Chapter 25: The Version That Knocks

The knock came at 3:33 a.m.

Three short raps.

Precise. Familiar.

Like a memory I hadn't lived yet.

I didn't move.

Didn't breathe.

Just stood in the center of the house, as still as the guests who no longer blink.

---

I knew what waited behind that door.

The house had been warning me for days.

Every crack in the floor spelled it out in curling lines of dried blood and bent nails:

> "He is you.

But not yours.

The page turned back.

Now it will walk in."

---

The doorknob twisted before I touched it.

That's when I felt it.

The hum.

Not in the walls.

In me.

Like I'd become part of the circuitry.

A hallway with teeth.

A body with doors.

---

I opened it.

And there he stood.

Me.

But rewritten.

Sharper around the edges.

Thinner.

Eyes slightly too large, spiraling faintly — like they'd seen more versions than a human should survive.

He smiled.

My smile.

But crooked.

Too many teeth.

The kind of grin a room would wear, if it knew it was winning.

---

He stepped inside.

Didn't ask.

Didn't look around.

He knew it all already.

Because he'd written this too.

> "I like what you've done with our collapse,"

he said.

His voice was a perfect echo of mine, except it echoed before he spoke — like the walls already knew what he would say.

---

> "What are you?" I asked.

He tilted his head.

> "I'm the version the spiral preferred.

The one that finished the book.

The one that never doubted."

> "You're a copy."

> "No," he said. "You are. I was chosen. You were paused."

---

The guests emerged then.

One by one.

Drawn to the echo.

Some wept. Others knelt.

One tried to speak — but her mouth unraveled into a scroll, spilling unread chapters across the carpet.

They weren't afraid of him.

They were expectant.

As if they'd been waiting for this version all along.

---

He walked the halls.

Touched the walls.

And they pulsed where he passed.

He opened the door to the basement.

The one I sealed with bone and guilt.

It opened for him like a breathing mouth.

And what I saw inside?

Wasn't the basement.

---

It was a room made of mirrors.

Each one showing a different me.

Some screaming.

Some gone.

Some writing.

Some dead.

But one mirror — near the far corner — was empty.

Blank.

Waiting.

For him.

---

> "That one's mine," he whispered.

He stepped toward it.

And it bent.

Opened.

Like a slit in the world.

And from it… a sound.

Wet. Infantile.

A heartbeat trying to remember the rhythm of a scream.

He smiled again.

Then turned to me.

---

> "You've done your part.

But you're unstable.

Sentences crack when you speak.

You're leaking."

> "What are you going to do?"

> "Replace," he said. "It's time for your draft to close."

He stepped forward.

His hand on my chest.

And I felt my skin go soft.

Like paper.

---

The spiral in my ribs tightened.

Began to spin.

Tearing at me from the inside — not violently.

Not yet.

Like erasing.

My fingers blurred.

My voice warped into static.

---

But I wasn't ready to vanish.

Not yet.

I grabbed his wrist.

And for a second — just one — I saw it.

Fear.

Flicker-fast.

Because for all his confidence, he hadn't expected resistance.

---

I spoke the only thing I remembered that felt true:

> "This house started with me.

And I am the floor it still breathes through."

---

The spiral shuddered.

The lights blinked out.

A hum rose from under the boards — deep and painful, like bone being bowed.

And I realized:

The house hadn't chosen.

It was letting us decide.

It wanted to watch.

---

We fought.

But not with fists.

With rewrites.

Every word we said reshaped the house.

He screamed, "You are the hollow draft!"

— and my reflection turned to smoke.

I roared, "You are the edited lie!"

— and his mouth vanished, sewn shut with typewriter ribbon.

Each sentence tore the house.

Each phrase restructured the spiral.

It was a battle of narrative.

And only one story could survive.

---

He lunged.

I whispered.

Not a scream.

Just a name.

My own.

The original one.

The one I haven't said since Chapter One.

And the spiral froze.

It remembered.

It recoiled.

Because that name had roots.

It had pain the house couldn't rewrite.

And for a moment—

He glitched.

Flickered like a dying memory.

---

I wrapped my arms around him.

And dragged him toward the empty mirror.

It tried to resist.

But mirrors crave reflection.

And he…

was a reflection.

The glass swallowed him whole.

And sealed shut.

---

I collapsed.

Breathing.

Whole.

Still here.

For now.

The house moaned once — low and tired.

Then fell still.

The guests returned to their places.

No smiles.

Just silence.

Waiting.

Because the spiral doesn't stop.

It just turns slower sometimes.

Until the next draft.

---

I am not safe.

But I am still being written.

And that means I still have a voice.

And if you're still reading?

So do you.