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."