The Watcher

The world returned slowly, like breath after drowning.

Shapes first. Then color. Then stillness.

The room was bathed in dull morning light that filtered through the blinds in pale, sterile lines. I blinked, the ceiling above me unfocused, grainy. My body felt heavy—like it belonged to someone else. But even before I turned my head, I knew I wasn't alone.

He was there.

The masked man.

Sitting in the corner of the room like he'd always been there. Watching.

My breath caught in my throat. I didn't scream—there wasn't enough strength left in me to even flinch. I just stared, and he stared back.

He didn't look startled to see me awake. Didn't fumble or straighten like someone caught in the act. No. He moved with intention. With quiet control. Like he had waited for this very moment.

He stood, slowly. Not with menace—but with certainty. Like whatever happened next had already been decided.

Then he stepped forward and reached down.

His fingers brushed under my arm and lifted the notebook gently—the one I'd held in my sleep like a lifeline. The one I'd poured myself into. The one I'd bled onto with ink and tears.

He didn't snatch it. He took it like it had always been his.

I opened my mouth to protest, to ask him why—but the words caught behind the rawness in my throat. There was nothing to give but breath.

He turned away and opened it. And read.

His silence was more suffocating than any scream could have been. He didn't blink. Didn't shift. Just absorbed the words like they were statistics, not the unraveling of a girl barely holding herself together.

Time blurred. The beeping machines faded into the background.

And then the door creaked open.

A man entered in a white coat. A doctor—masked, gloved, head bowed.

He didn't even glance at the masked man in the corner. Just walked past him like he wasn't there. Straight to me.

He knelt beside the bed with a practiced rhythm. His hands were clinical and cold, unwinding the bandage from my wrist. No questions. No words. Just the rustle of fabric, the faint sting of antiseptic.

I flinched when the fresh gauze pressed into my skin, but he didn't pause. He was methodical. Detached. As if I were nothing more than a task. A wound. A record to update.

The masked man closed the notebook softly and held it for a moment against his chest. Then, just as slowly as he'd arrived, he placed it on the bedside table.

He turned to me, his gaze meeting mine one last time. His eyes behind the mask were unreadable. Calm. Maybe even sad.

Then he left.

And I didn't stop him.

The doctor remained, still silent, still working. The new bandage was tighter now. Cleaner. Still no words. Still no acknowledgment of my presence beyond the wound.

"I wrote that for my mother," I said, barely above a whisper.

No response.

"I wasn't writing secrets. Just… pain."

Nothing. His eyes remained down.

"I asked if you're deaf or just pretending I don't exist," I added, sharper this time, my voice cracking.

His eyes flicked up once. Just a glance. Not pity. Not surprise.

Just recognition.

Then he stood, peeled off the gloves, and turned to leave.

"You people think you're gods," I muttered. "But you're just cowards hiding behind silence and masks."

He paused at the door, hand on the knob.

Then, without turning around, he said quietly, "He read your letter twice."

My stomach turned.

"And?" I forced out.

"He didn't blink."

Then he stepped out.

The sound of the lock turning echoed louder than it should have.

The doctor was gone, but the silence he left behind lingered like a weight. I stared at the door long after it clicked shut, not because I expected him to return but because of the way he'd left. Quiet. Final. As if something had just ended… or something else was about to begin.

I slowly leaned back into the mattress, its cold stiffness pressing against the curve of my spine.

My eyes drifted across the room, though I already knew what I'd find. Walls too white. Light too harsh. Shadows that didn't belong to furniture.

And the notebook.

It lay neatly at the foot of the bed, exactly where the masked man had set it down before he left. I curled toward it, hand reaching halfway before I stopped. As if touching it might pull me back into everything I'd poured into its pages—every ache, every cry I hadn't spoken aloud. My fingers hovered above the cover.

I blinked against the ceiling lights, wishing for darkness. Wishing, more than anything, that I could vanish inside memory instead of this room. Jason's face came unbidden to my mind—his eyes steady, his voice soft when he said, "Then we start with memories."

He was trying. I knew that. But what did trying mean when I was unraveling by the second?

A soft breath escaped me, almost a sob but not quite. Just a hollow sound from somewhere deep inside.

I closed my eyes and saw my mother.

She'd always known the right words to say. Even when the world seemed determined to give me nothing but silence, she'd find a way to break through it. Her voice was my anchor, soft but firm. Now, all I had were fragments of her, scattered in my memory, like broken pieces of a puzzle that no longer fit together.

Would she be proud of me? Or heartbroken? Or both?

I turned, my eyes unconsciously flicking toward the door. It stood closed, unmoved, just as it had been since the doctor left.

But it didn't feel right.

The air in the room was still—too still. Not peaceful, not calm. It was the kind of quiet that presses down on your chest, heavy and suffocating, like the aftermath of something broken. Something lost.

I pressed a hand to my chest, trying to hold myself together. Not from fear, but from something deeper—something I couldn't name. It was like my body knew something my mind hadn't caught up to yet.

That door wouldn't stay shut forever.

The thought barely registered before it happened. A shuffle. The faintest sound, like someone brushing past the wall outside.

Footsteps.

I froze. My breath caught in my throat.

They stopped. Right there. Just outside.

And then… silence.

I wasn't sure how long I held my breath too, waiting for whatever came next. But as the seconds stretched into minutes, the air grew thicker, heavier. The footsteps hadn't resumed. They hadn't retreated. They had just… stopped.