Here I am, trapped inside a riddle I never chose, a game I never agreed to play, set by a shadow that haunts my every step. The fear is so thick it chokes me, wrapping around my thoughts, sinking into my skin. I've always cherished solitude, found peace in the quiet, and held tightly to my own company. The world and its noise were distant, meaningless. By the river, I'd sit with a book in one hand, a pen in the other, content in my own small, quiet world.
But tonight, even my own shadow is too much to bear. The walls close in around me, silent, yet alive with some terrible presence I can't shake. I've never felt this alone. This isn't the calm solitude I once loved,this is loneliness, raw and vicious. It seeps into me, turning the quiet into something dark, something that watches me from the corner of every room.
The thoughts that gnaw at me are almost worse than the fear itself. I could vanish into thin air, and who would notice? Who would search for me if I disappeared? My absence would only be a murmur in the town, a headline in the paper, a fleeting story soon forgotten. They would move on, leaving me erased as if I'd never existed at all. The emptiness of that thought makes me shiver it's a kind of loneliness that goes beyond isolation, that tears away any sense of comfort.
And then there's that shadow. I don't even know if I'm alone in my own home. I move from room to room, the silence so heavy it presses on my skin, checking each corner, each shadow, hoping yet dreading that something will be there. My footsteps echo, empty and cold. Nothing. No sign of anyone... and yet the feeling lingers, a presence that won't let me go.
Finally, I stop, exhausted, and find myself holding the postcard, staring at the riddle scrawled in dark ink. I read it again, my heart pounding, my hands trembling:
"When the moon is at its highest peak,
Beneath the stars where shadows creep,
And secrets hide in silence deep.
A mirror to the sky so vast,
In stillness holds the breath of the past.
Try to find where darkness keeps;
By dawn, my trace will slip away."What does it mean? Why would anyone leave this for me? Every line is like a whisper from the shadow itself, pulling me deeper into something I don't understand. I think about going to the police, but what would I even say? And if I tell them, will it bind me to this twisted game, pull me deeper into whatever this is?
I read the riddle again, but each word only sinks me further into confusion, like I'm slipping into a dark, endless pool. I don't know what it wants, and I don't know if I want to find out. Yet here I am, lost in my thoughts, searching for some meaning, some way out of this dark forest of fear and doubt. I want to believe there's an answer somewhere, but hope feels as fragile as glass, ready to shatter at the slightest touch.
I'm alone with this silence, with this fear that won't leave, and as I read the riddle again, I realize something terrifying: I don't even know if I want to solve it, or if solving it will make everything worse. But the shadow waits, watching, as if daring me to find out.
YOU ARE READING
INK&BLOOD
Mystery / ThrillerWhen fiction bleeds into reality,can an author escape her own story?