These are the consequences of sleeping with a… See more..

I stopped under the shadow of a massive concrete pillar and finally unfolded the paper properly. The drawing was even more disturbing the second time I looked at it. It was a crude sketch of our family home, but the perspective was all wrong, distorted like a bad memory. One window was violently crossed out, a jagged, angry ‘X’ that seemed to vibrate on the page. Next to the entrance, there was a black square—a mark that looked like a warning sign that had been scrubbed and erased so many times it had become a permanent, filthy stain on the paper.

Lily had always been the sensitive one, the one who saw cracks in the world that no one else dared to notice. We hadn’t spoken in three years, not since the incident at the lake house, yet here she was, appearing out of the ether to hand me a map to my own destruction. I leaned against the cold concrete, my heart hammering against my ribs. I had a ticket to London, a fresh start, and a promise of a job that would finally put me on the path to stability. Why would she want me to stay? Why would she want me to look for a black square that looked like it belonged in a nightmare?

I looked around the airport terminal, my eyes searching the faces of strangers for someone following me. The people passing by seemed like mannequins—static, uninterested, and oblivious to the fact that my world was unraveling. I thought back to the last time I saw Lily, the way she had clutched her own arms, whispering about “the pattern.” I had called her paranoid then. I was the rational one. I was the one who went to college, got the degree, and moved away to build a life far from our suffocating upbringing.

The silence of the parking garage was heavy, pressing in on me from all sides. I folded the note and tucked it deep into my coat pocket. If I boarded that plane, I would be safe. I would be thousands of miles away from whatever darkness Lily was convinced was chasing us. But the image of that crossed-out window lingered in my mind. What if she wasn’t talking about the house? What if she was talking about me?