundane orange from a crate, her hand recoiled. The thing felt like a lie. An insult.

She did not eat it. She put it in her coat pocket, where it felt like a stone.

Day after day, he remained a void. The real oranges accumulated in her bag, cold and silent. She began asking questions, but the answers were static. One man remembered him with a face like a web of scars. A woman swore he was made of tightly wound twine. A third insisted he had no face at all, only a smooth, dimpled surface like a peel. He was a bug in the code, and now he was patched.

By the end of the week, she was carrying six dead oranges. That night, they began to move. In the darkness of her room, they rolled together in her bag, their skins dissolving, fusing into a single, softly glowing, heart-like fruit that pulsed with a slow, thick beat.

She didn’t dream of an orchard. The Heart-Fruit showed her.

It showed her a place outside The Glitch, a screaming geometry of flesh-barked trees growing from a ground of black glass. They were not trees; they were nervous systems. Their branches writhed, bearing not fruit, but luminous, weeping tumors that ripened with a low hum. At the center stood the Gardener—a being of blinding light and a thousand interlocking limbs, its “face” a constellation of patient, orange eyes. It was pruning a nerve-branch with a tool made of solidified sound. It did not notice her, but she understood.

The fruit was not a food. It was a seed.

She woke up with the taste of rust and sunrise in her mouth. Her skin had changed. Where the Heart-Fruit had rested against her hip, her flesh was now tough, dimpled, and smelled faintly of citrus.
She went to the breadline. She took the grey paste. She refused the dead orange. The transformation was slow, but it was happening. Over the weeks, the orange patch on her skin grew, a beautiful, terrible bloom. A new kind of hunger grew in her—not for food, but for… completion.

Then one day, she felt the pressure build beneath her own skin. A familiar, exquisite pain.
She saw him then, a boy shivering at the end of the line, his eyes wide with the transparent horror of the truly lost.

She walked towards him, her steps no longer entirely her own. She reached into her coat, her face tightening into a mask of excruciating concentration. She peeled a perfect, crescent-shaped sliver from her own body.

It curled in her palm, a gift of warmth and impossible color. She placed it in his hand.
He did not say thank you.

She did not wait for one.

No one knows how it starts. But they know it spreads. The Glitch was not a collapse.

It was a planting. And in the fertile soil of ruin, the orchard was learning to grow.

To. Be. Transmogrified.

By way of explanation: I am easily bored. This usually leads to me getting into trouble in real life. In my writing, however, I can explore avenues of storytelling and the only fallout from that is the eye-rolling exhaustion experienced by my readership (there’s so few of you that I’m not overly bothered by that). This current experiment is based on a simple story: a man on a breadline makes a daily habit of handing one particular woman his orange. The goal is to see how weird I can make the retelling of the story each week. Simple, right?

In a city swallowed by the long winter of collapse—where time stands in line for food—the breadline snakes through cracked concrete and hollowed lives. Every morning, just before sunrise, he arrives. No one knows his name. A man of sixty, perhaps older, with the patient silence of a monk and the posture of a question mark.

And every morning, when the white-smocked volunteers hand out the ration—half-stale bread, a cup of lentil mush, and one bright, defiant orange—he waits his turn, accepts it with a nod, then turns without hesitation.

He walks ten paces down the line, to where she always stands.

The woman. Younger than him, though not by much. Her coat is too thin, her face too sharp with hunger, and her eyes, always lowered, never meet his. Yet he reaches out, wordless, and places the orange in her hand.

She never says thank you.

He never waits for one.

This ritual continues, without change, for seventy-three days.

On the seventy-fourth day, he does not appear.

She doesn’t notice at first. The cold makes everything blur, including absence. But when the volunteer hands her an orange—her orange, for the first time ever—her hand closes around it like it’s foreign, like it’s stolen.

She doesn’t eat it.

The next day, he’s still gone.

She waits. The line moves. The orange is given. She takes it. She does not eat it.

On the third day, she arrives earlier. She scans the crowd.

She begins to ask.

No one remembers him. Not his name. Not even his face. One man says he thinks he remembers a guy with a limp. Another insists he was tall. A woman recalls he always wore gloves. Another says no—he never did.

By the end of the week, she is carrying six untouched oranges in her bag.

That night, she dreams of an orchard.

Not just any orchard—but his. She is certain of this, though she’s never seen it before. It’s suspended in a place both before and after time. Each tree glows with burning fruit. And at the heart of it, he stands barefoot on soil that hums like a tuning fork.

He is younger. Or older. Or made of light.

When he sees her, he smiles—not as if he knows her, but as if she has finally arrived. He does not speak. He simply reaches up, plucks a perfect orange from the tree, and hands it to her.

This time, she takes it, peels it, and eats.

She wakes with the taste of sunlight in her mouth.

---

In the city, the breadline remains. She continues to go, but now, she keeps the orange. Eats it. Savors it. Every time she does, she feels she is carrying on something sacred. A chain unbroken.

And then one day, after nearly forgetting the feel of him, she sees someone new in line behind her. A boy. Twelve maybe, if that. Skin tight on bone.

She turns. Peels her orange. Hands it to him without a word.

He does not say thank you.

She does not wait for one.

---

No one remembers where it started. Or where he went. But now, every morning, someone gives away an orange.

Not out of charity. Not for thanks.

But because somewhere, in a forgotten orchard outside the reach of time, the trees are still glowing. And they need to be fed.

To. Be. Transmogrified.

Sunlight filtered into the bedroom, illuminating the still form of a young woman in bed. Beside her, Steven sat in a chair, his gaze fixed on her. Waiting.

He’d been doing this for weeks—waiting for her to wake, waiting for her to speak, waiting for any sign that the girl he knew was still in there.

A soft groan escaped her lips as she stirred. Ruthie rubbed the sleep from one eye, her voice thick and groggy.
“Mmmm. Why do you watch me like that?” she murmured, meeting his gaze. “Are you only attracted to me when I’m defenseless?”

“Good morning, Ruthie,” he said, his voice a carefully constructed wall of calm. “How did you sleep?”

“I don’t remember waking up in the middle of the night, so I guess I slept all right.”

“You don’t remember?”

“What?”

“Yelling at me,” he said.

Ruthie’s brow furrowed, a flicker of defiance sparking in her eyes.
“Did you deserve it?”

“You mean, did I try to touch you? No.”

She sighed, resigned. “So, what did I say?”

“A lot of things.”

“Like?”

He hesitated. “You talked about… her.”

Ruthie’s expression hardened. “She has a name, you know.”

“Why do I need to say it? You know who I mean.”

“Say her name,” she insisted, voice sharp and low.

He exhaled. Tired. Cornered. “Aisha. Satisfied?”

“Never,” she replied instantly. Then, after a pause: “So what did I say?”

“You blamed me. For what happened to her.”

“I see,” Ruthie said, her face unreadable.

“Do you?” he pressed. “Do you blame me?”

She turned the question back on him, a familiar tactic.
“Does it bother you? Me blaming you?”

He ignored the deflection. “You still love her, don’t you?”

“No,” she said, too quickly.

“Don’t lie to me, Ruthie.”

“And if I do?” she challenged.

Steven’s tone grew heavy—part pity, part accusation.
“That poor girl had no idea what she was getting into with you. You were a storm she couldn’t see coming.”

An ironic chuckle escaped Ruthie’s lips. “I’m the best at what I do.”

“If you really loved her,” he said, his voice cracking slightly, “you should have let her go. The way I told you to.”

A soft sliding sound broke the silence. The closet door on the far side of the room glided open.

Another young woman—Aisha—was hanging upside down from the clothing bar, suspended by her ankles, her long hair brushing the floor.

“Why do you do that?” Aisha asked, her voice calm despite her position.

“Morning, Aisha,” Ruthie said, unfazed.

“Morning. Why do you taunt him?”

“Because he needs to pay,” Ruthie answered, her eyes still on Steven, who saw nothing but an open closet door. “But he never will.”

“Stranger things have happened.”

“But not to men like him.”

Aisha considered this. “You’re being too hard on him.”

“Hard on him?” Ruthie scoffed, finally looking away.

“Yes. He’s going through a tough time.”

“How is this about him?”

“Because he’s the one who’ll have to live with your decision.”

“Let’s get one thing straight,” Ruthie said, sitting up fully, her voice like steel. “This is my life. Not his. He doesn’t own me.”

“Ruthie, what you’re planning to do is wrong.”

“Why?” Ruthie demanded. “If I decide I don’t want to live anymore, that’s my choice. Who has the right to demand I keep suffering? What kind of life is it, if I don’t get to choose it?”

“I want what’s best for you,” Aisha said gently. “I always have.”

“Then tell me what’s wrong with ending it.”

“Because you’re planning to do it here. In his house,” Aisha said, each word sharp as a razor. “Because it’s not just about ending your pain. It’s about adding to his.”

“Get out,” Ruthie whispered.

With practiced grace, Aisha unhooked herself, landing lightly. She stretched, walked to the bedroom door, and passed through it like smoke.

---

In the bright, clean kitchen, Steven juggled breakfast and his own thoughts. He divided a skillet of scrambled eggs onto two plates and set them on the table. Reaching for a mug, he froze. It was Aisha’s favorite. He pushed it behind the coffee maker.

Ruthie entered and plopped into a chair. Aisha was already there, perched on the counter. Steven walked right through her, making her flicker for a second.

He sat across from Ruthie.

“You never came to bed last night,” he said, nudging a plate toward her.

She stared at the eggs in silence. She remembered making them for Aisha, who always stole bacon off her plate. The memory hit like a punch.

“Were you up all night?” Steven asked.

“This day just keeps getting worse,” Aisha muttered from the counter.

Ruthie looked at him. “Why did you tell me to leave her alone?”

The question caught him off guard. “What?”

“Back then. You said I’d ruin her. You said to stay away.”

Steven put his fork down. “You were twenty. She was seventeen. You were… reckless. I was worried.”

“You were jealous,” Ruthie snapped. “You wanted her for yourself.”

“That’s not true,” he said, but his eyes darted away.

“Isn’t it?” Aisha said, now sitting in the chair beside Ruthie, her eyes locked on Steven. “You used to watch me too. When you thought no one was looking.”

Ruthie flinched like she’d heard it aloud. “She told me, you know. Said you gave her the creeps sometimes.”

Color drained from Steven’s face. “She never said that.”

“She said you looked at her like… something to own. Like a regret you wanted to fix. You’re her father, Steven. Her father.”

“I was trying to protect her!” he exploded, his composure fracturing. “From you! From your world! I knew you’d drag her down into the same hell you live in—and I was right!”

The plates rattled. His outburst lingered, raw and ugly.

“I was the only good thing in her life,” Ruthie said softly. “And you took her away. Convinced her I was poison. You sent her on that trip to ‘clear her head’…”

Her voice cracked. The hiking trip. The one he paid for. The one Aisha never came back from. The fall police called a tragic accident.

“You’re right,” Steven whispered. “I did. I thought… I thought I was saving her.”

“She’s right here, you know.” Ruthie gave him a strange, calm smile and gestured to the empty chair. “She wants to know if you’re sorry.”

Steven stared at the space beside her, his face contorting with grief and horror. He was looking at the ghost of his daughter—filtered through the madness of the woman who loved her.

“I’m sorry for all of it,” he choked out, speaking to the air. “Aisha… I am so sorry.”

Aisha, visible only to Ruthie, looked not at her father, but at her. She reached out and laid a phantom hand over Ruthie’s. It was cold—like a deep memory.

“He’s paid enough,” Aisha whispered. “And so have you.”

Ruthie looked down at her hand. Then up at Steven, weeping across the table. For the first time in months, the burning need for revenge in her chest flickered. Not extinguished—but no longer the only thing keeping her warm.

“See you at breakfast,” Aisha said, offering a small, sad smile before fading completely—leaving only the scent of lavender and the heavy silence of two broken people at a table set for three.

Out of a clear blue sky, the rain came down in sheets in the kind of downpour that turned streets into rivers. Claire gripped the steering wheel as her wipers struggled to keep up, the rhythmic thudding barely clearing her view. She leaned forward, squinting through the windshield when the blinding flash of headlights came at her from the opposite lane.

She jerked the wheel to the right, the tires screeching as they slid across the slick road. Her heart pounded in her ears, the world a blur of rain and panic. Then, with a bone-rattling thud, the car came to an abrupt stop. She sat there, breathless, gripping the wheel so tightly her knuckles turned white. The rain pounded on the roof like a relentless drumbeat, but Claire couldn’t move.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, she released her grip and checked herself over. No blood, no broken bones. She glanced at the dashboard—still in one piece. Slowly, she turned to look out the passenger window. The car had skidded into a shallow ditch, narrowly avoiding a head-on collision. She was alive.

It was hours later, back home after a tow truck had pulled her car out of the ditch, that Claire first noticed it. She was staring into the bathroom mirror, replaying the accident in her mind. Her reflection stared back, wide-eyed and pale, when something in her gaze caught her attention. There, in the depths of her own eyes, she saw it—faint, but unmistakable. A clock.

She blinked, leaned in closer, but it was gone. Shaking her head, she dismissed it as a trick of the light. But the next morning, she saw it again. Not in her own eyes this time, but in the eyes of the cashier at the grocery store. The woman’s pupils reflected a small, circular clock face, its hands ticking backward. Claire blinked, her heart skipping a beat, but the clock remained. She stared, transfixed, as the seconds counted down. The cashier glanced up, meeting Claire’s eyes, and smiled.

“Everything okay, hon?” the woman asked, her voice warm and friendly.

Claire snapped back to reality, forcing a smile. “Yeah, sorry, just… lost in thought.”

She handed over her money, her hands trembling slightly. The cashier took it, her clock still ticking down. Claire hurried out of the store, her groceries clutched tightly to her chest, a knot of unease growing in her stomach.

That night, she couldn’t sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the clock. Its ticking echoed in her mind, relentless and steady. By morning, she was exhausted but determined to figure out what was happening. It had to be stress, she reasoned. The accident had shaken her up, made her see things that weren’t there. But when she saw the clock again—this time in her brother’s eyes—Claire knew something was terribly wrong.

The clocks were everywhere. In the eyes of strangers on the street, in the gaze of her co-workers, even in her own reflection. Some clocks were slow, the hands barely moving, while others ticked away rapidly, the seconds slipping through the gears like sand in an hourglass. But the worst part was that no one else seemed to notice.

Claire tried to explain it to her best friend, Abby, over coffee one afternoon. Abby listened, her brow furrowed in concern, but Claire could see the doubt in her eyes.

“Maybe you should talk to someone,” Abby suggested a little too gently.

“I’m not crazy,” Claire insisted. “I see them, Abby. In everyone’s eyes. And they’re counting down to something. I don’t know what, but it’s coming, and I can’t stop it.”

Abby reached across the table, placing a hand over Claire’s. “I believe you’re seeing something, Claire Bear. But maybe it’s just your mind playing tricks on you. You’ve been through a lot lately.”

Claire pulled her hand away. “You think I’m imagining this.”

“No, I just—”

“Look in my eyes,” Claire interrupted, leaning forward. “Tell me if you see anything.”

Abby hesitated but then leaned in, their gazes locking. Claire held her breath, searching for a reaction, but Abby’s expression remained unchanged.

“I don’t see anything, Claire,” she said softly.

Claire slumped back in her chair, her heart sinking. She knew what she saw, but how could she make anyone else understand? As they finished their coffee, Claire couldn’t help but notice the clock in Abby’s eyes, ticking away slowly, but steadily.

Days turned into weeks, and Claire’s obsession with the clocks grew. She stopped going out, afraid of what she might see in the eyes of strangers. She spent hours researching, scouring the internet for any mention of what she was experiencing, but found nothing. The clocks haunted her dreams, ticking louder and louder until she woke up in a cold sweat.

Then, one evening, she saw it—her own reflection, staring back at her with a clock in its eyes. The hands were moving faster than any she had seen before. Panic surged through her, her mind racing with possibilities. Was this her own countdown? Was she running out of time?

Desperation took hold of her. Claire began avoiding mirrors, but the clocks were everywhere, impossible to escape. She tried to warn people, but they looked at her with pity, their concern deepening with every frantic word she spoke. She was losing them—losing herself.

One night, as she lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, Claire’s phone buzzed. It was a message from Abby: Can we talk? I’m really worried about you. Claire stared at the screen, her heart pounding. She needed to see Abby, needed to warn her about the clock in her eyes before it was too late.

They met at Abby’s apartment the next day. Claire could barely look at her friend, afraid of what she might see. But when she finally did, the clock in Abby’s eyes was ticking faster than ever before. Claire’s pulse quickened, her breath coming in short gasps.

“Abby, I need you to listen to me,” Claire began, her voice shaking. “I know you don’t believe me, but the clock in your eyes… it’s almost out of time. Something’s going to happen, and I don’t know how to stop it.”

Abby’s face softened, and she reached out, pulling Claire into a tight hug. “It’s okay, Claire. I’m here.”

But Claire couldn’t relax. The ticking in Abby’s eyes was deafening, growing louder and louder. And then, with a final, ominous tick, the clock hit zero.

Abby pulled away, her eyes wide with fear—but it wasn’t her own. It was Claire’s. She could see it now, clear as day, in Claire’s own eyes: the clock that had been ticking down all along. Claire stared at Abby, the realization hitting her like a tidal wave. The clock wasn’t counting down to the end of Abby’s life—it was counting down to the moment when Abby would see the truth.

Abby stepped back, her hand covering her mouth. “Claire… your eyes…”

Claire’s legs gave out, and she collapsed to the floor, the room spinning around her. The clocks in everyone’s eyes had been a reflection of her own fate all along. As the darkness closed in, she realized the truth too late—her time had come.