You Are Never Alone

There is a moment, just before sleep, when the world goes quiet.

Not the quiet of silence. The quiet of waiting.

You open your eyes. The room is empty. The curtains are still. Everything is normal.

But you know.

You know because the cold spot on the pillow is not where your head was. You know because the chair by the window has been moved two inches to the left. You know because, for a fraction of a second, you saw a reflection in the glass that was not your own.

You tell yourself it was nothing.

You close your eyes.

You sleep.

And somewhere, in the dark, something watches.

Not a ghost. Not a demon. Not an angel.

Something older. Something that has no name.

This is not a story about a haunting.

This is a story about the shape of absence. The weight of a hand that is not there. The sound of a voice that speaks only in the language of things you have lost.

This is a story about a man who walked into the sea.

And the woman who walked out.