The Silence Beneath Glass

Part 1: The House That Shouldn't Exist

There are places in the world where sound feels wrong. Like it doesn't bounce right. Like it's afraid to echo.

That’s what I noticed first about the glass house.

It stood on the edge of the lake, partially hidden by overgrown cattails and a collapsed boathouse. I’d been driving for two hours, aimlessly following back roads with the windows down and no music on. My phone had died somewhere around the last gas station, and I wasn’t sure what state I was even in anymore.

But when I saw the house, I hit the brakes without thinking.

It wasn’t on any map. It wasn’t for sale. It simply existed — wrong and silent — like it had been built out of a secret someone tried to bury and failed.

The house was all glass, but not in the modern, luxury-home sense. It looked like something that had been abandoned for years, possibly decades — the frame eaten by rust, the panels fogged and stained with streaks like old tears. There was a front path choked by weeds and a metal wind chime hanging by the door that didn’t make a sound, even when the breeze hit it.

I should’ve left. Any sane person would’ve.

But sanity is relative when you’re running from something you don’t fully remember
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I don’t know why I started driving in the first place. The therapist — a warm woman with careful eyes and an office that smelled like lemon disinfectant — said it was common for memory loss to work that way. That the brain has its reasons for blacking out trauma. That it might come back in pieces.

So when I found myself behind the wheel on a random June morning, wearing shoes I don’t remember buying and with a suitcase in the backseat packed by someone who clearly knows me better than I do, I figured: Maybe this is how it comes back.

Maybe this is the road back to myself.

Or maybe this is another kind of escape entirely.


I stepped out of the car. The grass swallowed my ankles. The glass house watched me approach.

The doorknob was warm, like someone had just touched it.

Inside, it smelled like lavender and something deeper — not rot, exactly, but age. An old memory perfuming the air. I stood still for a moment, waiting for the floor to creak, for a ghost to whisper, for my mind to scream.

None of those things happened.

Instead, I heard the softest sound of a piano. One note. Just one.

And then silence again.


The furniture was covered in white sheets, some stained with water rings. There was a spiral staircase leading to an open loft with a massive window that faced the lake. A dusty photo frame sat on a small table near the entrance.

I picked it up, my hand trembling.

In the photo, I stood between two other people — a man and a woman. All of us were smiling. My hair was shorter, dyed a color I didn’t recognize. The man had his arm around me. The woman wore a dress with sleeves that looked like glass petals.

I stared at my own face. My mouth knew that smile, but my brain did not.

I flipped the frame over.

On the back, in thick black ink:
Summer, 2021 – Home again. Don’t forget.
The handwriting was mine.


I turned in a slow circle, heart pounding. The glass walls offered no safety, only exposure. I was being watched — not from outside, but from the past.

This was my house.

Or it had been.

And someone had wanted me to forget it.


I wandered through the house in a daze, touching everything. A chipped ceramic mug. A pair of ballet flats by the door. A record player half-covered by a moth-eaten scarf.

In the kitchen, a knife block sat full — except for one empty slot.

On the fridge, held by a magnet shaped like a black cat, was a postcard.
A line of text in all capital letters:
“YOU LEFT SOMETHING BEHIND.”
No signature. No return address.

Just a postmark:
Three days ago.

I dropped it. My hands had started shaking.


That night, I didn’t sleep.

I lay on the couch in the living room — sheets removed, just cracked leather against my back — and watched the reflection of the moon ripple across the lake, then against the walls of the house. I thought about the photo. About the missing knife. About the strange silence, like even the insects were holding their breath.

And about the single piano note.

Was it a memory?

Or a warning?

To Be Continu