What Slips Between Words
He kept walking.
The corridor bent subtly, curving just enough to keep the end out of sight.
With each step, the air thickened.
Thoughts unraveled mid-sentence.
A word would come to mind—"remember"—then dissolve before he could finish holding it.
He paused.
Pressed his hands to his temples.
"I'm… I'm forgetting," he said aloud, just to hear it.
The sound echoed too long, as if the corridor couldn't let go of the words.
"I'm forgetting."
It wasn't panic this time.
It was observation.
Fact.
Like watching your breath fog up glass, then disappear.
He looked to the walls again.
The handwriting was getting worse.
Not just frantic—fragmented.
Letters half-formed. Sentences collapsed mid-word.
Some words doubled over themselves.
Others blurred into unreadable static.
But one line kept appearing.
Over and over again, in different sizes and depths:
"You will forget this."
"you Will foRgEt thiS."
YOUWILLFORGETTHIS
you... will… f…orget… th…
Like the sentence itself was dissolving as it was being written.
He tried to focus.
But the effort was sand in his mouth.
He looked down at his own hands and, for a moment, forgot which way fingers bent.
He staggered forward.
The walls pulsed.
He whispered:
"Why am I forgetting?"
No one answered.
But the lights dimmed slightly—like even that question was being erased.
Up ahead, the corridor widened.
A new wall stood at the end.
And carved into it—etched deep, perfectly legible, like it had fought to survive the decay—were four final words:
YOU WERE BURIED HERE
He stopped.
Cold flooded his spine.
He stared at the message.
Tried to make sense of it.
But as soon as he read it, he could feel the words slipping away, already softening in his memory.
He turned back toward the tunnel.
The words behind him were already gone.
All of them.
Every sentence. Every scratch.
Only blank walls now.
As if he'd imagined it all.