The Silence Between Thoughts

They say writers hear voices in their heads.

But what if one of those voices starts hearing you?

My name is Arham.

I’ve been a writer for nine years — crime novels, mostly.

Stories about guilt, obsession, and madness.

People love the darkness… when it’s on paper.

But my last novel — The Silence Between Thoughts — was supposed to be different.

It was about a man named Zayan, who loses control of his own mind.

He hears a voice that tells him what to write.

A voice that slowly takes over his thoughts.

What I didn’t know…

was that Zayan would start writing me back.

It started quietly.

I was sitting at my desk one night, staring at a blank document.

Rain outside, coffee going cold.

Classic writer cliché.

And then, out of nowhere — my laptop typed a sentence by itself.

“You’re late again, Arham.”

I froze.

Maybe it was a glitch, I thought.

Or auto-correct.

But then another line appeared.

“You think you’re writing me… but I’m writing you.”

I stared at the screen, heart pounding.

My mind said: you’re tired. hallucinating.

But my fingers were trembling.

The next morning, I deleted the file.

Started fresh.

But every time I typed a new story, the name Zayan appeared somewhere — automatically.

In dialogue, in titles, in random sentences.

I changed laptops.

Wiped drives.

Even switched to pen and paper.

Didn’t matter.

The handwriting — my handwriting — would shift mid-sentence.

You can’t erase me.

I stopped writing for a month.

No laptop. No notebook.

Just silence.

But that’s when I started hearing him.

Not through the computer.

Inside my head.

Like a faint whisper — familiar and calm.

“Keep writing.”

I ignored it.

“You owe me an ending.”

I screamed at nothing. “You’re not real!”

The whisper paused. Then, almost amused:

“That’s what I said about you.”

Sleep stopped coming.

I started keeping notes on my wall — trying to separate what was mine from what was his.

My handwriting: clean, sharp.

His handwriting: slanted, desperate.

But soon, I couldn’t tell the difference.

I tore down the notes, smashed my typewriter, even burned a few pages.

But in the morning, new ones appeared — perfectly printed.

The story isn’t over.

I finally went to see a psychiatrist.

Dr. Nadia — soft-spoken, kind eyes.

I told her everything.

She said it was a classic case of dissociative identity mixed with auditory hallucination.

In simple terms:

“Your mind created Zayan to process your guilt, anxiety, and creative pressure.”

I laughed. “So my mind is ghostwriting for me?”

She smiled. “In a way, yes.”

She prescribed medication and said,

“If you hear the voice again, don’t resist. Just listen. Sometimes the mind calms when acknowledged.”

I wish she hadn’t said that.

That night, I listened.

And Zayan spoke clearly for the first time.

“You shouldn’t have told her.”

His voice wasn’t angry.

It was disappointed.

“Now she’ll try to delete me too.”

I sat frozen, breathing shallow.

He whispered again:

“Let me write. Just once. I’ll stop after that.”

My body moved before my thoughts caught up.

I opened the laptop.

The cursor blinked.

And my fingers started typing — fast, unstoppable.

Dr. Nadia never saw it coming.

I gasped and yanked my hands back.

“What the hell was that!?”

Just fiction, he said calmly. Unless you make it real.

Two days later, I got a call.

Dr. Nadia had been found dead.

No signs of struggle.

A heart attack, they said.

But the report mentioned one strange detail —

her office computer had a half-written file open.

Title: The Silence Between Thoughts.

I stopped eating. Stopped leaving the house.

Zayan was winning.

Every time I tried to resist, he punished me — headaches, hallucinations, whispers louder than thunder.

Until one night, I gave up.

I said, “Fine. You want an ending? Let’s finish it.”

He smiled inside my head.

“Good. Let’s begin where you end.”

I started writing like a man possessed.

Days blurred into nights.

The story flowed — about a writer trapped by his own creation.

Halfway through, I realized something.

Every time I described what Zayan did, it happened to me.

If I wrote “He hadn’t slept in days,” I couldn’t sleep.

If I wrote “He felt someone watching,” the shadows moved.

The story wasn’t fiction anymore.

It was instruction.

And I wasn’t the author.

When I typed the final chapter title, my hands shook.

“The Ending Writes Itself.”

Zayan whispered:

“Now write your last line.”

I asked, “What is it?”

He said, softly:

“Goodbye.”

Then — silence.

The voice stopped.

For the first time in months, there was peace.

I fell asleep at my desk.

When I woke up, my phone was ringing.

It was the publisher.

“Arham, your new manuscript is incredible! When did you write it?”

I blinked. “What manuscript?”

“The one you emailed last night. The Silence Between Thoughts — final draft.”

I opened my sent folder.

It was there.

A full 280-page novel — perfect grammar, new chapters, a flawless ending.

But the last line chilled me to the bone:

“Arham Blake was a brilliant author — until he took his own life at his desk, mid-sentence.”

I stared at it.

Then at my hands.

They were covered in ink.

My laptop camera light was on — recording.

I don’t remember typing that line.

I don’t remember hitting send.

But when I looked at the reflection on my screen…

Zayan was sitting behind me.

Smiling.

It’s been two months since then.

The book became a best-seller.

Critics called it “the most haunting self-reflective novel of the decade.”

But here’s the truth:

I didn’t write it.

He did.

And now, when I hear that faint whisper in the silence between my thoughts…

I wonder if I’m still Arham —

or if he’s just letting me think I am.