My vision blurs. It feels like I’m underwater, like liquid is filling my ears, muting everything around me. I hear something—but what? A voice. Someone is speaking, but the words don’t reach me. They dissolve before I can make sense of them.

  My breathing quickens. Too fast, too shallow. My chest tightens, the air barely making it in. My body isn’t listening to me. My hands tremble as I grip the edge of the sink, trying to steady myself, but my fingers feel weak, disconnected.

  The room is closing in. The walls press against me, the air thick and suffocating. My pulse is pounding—throbbing in my ears, my throat, my fingertips. I squeeze my eyes shut, but that only makes it worse. My stomach clenches. Nausea twists inside me, threatening to spill over.

  I can’t breathe.

  I gasp, but it’s not enough. My lungs burn, my throat tightens, every nerve in my body screaming for something—air, escape, anything. My chest rises and falls too fast, my ribs aching under the pressure.

  I need to move. I need to run. But I can’t. My legs won’t listen. I am frozen, trapped in this moment, caught between fear and the crushing weight of my own mind.

  “Hey, I’m talking to you.”

  My eyes snap back to the mirror.

  He’s there. Watching. Waiting.

  And I’m still here. Still breathing.

  I see him now. Really see him. His reflection in the mirror is as real as the blood drying on my cheek. Was all of this real?

  Slowly, I turn my head.

  He hasn’t moved. Still standing there, still watching me with that same unreadable expression.

  “Finally, you’re listening,” he says, like it’s nothing. Like he’s just been waiting for me to catch up.

  I just want this day to end. My body is still trembling, my fingers gripping the sink so hard my knuckles turn white. I try to steady my breath, but it’s useless. The weight of the last few minutes, the last few hours, is pressing down on me, and I don’t know how much more I can take.

  “Well then, I’ll say it one last time.”

  He reaches into his coat. The gun reappears.

  “Two options.” His voice is calm, almost casual. “You come with me as a witness and help me with my business, or—”

  He tilts the gun slightly, flicking it up and down in his hand. Almost like some old Western movie cliché. Almost like this is all just a game to him.

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  I meet my own gaze in the mirror. My face is blank. Hollow.

  “Looks like I only have one choice, then.”

  I try to play it off as much as possible, forcing my legs to move. But as soon as I take a step—

  The world tilts.

  My body gives in before my mind does. My vision tunnels, and the last thing I hear is the dull thud of my own body hitting the floor.

  Then—

  What’s this?

  I’m standing. But I’m outside. The air is crisp, the sky blindingly bright. Is it day already?

  I try to reach for my pocket to take out my phone, but then I remember. My phone is in my coat. I must have left it back at the hotel.

  A child crosses the street in front of me. Silly girl didn’t even look left or right. Didn’t her parents teach her anything?

  I watch her for a little longer. It feels… comforting.

  Then, movement. Her parents rushing after her.

  “Azra, wait!”

  A man’s voice. Sharp, urgent. It makes my chest tighten for reasons I can’t explain.

  Funny.

  I watch them—her parents catching up, taking her hand. Their laughter is light, the kind of laughter I never knew. The girl looks up at them with shining eyes, a smile on her face.

  I’m stuck in this moment. Outside of it. I am nothing but a whisper, an echo.

  I walk away a little and see them again. This time they’re all holding hands. Seems like they taught her to look left and right now. Looking at them, I forget to watch the street myself and a car comes my way, way too fast to stop now.

  I close my eyes and—

  No pain. Nothing. Just stillness.

  When I open them again, it’s dark. Oh, night already?

  How did I get here? I’m in a hallway, standing in front of a door.

  I’m somewhere else. Somewhere familiar. Somewhere that smells like dust and old wood.

  I’m standing in a hallway. The walls are too close, the air thick, suffocating. I can hear the faint murmur of voices coming from a kitchen. The door is cracked open, and through it, I see a figure sitting at the table. A man, his back turned to me.

  It’s him again.

  The father of that Girl.

  My Father.

  I feel my chest tighten, the emptiness inside me growing. I can’t move. My feet feel like they’re cemented to the floor, trapped in this moment that isn’t mine anymore. I’m just a shadow, a ghost watching my own past unfold.

  I look at the man in the kitchen, and I know what he’s going to do. I know the coldness of his hands, the way they feel like chains. I know the empty look in his eyes that was never really love, just ownership. I know all of it. It’s too much. It’s suffocating.

  I want to scream, but I can’t. No sound comes out. I can’t reach him. I can’t change anything.

  But I can’t leave either. I’m trapped here, in this place, in this time. The kitchen is so close, and yet it feels like a thousand miles away. I can’t move, but I can see it all.

  He’s calling me.

  “Azra, come here.”

  His voice is cold, like always. It sends a shiver through me, even though I’m not really there. I see my younger self—me, the child—standing there at the threshold of the kitchen, unsure, vulnerable.

  And I know what’s going to happen next. I can see it all unfold. The touch that isn’t a touch. The hands that shouldn’t have been allowed to touch me. The words that would never be said aloud, but I’d hear them anyway.

  I can’t stop it. I can’t warn her. I can’t reach my past self. But I can see it all so clearly, and it makes me want to disappear. To fade away, so I don’t have to watch it again.

  But I can’t. I’m already gone. And the memories—they keep playing, over and over, until they suffocate me, until I’m nothing but a shadow of what I once was.

  Just as he raises his hand—

  I try to scream, to move, to escape, but I’m trapped, bound by the weight of the past.

  “AHHHH!”

  I scream as I wake up, the sound ripping through the air, jagged and raw. My body drenched in sweat, heart hammering in my chest. The room spins around me, everything blurry and disorienting. My breath comes in quick, shallow gasps, each inhale and exhale a battle.

  The familiar scent of antiseptic fills the air. The beeping of a machine is the only sound I hear, constant and mechanical. I blink, struggling to focus, and slowly—too slowly—the haze lifts.

  Where am I?

  I touch myself, feeling the coldness of the sterile sheets beneath me, the softness of my own skin.

  “It‘s real“