Ch. 3

  It happens so easily. One moment, you're somewhere—feet planted, reality firm beneath you. The next, the ground tilts, the seconds stretch and snap, and suddenly, you're not sure where you were before this. Maybe you were always here. Maybe there was never a 'before' at all.

  A voice cuts through the haze.

  "How would you describe Kafka's works?"

  The words come from the front of the classroom, though they seem to echo from nowhere at all. The teacher stands still, waiting, but the question doesn't feel like theirs. It feels like it has been asked a hundred times before, by voices long gone, and will continue to be asked long after this moment dissolves.

  Carmen blinks. The world around him is bright—too bright. Sunlight spills through the wide windows, catching the dust in slow, swirling movements. There is chatter, faint scratching of pens, the occasional cough, but it all seems distant. Like it's happening behind a glass pane, muffled and unreal.

  Kafka's works? He should know this. He does know this. He has read them, turned their words over in his head like a stone in his palm. But at this moment, language feels foreign, slippery. Thoughts spill out like ink on wet paper—blurred, illegible.

  He reaches for his pen, but he is not seated anymore.

  He is walking.

  Somewhere between picking up the pen and pressing it to paper, the scene has shifted. His feet hit pavement. The cool weight of his bag still lingers on his shoulder, but the classroom is gone. The fluorescent lights have been swallowed by darkness. A streetlamp hums beside him, flickering once, twice.

  -lost track of time already eh? funny.

  The night air presses in. It smells of rain that never fell, of pavement warmed by a sun that no longer exists. The wind moves around him, slipping through his sleeves, brushing over his face with cold fingers. It feels like a whisper. Like something unseen is exhaling against his skin.

  The question still lingers in his mind, clinging like cobwebs. How would you describe Kafka's works?

  He pulls out his notebook, flips to a blank page, and writes.

  But what is he writing? His own thoughts, or words placed in his head by something else? The ink flows, but the meaning stumbles, twisting into shapes that refuse to settle into coherence. Every sentence is a bridge to nowhere, every thought curling into itself like a snake devouring its own tail.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  There are no stars in the sky. Just a void stretching endlessly above him. No pinpricks of light, no constellations. Just an empty canvas, vast and silent.

  Connect enough dots and you'll make a star, but stars don't exist in this world... and so do you... remember?

  He stops walking. His breath curls in the air, a thin ghost of warmth against the cold. The page stares back at him, unfinished. Or maybe complete. Who decides?

  The streetlights buzz louder, an artificial heartbeat pulsing in the silence.

  He looks up.

  There is someone across the street.

  Still. Watching.

  Or maybe not watching at all. Maybe just there, existing in the way an unanswered question exists—uncomfortable, persistent.

  Carmen grips his notebook tighter.

  He doesn't remember writing an answer, but when he looks down, words sit there, neatly formed, ink drying as if they've always been there.

  It is not a concrete answer. But it is an answer nonetheless.

  ________________________________________________________________________________

  Cat...?

  The scent of home greets him before anything else.

  A warmth lingers in the air, thick and unmoving, pressing against his skin as if the walls have been holding their breath in his absence. Dust clings to it, subtle but present, mixing with something else—something faintly metallic, like rusted hinges or the forgotten remnants of an old candle long since extinguished. The air feels heavier here, carrying the weight of something unseen, something waiting.

  The door creaks as he steps inside, the sound stretching longer than it should, echoing into corners he can't quite see. The dim light from the hallway flickers, just for a moment—so quick he might've imagined it. But he didn't. He knows he didn't. Do you?

  There is a hush to the space, a silence that isn't empty but filled with tiny, living noises—the hum of the refrigerator, the distant ticking of a clock, the soft crackling of wood settling in unseen places. It's all familiar. Too familiar. Like stepping into a memory that refuses to change.

  And then, a presence.

  A brush of fur against his leg. A demand, wordless but so very clear.

  His cat, beautiful, with hair as white as the snow, long Persian hair, tail lashing like a whip, circles him once before stopping, golden eyes cutting through the dim light. The sound that escapes the small creature is not a meow—it is something deeper, a vibration that settles into his bones.

  Another demand. Food, probably. Or acknowledgment. Or something beyond either.

  Carmen bends down, runs a hand along its spine. The warmth is real. The weight, the texture, the movement—all real.

  The cat's tail flicks, impatient. A soft, insistent pressure against his shin.

  -You're here. You exist. But for how long?

  The lights seem dimmer than before. The walls press closer now.

  The air shifts, just slightly. A voice that does not belong to him curls in the back of his mind, threading itself between his thoughts like a needle through fabric.

  "How could you betray your own instinct if that's all you're left with?"

  And then—

  "And I could ask you the same thing, dumb human."

  The cat stares.

  The darkness behind it does not blink.