Noah slammed the apartment door behind him, the sound ricocheting down the hallway like a gunshot. He pressed his forehead against the peeling paint, the wood grain biting into his skin. Just some lunatic. A drunk with a flair for drama. But the stranger's words slithered under his ribs, hot and persistent: "You're already in the script."
He flicked on the kitchen light. The bulb sputtered, casting jaundiced shadows over the countertop where Mia used to leave her keys—always too loud, always at 2 a.m. after her bartending shifts. The fly from yesterday buzzed past his ear, lazy and taunting.
The cold hit him first. Not the sterile chill of an empty room, but the kind that clings to abandoned spaces, like the air itself had given up. His eyes swept the living room, snagging on the gaps: the naked patch of wall where her Guernica poster had hung, the dust outline of her thrifted lamp shaped like a flamingo. The turquoise pillow was gone. The one she'd named Steve and threatened to "divorce" if he ever spilled beer on it again.
A half-empty whiskey bottle glinted under the couch. He grabbed it, the liquid sloshing like a dare.
"No. No, no, no—" He tore through the apartment, yanking drawers until their contents vomited onto the floor. Her cherry-blossom hairpin. The half-empty bottle of jasmine perfume she'd dab on his collar when she missed him. Even the goddamn mug she'd painted at one of those couples' workshops—World's Okayest Boyfriend in wobbly gold letters—had vanished. The fly landed on the empty mug spot, wings twitching.
His lungs tightened. They'd broken up two weeks ago. Hadn't they? The night she'd thrown his phone at the wall, screaming about deadlines and emotional coffins. The same night the script had first updated itself. Right?
---
He unearthed his phone beneath a fossilized pizza box, the spiderwebbed screen flickering to life. Mia's Last Texts glared back:
Mia (11 weeks ago): Don't call. Don't text. You've made your choice.
Mia (11 weeks ago): I hope that script haunts you worse than I did.
His thumb hovered. Eleven weeks. But he'd kissed her here, in this kitchen, just days ago—her lips tasting of spearmint and resentment. The fly buzzed louder, as if laughing. Hadn't he?
The emails were worse. A confirmation for a storage unit dated three months back. A receipt for a U-Haul. A newsletter from her new yoga studio: "Release what no longer serves you." He clicked the photo attachment—a group class, Mia front-row in a pose that would've made her old self snort. "Yoga is just stretching with a cult," she'd say, popping another gummy.
"This isn't… I didn't…" He dialed, the ringtone trilling like a dentist's drill.
"Seriously, Noah?" Her voice was a shiv wrapped in silk. He pictured her leaning against the counter of her new apartment, the one he'd never seen, sunlight glinting off the hooded figure's knife in her fruit bowl.
"Mia, your stuff—the mug, the poster, all of it's gone. What's happening?"
A pause. He heard the clink of ice cubes, the rustle of sheets. Her sheets. Someone else's sheets? The fly crawled across his screen, obscuring her contact photo.
"Are you high right now? I moved out in March. You watched me pack, remember? Stood there like a kicked puppy, mumbling about 'needing more time to explain.'"
"March? But we—we went to Coney Island in June! The heatwave, the fucking blackout—"
"Jesus." Her exhale crackled. "That was two summers ago. You really don't remember?"
The floor tilted. He gripped the counter, the linoleum's grit sharp under his palm. "You brought me popsicles. The cheap ones that stained your lips blue."
"Yeah. And you threw them in the trash because you were 'in a groove' with your writing."Her laugh was a dry thing, kindling snapping. "You said the script was alive. Like it mattered more than—"
"It does matter!" The whiskey bottle slipped, shattering. Amber pooled around his shoes. The fly drowned in it, wings still fluttering.
"Stay in your fucking loop, Noah."
The line went dead.
---
Sleep came in jagged pieces.
Mia's fists balled in his shirt, her breath hot and sour with tequila. "You don't get to vanish for a month and then show up like nothing happened!"
"I was working!" The walls throbbed, pulsing like a throat around them. "This script—it's different. It's alive—"
"So am I!" She shoved him, the Coney Island photo slipping from the shelf. Glass exploded. Shards pierced his soles, but he didn't bleed. Couldn't.
"You're chasing ghosts, Noah. But guess what?" Her voice dropped, venomous. Behind her, the hooded figure stepped into the frame, hands in pockets. "You're the one who's dead."
He woke up gasping, the dream's edges already fraying. Had she worn her Nirvana tee or the sundress from their first date? His skull pulsed, a dull drill behind his eyes.
---
The Echo Script.pdf glowed on his desktop, its icon smirking. He hadn't opened it since the night she left. Since March. Since the whiskey and the sirens and the hooded figure's first appearance outside Rossi's deli.
The cursor blinked. Coward.
He double-clicked.
Scrolled past the familiar bones of the story: the detective's obsession, the time loops, the shadowy corporation that shared a logo with his father's old lab. Then—new text, still bleeding onto the page:
[INT. NOAH'S APARTMENT - NIGHT]
The man claws awake, sweat pooling in the hollow of his throat. The dream replays—HER laugh, HER anger, the glass like fallen stars. He fumbles for the lamp. The light dies. It always dies.
[CLOSE ON LAPTOP SCREEN]
The script refreshes. Words slither into view: "He thinks he's reading it. He's wrong. It's reading him."
Noah recoiled, chair screeching. The timestamp blinked: Last Modified: 4:12 AM.
The exact moment he'd wrenched himself from the dream.
Across the street, the hooded figure stood beneath Rossi's flickering awning. This time, he waved.
"What the everloving fuck?"