Senna Calix hadn't heard her own voice in months.
Not truly. Not outside of her head. Not since the silence had become safer than speaking. Words had once been her power, her currency, her curse. But now, they stayed locked inside her not out of fear, but out of choice.
The cabin she called home sat in the middle of nowhere, tucked deep within an overgrown forest. No neighbors. No cameras. Just trees, wind, and her words. The walls were lined with notebooks, all unlabeled. Some finished. Others half-filled, sentences cut off mid-thought like a life interrupted.
She stood barefoot on the wooden porch, a mug of black coffee in one hand and a pen in the other. A page fluttered in the wind beside her.....her last draft, the one she'd sent.
To Marianne.
Her old therapist.
Senna took a slow sip, ignoring the bitterness. She didn't sweeten anything anymore. Bitterness was easier to swallow when you stopped resisting it.
Somewhere, someone was reading her words. Someone who would feel them burn.
She sat down on the old bench and opened her journal to a fresh page.
"Day 1872."
That's how she measured time now. Not in months or seasons. Just days since she disappeared. Days since she broke. Since she walked away from the world that kept demanding more than she could give.
She began to write.
He watched her from the shadows, just like before. Same alley. Same hesitation. Different victim.
Her pen scratched quickly across the paper. There was no plan. The story just… came. It always had. Like it lived inside her bones, waiting to be let out.
She paused, glanced at the sky. Gray clouds hung low, promising rain. The kind of weather she liked best. Storms were honest. Loud, messy, unapologetic.
Not like people.
Not like her.
Senna closed the notebook.
She stood and walked back inside the cabin. The interior was dim curtains drawn, lights off. A small fire cracked in the hearth. Her laptop sat on the desk in the corner, but it hadn't been turned on in weeks. Everything she wrote now was by hand.
Less traceable. Less real.
She paced the floor, restless.
Sending that manuscript had been a mistake. She knew it the moment she let it go. But something in her needed to know if Marianne remembered. If she still cared. If she would see the signs hidden in the ink.
It wasn't just fiction.
It was a warning.
Senna didn't know if the killer was real or if she had created him. The line was thinner than most people realized. When you wrote darkness long enough, it stopped feeling like fiction.
Maybe that's what he was a reflection of what she'd buried. Or maybe someone had taken her words too literally. Again.
She rubbed her temple. A headache throbbed just behind her eyes.
A knock startled her.
Senna froze.
No one knocked here. No one should know where she lived.
She waited. Heart pounding.
Silence.
Then another knock. Firmer.
She moved slowly toward the door, not making a sound. Peered through the peephole.
Nothing.
The porch was empty.
She opened the door anyway.
An envelope sat on the steps.
Her name, written in unfamiliar handwriting this time. Not printed. Scrawled, rushed.
She picked it up with shaky hands and stepped back inside, locking the door behind her. Her breath quickened as she tore it open.
Inside one page.
No words. Just an image.
A photocopy of her own handwriting.
Her story.
The line she'd written that morning:
"Same alley. Same hesitation. Different victim."
Someone had taken her words. Copied them. Sent them back.
Senna dropped the paper.
It fluttered to the floor.
Her throat tightened.
She wasn't writing fiction anymore.
She was writing instructions.