The mirror stayed still for a long time after that.
Or maybe I did.
I sat there, not breathing, not blinking, waiting for something else to move.
Nothing did.
The lights came back on at 12:01. The crack in the mirror glistened like a fresh wound.
My reflection looked tired—older somehow.
I told myself I imagined it. I said it out loud just to hear my own voice:
"You imagined it."
The room didn't answer.
---
By morning, I couldn't stay.
The air felt stale, heavy with the smell of dust and something faintly sweet—like rotting flowers.
I grabbed my bag, shoved my notebook inside, and walked out.
The clerk at the counter didn't glance up as I passed.
I wanted to thank him, or at least say something human, but the words dried up on my tongue.
His eyes flicked once—through me, not at me.
Outside, the sky looked bruised. Not cloudy, not clear—just… wrong.
The sun hung too still, like someone had pinned it there with a nail.
I walked.
No plan, no direction, just movement.
I needed sound, proof, people.
I passed a stray dog near a dumpster. I whistled, snapped my fingers.
It didn't react. Not even a twitch of an ear.
Its eyes slid past me and followed something else that wasn't there.
I kept walking.
Cars drove by, horns blaring, engines growling—but I noticed something.
None of them slowed. None of them swerved.
I stepped into the street once, testing a theory.
Nothing.
A silver sedan passed straight through my shadow.
No honk. No gasp. No sign I existed.
---
I tried calling out—"HELLO?!"—and the sound came out small, swallowed, like the world itself was muting me.
A couple holding hands brushed past. I reached out. My fingers met fabric, but the woman didn't flinch. She just kept walking, her laughter echoing faintly like a recording of a recording.
I turned toward a man selling newspapers. His stand listed headlines I didn't recognize.
No date. No price.
Just words that blurred when I tried to focus.
I said, "Hey—where am I?"
He didn't answer. Didn't move.
Just kept folding papers that weren't there.
---
By the time I realized I'd been walking in circles, the motel was gone.
Not closed. Not demolished.
Gone.
The lot where it had stood was empty, covered in cracked asphalt and weeds. No sign. No outline. Not even the smell of old smoke or detergent.
I stared, heart pounding.
"This can't be—"
I pulled out my phone. The signal bar blinked once, then went black.
I searched the name of the motel—nothing.
Searched the address—"No results found."
Even the map refused to load that part of the city.
Just gray space.
I zoomed out.
Gray spread wider.
I kept scrolling until the whole map was nothing but blankness.
---
The world was vanishing with me.
I ran. Back to where the payphone should've been—rusted, cracked glass, graffiti.
Gone too.
The pole stood bare, as if no phone had ever been mounted there.
The sidewalk was smooth where the bolts should've been.
Like history had been repaved.
"Someone!" I yelled. "Please!"
A man in a suit passed by, carrying a briefcase. His shadow didn't touch mine.
A little girl holding an ice cream cone walked right through the spot I stood in, the cone passing through my chest like mist.
I tried to scream, but it came out as a whisper—thin and useless.
---
Then, across the street, I saw something.
A flicker in the air, like heat distortion.
And for the briefest moment, through it—I saw the motel again.
Dim lights. Broken sign.
My reflection in the window, looking back at me from a room that shouldn't exist.
And behind it—
the man in the suit.
He lifted a hand.
Not a wave. Not a threat.
Just a gesture—
beckoning.
---
I blinked.
And the vision folded in on itself like paper burning from the edges.
The street was empty again.
Silence pressed in. Not dead silence—breathing silence.
The kind that hums beneath your ribs, that waits for you to notice it.
The kind that feels alive.
And for the first time,
I wondered if the world had stopped ignoring me—
—or if I had finally stepped somewhere I was never meant to be seen.