The House of Cards

The rain came suddenly, cascading down in sheets over the city. The sky, an endless expanse of storm-wracked gray, mirrored the color of his hair. Streetlights carved fractured beams through the downpour, illuminating wet pavement and stretching shadows into eerie, shifting forms.

Kaelen barely noticed.

His grip on the umbrella was loose, the other hand buried deep in his coat pocket. His footsteps were measured, slow. His mind, however, was anything but still. The bitter aftertaste of alcohol lingered on his tongue, but something else gnawed at him more fiercely. A whisper. A sentence, looping endlessly in his thoughts.

"You'll believe when you see."

And then, he saw her.

On the opposite side of the rain-slicked street, standing motionless beneath a flickering streetlamp, was a woman draped in white. Her long red hair tangled in the wind, wild and unrestrained. But it was her eyes—sharp, impossibly green—that pinned him in place.

There was no shadow beneath her feet.

Kaelen's breath stilled.

Then, through the relentless downpour, he heard it. A sound barely more than a whisper, yet it sliced through the rain like a blade.

— Writer...

His blood ran cold.

— You were born a writer, and a writer you will remain.

A sentence he had never heard before. Yet, somehow, he knew it.

His legs refused to move. The city around him blurred, distant, unimportant. His pulse thundered in his ears. It couldn't be—no, it shouldn't be—

His mother.

Lightning split the sky.

In its blinding flash, images poured into his mind like an unstoppable flood. His own stories—his words—becoming something more than ink on paper.

A knight, kneeling in the heart of a raging storm, his hands caked in mud, his tears indistinguishable from the rain. His voice, raw and pleading, tore through the night:

— Lord, make my reality a resting place for this writer!

Kaelen gasped, wrenching himself from the vision. He blinked rapidly, his chest rising and falling in uneven bursts.

The woman was gone.

As if she had never been there at all.

He turned sharply on his heel, heart pounding, and rushed home. His thoughts tangled and coiled, too fast to untangle, too heavy to bear. The moment his apartment door clicked shut behind him, exhaustion wrapped around him like chains.

Sleep swallowed him whole.

But rest never came.

A storm raged inside his dreams.

He was behind the wheel, rain hammering the windshield with relentless fury. The wipers struggled against the deluge. He didn't know where he was going. He only knew the road stretched endlessly ahead, devouring all sense of time.

Then, in the glare of his headlights, it emerged.

An old house.

Its walls split with age, iron gates rusted and broken. The door, half-open, creaked softly in the wind.

The car's engine cut off with a hollow silence.

On the wet ground before him lay a tarot card.

He reached for it with unsteady fingers, the dread sinking into him before his eyes even focused on the image.

A clown.

Its face was frozen in an unnatural grin, its eyes vacant, void of thought, void of soul.

Above it, the words twisted in a print he did not recognize:

"A Collapsing House and Dead Bodies."

Kaelen's pulse pounded against his ribs.

But when he looked closer—when he truly saw the clown's face—he forgot how to breathe.

It was his face.

His own features, twisted into that grotesque smile. His own eyes, emptied of all light. His own body, draped in a tattered circus costume.

His stomach lurched. He tried to throw the card away, but his fingers refused to obey. As if unseen hands gripped his wrist, as if something else would not allow it.

Then—

Laughter.

A dry, breathless laugh from within the house.

A laugh that did not belong to anything human.

Kaelen woke with a violent gasp, his sheets twisted around him like restraints. His body convulsed, stomach twisting, bile rising.

He barely made it to the bathroom before collapsing over the toilet.

His throat burned, his limbs shook.

But worse than the sickness was the thought.

"A broken house and dead bodies..."

He forced himself to his feet, gripping the sink for support. The cold water ran over his face, but it couldn't wash away the fear.

Slowly, his eyes lifted to the mirror.

The reflection that stared back was pale—paler than it should be.

He swallowed hard.

Was he losing his mind?

And then—

Morning came.

The world moved forward. But Kaelen remained trapped in the night.

His hand trembled as he reached for his car keys.

"I have to get to the cabin."

One last look in the mirror.

He barely recognized himself.

Then, without another word, he stepped outside.

The road to the haunted house awaited him.

And this time, there was no turning back.