The Forgotten Ones

It started with Eli.

One night, I texted him about our usual weekend plans, but the message never delivered. His name was still in my contacts, but every old text thread, every group chat, every tagged photo—gone. I scrolled through my phone in confusion, my stomach knotting tighter with each missing piece.

I asked Sam about it the next day.

“Who?”

I laughed. “Eli. You know, our friend? The one who got us into that abandoned building last summer? The one who—”

Sam shook his head, eyes blank. “I don’t know an Eli.”

I stared at him. He was messing with me. He had to be.

But no one else remembered him either. Not our other friends. Not my parents, who had once scolded me for spending too much time with him. Not even social media, where his existence had been erased like he had never been there at all.

I tried to move on. Maybe I had imagined him. Maybe there was something wrong with me.

Then Taylor disappeared.

One day, she was laughing at a meme I sent her. The next, she was *gone*.

Every trace of her—deleted.

And again, no one remembered.

“What’s wrong with you lately?” Sam asked as I tried to explain. “First Eli, now some Taylor girl? You keep making people up.”

I felt sick. They weren’t fake. They were real. They were real.

I stopped talking about it, but I started keeping records. I wrote down everything I could about my friends—where we met, inside jokes, favorite foods—before they could vanish too. I wasn’t crazy. I couldn’t be crazy.

Then one morning, I woke up to find Sam’s name in my notebook.

The ink was smudged from my shaking hands. My breath hitched as I checked my phone. No texts. No tagged photos. No proof.

I ran to his house, heart hammering. His mom answered the door, smiling politely, like I was a stranger.

“Sam?” I gasped. “Is he home?”

Her brows furrowed. “I don’t know anyone by that name.”

I staggered back.

No. No, no, no.

I was alone.

A gnawing horror settled in my chest. Would I be next?

I rushed home, flipping to the last page of my notebook. I wrote my own name in large, desperate letters. My birthday. My favorite song. My worst fear.

The ink bled into the paper as I whispered to myself, “I am real. I am real.”

The lights flickered.

And then the page was blank.