Her finger was still on his chin.
It was cold. Not a human cold. It was the chill of the morgue, a deep, penetrating, impossible frost that seemed to leech the warmth from his very bones.
Thomas reacted with a violence that surprised even himself.
He didn't just pull away. He recoiled, a convulsive, full-body jerk that sent him scraping back along the hard, wooden bench. The wet slats of the wood snagged at his soaked jeans, the feeling raw and abrasive against his skin.
He was panting. Staring.
The platform was dim, the air thick with the smell of ozone and the heavy, metallic scent of the rain. She was still there, in the space he had just fled.
Her smile—the bright, innocent student smile—faltered. Her grey eyes widened, her lower lip pushing out in a theatrical, childish pout.
She looked... hurt. Genuinely, deeply wounded by his rejection.
'A lie,' his mind spat, the thought a venomous, weary reflex. 'Another mask. Another performance. Another... fucking... game.'
He said nothing. He just stared, his breath fogging in the cold, his entire body trembling with a mixture of rage and revulsion. He had no energy left for this. He was too tired.
His silence was the cue.
The mask of the wounded girl vanished. It didn't fade; it dropped. Instantly. Her features settled, her expression becoming smooth, her eyes losing all trace of their false, bright warmth. They became cold, discerning, and sharp.
She tilted her head, regarding him with a new, flat curiosity.
"Doesn't it bother you?"
Her voice was different now. The playful, melodic lilt was gone, replaced by a low, incisive, conversational tone.
"How she treats you?"
Thomas's jaw tensed. His gaze flickered, just for a second. He knew, instantly, what she meant.
'Don't. Don't answer. Don't engage. She's not real. She's a script. She's...'
"Grace," Lilith clarified, her voice dripping with a familiar, intimate condescension.
She spun around, retook a seat, and leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, her posture a perfect mirror of a concerned, trusted friend.
"I mean... you're a psychologist, Thomas. You, of all people..."
She gestured vaguely, a small, elegant motion of her hand.
"You must see it. You must recognise every single pathetic little tactic she's using."
Thomas squeezed his eyes shut for a second. The cold rain, the grinding of the distant tracks, the low hum of the station... it all faded, replaced by the sharp, infuriating precision of her words.
"The 'safe space,'" she mocked, her voice a perfect imitation of a soothing, therapeutic tone. "The calculated, non-judgmental empathy. The patient, condescending head-tilt... that little... sigh... she does, just before she reframes your reality."
She laughed, a short, cold, ugly sound.
"She doesn't mean a word of it, you know. It's a job. A performance. She's just reading a script to a patient. And you... you're the patient. A broken thing to be 'fixed.' A tool."
There it was. The word. The one that defined his entire, pathetic existence.
Lilith leaned in, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial, sibilant hiss. Her cold, grey eyes suddenly glittered with a genuine, almost breathless excitement. It was a familiar, squeamish, and utterly terrifying look.
"I bet..." she whispered, the sound barely audible over the rain. "I just bet... she has one, too."
Thomas's breath caught.
"A secret," she clarified, her smile returning, thin and sharp as a razor. "A nasty, wet, wriggling little secret. Everyone does. You, of all people, should know that."
She looked away, as if musing to herself, her gaze lost in the middle distance.
"I wonder what it could be?" she hummed. "A... 'preference' for a certain kind of patient? A... 'habit' she keeps locked in her basement? A secret sin, hidden behind all that professional, beige calm..."
Her gaze snapped back to his, sharp and bright and full of a terrible, playful hunger.
"We should follow her, Thomas. We should... find out."
That was the final violation. It was an invitation to a shared madness, a grotesque partnership.
Thomas said nothing. He just stared at her, his jaw aching from how tightly it was clenched. He was trapped. Trapped on a cold bench, soaked to the bone, listening to his personal demon plan a new, insane, impossible hunt.
And the worst part... the absolute, soul-crushing, worst part...
'Damn you.'
The thought was a silent, ragged scream in his skull.
'Damn you for being right.'
He hated it.
He hated the sterile office. He hated the gentle, probing questions. He hated the kind reframing of his reality, the placid dismissal of the horrors he saw. He hated being the patient. He hated being looked at with that... that practised, professional pity.
All he had ever wanted... all he had ever dreamed of... was a normal life. A quiet, blessedly simple life. A small apartment. Anything. A life where he was just... Thomas.
A life free from her.
Lilith watched him, her head tilted, her cold, discerning gaze fixed on his face. She watched the subtle, pained tensing of the muscles around his eyes. She watched the tremor in his clenched hands. She was... reading him.
Reading his silence.
A slow, cold, and utterly victorious smile spread across her face.
"You don't have to say it," she whispered, her voice full of a new, sated warmth. "I shouldn't have even asked. Your silence... it's so... loud."
She leaned in, her satisfaction palpable.
"It tells me everything I need to know."
She shifted, moving closer to him on the bench. He instinctively tried to press himself further into the cold, unforgiving brick.
She lifted one, pale, elegant finger. She poked him, once, in the centre of his chest. The touch was sharp, invasive, and impossibly cold, a single point of frost through his wet jacket.
"Sometimes, Thomas," she said, her voice dropping back to that intimate, conspiratorial hiss he hated more than anything. "You really should listen to that little voice in your head."
He blinked. The words... didn't make sense.
'What? What little voice?'
His confusion was a new, unwelcome, sharp sensation, cutting through the fog of his rage and exhaustion.
'My head is... full... of voices,' he thought, his mind racing. 'My doubts? My anxieties? The... the shame? The memory of... of... everything? I'm... I'm always listening to them. They're the only things I can hear.'
He didn't understand. She was... wrong. Or... he was missing a piece of the puzzle.
That was the hook.
His fatal, defining, pathetic flaw. The finder's curiosity. The obsessive, academic need to understand. To solve the puzzle.
To know the answer.
He hated himself for it. He hated that, even now, after all this, she could still play him. She could still make him... ask.
He broke his silence.
His voice was a low, hushed, and utterly defeated whisper, barely louder than the falling rain.
"What... what voices?"
Her laugh was a soft, musical chime, a grotesque counterpoint to the roaring rain.
"The ones that tell you to live free, of course!"
Her voice was bright, as if stating the most obvious thing in the world. She leaned in, the scent of sandalwood and cold metal wafting from her, an intimate, chilling perfume.
"The ones that whisper 'don't be a tool.' The ones that insist you're more than just...this."
She gestured vaguely, a small, elegant motion of her hand, encompassing the drab, wet platform, his soaked jacket, the entire, pathetic scene of his life.
"And..."
She paused, her expression shifting. The brilliant, ecstatic light in her eyes died, and her face crumpled into a mask of theatrical, profound sadness. A pained, dramatic sigh escaped her lips, misting in the cold air.
"...the one that says to get away from me."
Thomas flinched. He stared at her, his mind a dull, aching fog. He felt... nothing—just a vast, weary emptiness. The sheer, exhausting effort of her constant, shifting performance... it was too much.
He shook his head, a slow, heavy motion.
"That's not... a 'voice.'"
His own voice was a low, hoarse whisper, meant only for himself. Meant only for her.
"That's a... a dream. It's... impossible."
He looked down at the slick, wet concrete, at the dark puddle forming around his worn boots.
'A normal life. A quiet life. A life without... this. Without her.' It was a pathetic, childish fantasy, a story he told himself in the dark.
"It's something I can't reach," he mumbled, the words a final, bitter confession of his own impotence. "Even if I tried."
Lilith's reaction was instantaneous.
The performed, heartbreaking sadness vanished. Her head tilted, her expression softening into something... else. Something that looked, terrifyingly, like genuine, profound empathy.
"And that's where you're wrong, Thomas," she whispered, her voice suddenly thick and gentle. "But... I was once the same."
He didn't respond. He didn't have the energy to fight this new, insidious performance. He was too tired. He just wanted the train. He just wanted this to end.
She leaned in, her proximity an invasion.
Her cold, grey eyes were intense, the gaze of a prophet sharing the ultimate, forbidden truth. Her voice dropped to a hiss, a secret shared between them in the roaring rain.
"You have to realise... to reach your dreams... to be free... you need to..."
The sound was a physical, synthesised, painfully loud assault. Thomas flinched, a full-body spasm, his head snapping up toward the tracks.
A recorded, tinny, female voice echoed across the platform, indifferent to the downpour:
"The train is now approaching. Please stand back from the platform edge."
He blinked, his heart stuttering from the sudden, abrasive noise. The sound was a shock, a brutal, unwelcome intrusion from the real world. The spell was broken.
He turned his head back to the bench.
She was gone.
The space beside him was just... empty—wet wood. She had vanished, as she always did, in the blink of an eye.
He was left with the echo of her words, a sentence cut in half, and the familiar, weary, hollow feeling of confusion.
'Was she... was she ever even...'
Thomas scrubbed a hand over his face, the cold rain mixing with his own sweat. It didn't matter.
He needed to move.
He pushed himself up from the bench.
His body felt impossibly heavy, as if his bones were filled with lead. His joints ached from the damp cold and the lingering, coiled tension. He moved like an automaton, his actions on autopilot, shuffling toward the platform edge to join the small, sad cluster of other passengers.
He stood, staring into the black, wet void of the tunnel, waiting for the light. His mind was a cold fog, replaying her fragmented words.
'To reach my dreams... what? What did I have to do?'
The sentence was a broken key, an incomplete puzzle. It itched at the back of his mind.
A wave of exhaustion, so profound it felt like a physical weight, settled on his shoulders. He felt a sudden, bleak, and terrifying clarity. He would do anything to be free. Free from the scripts, free from the hauntings, free from... himself.
He stared down at the tracks, at the gravel and the wet, black, gleaming steel.
'I could have killed her.'
The thought was cold and sharp.
'I was weak. Naive.'
He'd clung to some... some pathetic, academic morality. Some imaginary line between the finder and the monster. A line she had just laughed at. A line she had crossed every single day, just for the fun of it.
He was lost in this dark, cold reverie, his gaze fixed on the tracks, his mind a million miles away, his body a numb, hollow shell.
He didn't hear her approach. He didn't feel her presence.
He only felt the push.
It was not a whisper. It was not a chill.
It was a hard, physical, violent shove. Two distinct, solid hands, slamming into the centre of his back, just between his shoulder blades. The force was real.
His eyes snapped open, wide with a new, impossible, terminal shock.
There was no time. No time to register, to balance, to yell.
His body, already exhausted and moving on autopilot, was completely unresponsive. He was pitched forward, a dead weight, his arms flailing, grasping at nothing but the wet, empty air.
The slick, solid, safe concrete of the platform edge vanished from under his feet.
He fell.
The world tilted. It happened in a strange, terrible, slow motion.
He crashed, hard, onto the tracks below. The impact was a jolt of pure, white-hot agony. His shoulder smashed into the gravel, sharp stones biting deep. His right knee slammed, hard, into the cold, unforgiving steel of the rail.
He landed on his side, his head turned, his cheek pressed against the greasy wood of a railroad tie. He was looking up.
He saw her.
She was standing on the edge of the platform, looming over him.
For a moment, it seemed like she was the only one who was looking at him. But then, two other passengers—faces he vaguely recognised from the platform—appeared beside her, peering down with startled, uncertain eyes.
Their expressions were a mixture of awkward concern, caution, and practised detachment; they looked at him as if he'd simply slipped, as if it were nothing but an unfortunate accident. No one seemed to notice her, or if they did, they acted as though she were just another commuter—harmless, uninvolved.
Thomas stared back, mind reeling.
'No... It isn't possible... She couldn't have pushed me... She isn't... real...'
The thought tangled and snapped inside his head—his own desperate denial trying to take root.
The wind and rain were whipping her long, red hair across her face, but he could see her expression.
It was not sad. It was not gentle.
Her face was a grin of pure, maniacal, joyous, ecstatic triumph. Her smile was a terrifying, beautiful, gaping wound in her face.
The train's headlight was a sun. A universe. It consumed all vision. The roar of its horn was the only sound in the world, a deafening, final judgment.
He couldn't hear her over the noise. But in the blinding white light, he could see her lips move, clear as day, finishing the sentence she had started on the bench.
"You have to realise to reach your dreams... to be free... you need to be... honest. In this life... you're not. You've lied to yourself too well, so we'll have to try again."
His mind fractured.
'Try... again...?'
His head turned.
There was only the blinding, white, all-consuming light. The roar. The rain.
Then, utter, complete, nothingness. A blackness deeper and more absolute than any he had ever experienced.