The clock had just hit 2:30 AM. Silence filled the void of the empty house that stood in the far corner of a deserted street. The mildew-covered house looked haunted from the outside, but it did not compare to the true terrorizing horrors inside. Rose, a twelve-year-old girl with almond-shaped, caramel brown eyes, brittle black hair, and porcelain-like skin, was lying on her blush sheets. She was crying discretely to make sure He did not hear her. She was deathly afraid He would enter her room and abuse her frail, tiny body to satisfy His needs. He had already hurt her three times earlier… she was petrified He was going to do it again. Her body was terribly sore from the pain He caused her. Rose’s porcelain-like skin was a canvas. He would paint streaks of black, purple, and green in hidden parts of her body, but He couldn’t control Himself this time. Her once beautiful fair skin was now obscured by His damage. The pink flower-painted door creaked ever so lightly, but even the slightest sound made Rose freeze in fear. She held in her breath and mentally prepared herself for the torture she was about to face.
“Rose? Rosebud… you awake?”
It was just her barely 17-year-old sister, Grace. Grace had been working 10-hour shifts at a local gas station. She was working long hours to save up money for her and Rose to leave that infernal purgatory. In Rose’s eyes, Grace was the most beautiful girl to have ever existed. She had sparkling mint eyes that gleamed even in darkness. She was strong and resilient, something Rose wished to possess, but even her strength was stripped of its power in that Hell. Then, Grace heard her little sister let out strange noises. The words “Rosebud” triggered Rose’s body to shake like a withered leaf. Moments earlier, He had held a serrated knife against her throat and threatened to kill her if she ever dared attempt to escape.
“You would never leave me, right, Rosebud. It would end very badly, and very soon you will be flourishing into a flower… my little flower - I wouldn’t want to miss that.”
His threat, more like a promise, made Rose gasp for air from the panic He instilled in her. Grace rushed to her bed only to find her numb body covered in bruises and handprints. Rose’s panicked silence spoke volumes. Grace quivered in disgust and anger, fighting to hold her tears back.
“I’m going to get you some water,” Grace said as her voice cracked. She stormed out of the room, making sure to shut the door. Minutes were passing by, and Rose was starting to grow uneasy. She was suffocating at the thought of Grace abandoning her. Rose was abruptly startled from the sound of glass shattering into a thousand grating fragments. She clenched her eyes and covered her ears to drown out the horrors she felt coming. Grace’s blinding rage sent her into a trance. She grabbed a sharp shard of glass and confronted Him. She managed to slice His skin as if his body was made of fragile paper. Crimson red blood started dripping on the uneven wooden floors, but the sight of the color red only angered Him more like a wild bull. He wrapped His hands tightly around Grace’s neck, showing no mercy. The image of Rose’s abused body made Grace fight until her last breath. She grabbed the bloody shard of glass and stabbed Him in the artery below His jaw, instantly killing Him.
Rose opened her eyes in a disoriented daze to find a jagged piece from a broken mirror plunged in her neck. She was all alone in a grimy bathtub, not a soul in sight. She was a 22-year-old woman living in a beat-up apartment in New York City that had a haunted past of its own. A dark memory she thought she had suppressed imprisoned her in her own living Hell. Grace was a figment of Rose’s imagination. Rose created Grace as a way to protect herself. In fact, she had made an altered personality, a personality that she developed a deep connection with… her saving Grace. All the abuse and hurt that was replaying in her head, she was inflicting upon herself. Thick, bright red blood slithered slowly down her neck like a stream. Rose’s final breaths echoed the peace she always longed for.
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The Silence Between the Clues ⭐
The Room That Remembered Everything The room was empty when Elias first stepped inside it — at least, that’s what his eyes told him. No furniture. No windows. Just four pale walls and a single bulb hanging from the ceiling, flickering as if it struggled to stay awake. The air smelled faintly of dust and something older… like paper left unread for decades. Elias had rented the apartment because it was cheap. Too cheap for a city that never forgave hesitation. The landlord avoided eye contact and spoke quickly, as though the walls themselves were listening. “It’s quiet,” the man said. “That’s all most people want.” On the first night, Elias slept poorly. Not because of noise — but because of silence. The kind that pressed against his ears until his own thoughts sounded foreign. At exactly 3:17 a.m., he woke up. The light was on. He was certain he had turned it off. As he sat up, he noticed something else. A faint mark on the wall opposite his bed. It hadn’t been there before — or maybe it had, and he simply hadn’t noticed. It looked like a handprint. Not painted. Not dirty. Pressed. Elias laughed softly, blaming exhaustion. The mind played tricks when it was tired. He turned off the light and went back to sleep. The next morning, the handprint was gone. But something else had appeared. Words. Scratched into the wall as if written by a fingernail: “You forgot.” Elias stared at the message for a long time. He tried to remember what it could mean. Missed bills? A call he didn’t return? A promise he never kept? Nothing came. He covered the words with a poster and left for work. That night, the dreams began. He stood in the same room, but it was no longer empty. It was crowded with people — faces blurred, voices overlapping. Someone was crying. Someone was shouting his name. “Elias!” He woke up gasping. The poster had fallen. The words on the wall had changed. “You were there.” His hands trembled. He told himself there was a rational explanation. Stress. Sleepwalking. A prank. Yet deep down, something stirred — a memory struggling to surface. Over the following days, the room grew more active. New messages appeared. Faint sounds echoed at night — footsteps that stopped outside his door, whispers that dissolved when he listened closely. One evening, he found a final message written larger than the rest: “Look.” Below it, the wall was scratched raw, revealing something beneath the paint. A mirror. Elias froze. He didn’t remember a mirror being there. His reflection stared back at him — pale, hollow-eyed, unfamiliar. Then the reflection smiled. Behind him, in the mirror, the room was no longer empty. A woman stood there. Her face was bruised. Her eyes were calm in a way that terrified him. “I told you not to leave,” she said softly. Elias turned around. The room was empty. When he faced the mirror again, the woman was closer. “You said you’d come back,” she whispered. “You never did.” The memory crashed into him like a breaking dam. The argument. The door slammed. The rain. Her voice calling after him. The stairs. The fall. The silence. Elias staggered back, choking on the truth he had buried. “I didn’t mean to,” he whispered. The walls began to fill with words — hundreds of them — overlapping, bleeding into one another. REMEMBER. STAY. DON’T LEAVE. The bulb flickered violently. The woman in the mirror reached out, placing her hand against the glass. Where she touched it, a handprint appeared on the wall beside Elias — the same one he had seen on the first night. “This room remembers,” she said. “So you don’t have to forget anymore.” The light went out. When the landlord unlocked the apartment weeks later, he found it empty. No tenant. No belongings. Only a single handprint on the wall. Pressed. But in the quiet room, on the wall beside the mirror, a fresh handprint remained — pressed firmly into the paint.
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