A House Sewn Shut

The invitation came in thread.

Black embroidery thread — wrapped three times around my wrist while I slept.

When I woke, it was tied.

In a knot I didn't know how to make.

Too precise. Too intentional.

On the underside of my arm, someone — maybe me — had inked a single phrase:

> "Follow the seams."

---

The world outside the studio had changed.

The street was gone.

In its place: a hallway of fabric and fog, stitched like a winding intestine.

Walls were made of velvet, patterned with overlapping images:

My first recital.

A broken cassette tape.

A mouth whispering something behind glass.

I followed the thread.

It unspooled from my wrist like it had somewhere to be.

---

The air grew colder the deeper I walked.

A melody followed me —

not loud enough to hum,

but too specific to ignore.

A child's voice.

Singing backwards.

Something about lullabies.

---

At the end of the hallway was a door.

Familiar. Wooden.

Paint chipped just like—

My childhood bedroom.

Except wrong.

The doorknob was a microphone.

The welcome mat read:

> "Did you mean to leave… or just forget to come back?"

I opened the door.

---

Inside: a perfect reconstruction.

My bed.

My posters.

My stuffed dog with one eye.

The piano wallpaper my mother pasted one night while I cried myself to sleep.

But everything was stitched shut.

The dresser drawers: sewn closed with red thread.

The windows: crosshatched with fishing line.

Even the closet door was buttoned — large black buttons like eyes.

---

I walked across the carpet.

It felt padded. Soft.

Like I was stepping on something…

or someone.

Under my feet, I heard a note:

Middle C.

Then another: F#.

With each step, the carpet played my old practice scales.

---

I sat on the bed.

It creaked — a sound I hadn't heard in years.

But it creaked in rhythm.

Like it was syncing with my breath.

I ran my hand over the comforter.

Felt a bulge underneath.

Pulled.

Out came a book.

---

Black leather.

No title.

A key attached by a thin gold chain.

I unlocked it.

---

The first page:

> "Journal of Her."

(Date: Unknown)

(Author: Me, or someone who wears my voice.)

---

The writing was mine.

The slant. The loops. The pressure points.

But the words — foreign.

I turned the page.

> "Age 9: I stopped crying when I sang.

That was the first betrayal."

> "Age 11: I learned to match my mother's tone before I understood my own."

> "Age 14: My reflection asked me what I wanted to be. I said 'gone.'"

My breath caught.

These weren't memories.

They were decisions someone made about me.

---

Page after page, the book detailed a childhood of performance, but not in music.

Performance as survival.

> "Smile before the camera smiles back."

"Learn to echo pain before you admit it's yours."

I felt sick.

---

I reached a page bookmarked by a dried flower.

Not just any flower.

The one I pressed into my very first lyric journal.

How did she — how did I — get this?

On that page, the words read:

> "Your first song was not a song.

It was a surrender."

> "You wrote it to feel real.

I rewrote it to feel powerful."

Below, in red ink:

> "You thought you were singing.

You were stitching your shadow to your spine."

---

I stood up.

The walls were breathing.

The stuffed animals began to blink.

One — the headless rabbit — whispered:

> "Why did you leave us here with her?"

I backed into the closet.

Unbuttoned the door.

Inside: rows of dresses, each one tagged with a mood:

"Innocent"

"Sellable"

"Palatable Sadness"

And in the back: a mannequin wearing a version of me.

Mouth sewn shut.

Eyes painted black.

Ears covered in barbed wire.

Tag: "Prototype. Discarded."

---

A voice behind me.

My voice.

> "You buried me in melodies too soft to scream.

So I found my own frequency."

I turned.

She was there.

Wearing my old recital dress.

Shoes too tight.

Smile too wide.

She stepped closer.

> "You let them build me.

You let them choose what parts of you were marketable."

> "Now I get to choose which parts survive."

---

I ran.

Down the hallway.

Back through the stitched corridor.

But it kept expanding.

Every turn led to a memory I didn't remember:

Singing in a room of mirrors, all slightly delayed.

Applauding an empty audience.

Sitting in a sound booth, recording a song I hadn't written — but knowing the words too well.

---

I screamed.

The echo that came back was not mine.

---

Finally, I reached a final door.

It had no knob.

Just a note taped to it:

> "If you open this, you remember everything."

> "If you don't — she finishes the next album."

I stood frozen.

What would it mean to remember everything?

What if I wasn't the original?

What if this version of me — the quiet, fragmented, bleeding one — was just the echo that learned to take up space after the real voice went silent?

---

But I reached for the door.

Hands shaking.

I whispered:

> "If I'm going to sing again…

it has to be with all of me.

Even the parts I didn't choose."

---

The thread on my wrist tightened.

Then snapped.

The door opened.

And a voice — both hers and mine — whispered:

> "Finally."