Undone.

Prison

I don't remember when I started checking the door. I must have been doing it for as long as I've been living here, though. A habit, I suppose. The door. Always the door.

Click.

It's the sound that's supposed to reassure me. Like the world is still intact. Like everything is locked in place. It's never enough though. It never is enough. It never is enough. It never is enough.

Click.

I check it over and over without any rest. I should leave it, but I don't. I never do. The key turns smoothly in the lock, and I feel a strange relief, a brief sense of something settled. But I know better. There's something off about the way the door feels. The way it stands between the outside and inside, between the world and me. I don't trust the outside. Not anymore.

Click.

Eight. It has to be eight. Always eight.

I've lived here for months now. Years, maybe. I can't tell anymore. It all blurs. I can leave anytime, yet I don't. I never will. I'm stuck in this black box.

I leave the door open. I never want to. It's just the sound of the lock turning, the safety, the relief I'm supposed to feel, replaced by worry.

The apartment is small enough for only one human being.

I want to leave. I never will.

The floor is cold. It pains me.

I don't know when I stopped being able to sleep. I've been awake for...

It's quiet. The silence that fills the room until it feels too full. Too thick. It presses on me. The walls feel like they're closing in. The air feels horrid.

The case is still open. The reports pile up. A woman, thirty years old. Blonde, blue eyes. Her face—well, it's a face, that's all it is. Another face to add to the list. Another name to be forgotten, soul thrown away.

I look at her body again in the morgue, but I don't really see her. I see nothing behind her eyes.

They don't know anything. They will never understand.

The body doesn't bother me. I don't even care about the details anymore—the way the blood pools beneath her, the way her limbs hang at odd angles. The way her mouth is open, as if she might speak if someone could hear her. But no one can.

I don't remember moving the body. I don't remember arranging the scene. But it's always right.

I don't think about it. Not really.

The shower is always cold. I turn it on hard, the water slapping against the tiles in a rhythm I can't control, a pattern that's loud enough to fill my mind. It's too much. But it's not enough. The hot water is too warm, the steam thick against the bathroom mirror, but the coolness underneath—the air behind the mist—it feels good.

It makes me feel like I'm something.

I will never understand. I will never leave. I never will do anything.

The sock on the floor in the morgue doesn't bother me.

It shouldn't be there, but it is.

It's inside out. The way it always is. The way it's supposed to be. I leave it like that. I can't explain why, but it feels right. There's something about the way it hangs there, inside out, that gives me a kind of clarity.

The others don't notice it. They won't. I will make sure of that. The body is what they focus on. The way the blood stains the carpet. The way she looks like she's been left. But I know what they miss.

The small things. The details.

...

I don't sleep. It is a blur. It's too hard.

But it doesn't matter.

I check the lock again.

Click.

Once. Twice. Three times. No, eight.

Click.

I've been losing it for a while. My mind.

It doesn't matter.

The case is still open. Still unsolved. But it will be. It always is.

I always get what I need.

The apartment feels cold when I step back inside. The air is bad.

I turn the key in the lock again.

Click.

Eight times.

The body is waiting for me again.

I'll find it.

Everything is always where it should be.

I don't know when I stopped trusting my reflection. But I never look at it anymore.

It's not me. It's not me. It's not me. It's not me. It's not me. It's not me. It's not me. It's not me. It's not me. It's not me.

But I still keep checking the lock because I have nothing else left to do

Click.

...

...

...

...

After the shower, I looked outside for a moment while getting dressed.

The morning haze clung to the windows like a thin layer of dust, blurring the world outside. It didn't matter. I never looked out of the window anymore. I reached for my coat, the frayed fabric heavier than I remembered, and stepped into the hallway, feeling the distance between each step stretch into something unsteady.

The office was just down the street, a building I could almost see from here if I cared enough to squint. I knew every detail by heart anyway. "███ Detective Agency", etched in tarnished letters above a cracked glass door. There was nothing impressive about it. Just a box of walls, creaking with the weight of files no one would ever remember to shred. The lights inside buzzed like insects, drowning out anything softer than a whisper.

When I pushed the door open, the scent hit me first. Paper, ink, the faintest whiff of mildew from a leak that no one had bothered to fix. The voices—murmurs of cases long dead, bits of conversation blending into a muffled hum—were already layered over each other, words intersecting and vanishing. It wasn't a place for talking. Not if you could avoid it.

My desk was as I'd left it. Everything exactly where it should be. Files stacked neatly, every corner aligned. The air around it felt... still. That was the way it had to be. I couldn't handle it any other way.

On the corner of the desk sat the case file. Her name stared up at me from the label, meaningless. Just ink on paper. Blonde, blue-eyed, thirty years old. Her photograph, clipped to the corner, looked back at me, a hollow smile frozen forever. The others might have seen a mystery, something to solve. I saw something else. Something they wouldn't understand.

I opened the file slowly, the pages falling into place, familiar words and details forming a map only I could read. The police report was plain enough—standard. They'd done their job, they'd documented the scene. They hadn't seen the inside-out sock, left just so. They hadn't seen what I'd left there, plain as day.

My fingers brushed over the page, a tremor running through my hand. They hadn't noticed because they weren't supposed to. Not yet. Not ever.