The Store at Crescent Villa

At twenty-four, Arman had grown used to silence. The kind of silence that lived not in forests or fields but in neat, carefully drawn streets—rows of houses with trimmed hedges, painted fences, and gates that rarely opened. His was the last house on the crescent, larger than most, with a view of the park that remained unused.

The society was beautiful in design, but beauty and life were not the same. Days passed when Arman never saw another human being, not even in the distance. The only sound came from the guard at the entrance, whose voice crackled now and then over the intercom. Otherwise, silence stretched across the lawns like an unbroken sheet.

Arman was the caretaker of the house—or perhaps the house was caretaker of him. He wasn’t sure anymore.

It began with the store.

The store room lay at the far end of the house, behind the kitchen, door always closed. It wasn’t sinister by itself. In it were the things that made a home run: leftover paint cans stacked in corners, wires bundled with tape, a broken fuse box waiting to be repaired, half-used brushes stiff with color, tools whose edges remembered work.

On some nights, he heard small sounds from behind the store’s door. A click, a faint drag, like something shifting on its own. He told himself it was only rats. But the sound carried weight, as though the objects themselves were restless.

One evening, after a day when the air had felt too still even for breathing, Arman took the key from the hook and opened the store.

The air inside was heavier, smelling of damp concrete and the metallic tang of wires. Shadows pooled in corners. The bulb overhead flickered as though startled awake.

He stepped inside.

The paint cans seemed closer than before, their lids swollen, colors leaking in faint rings across the cement. On the shelf, a broken clock—one he had stored away months ago—ticked. Just once. Then again.

Arman froze.

The fuse box hummed, though it wasn’t connected to power. He could feel vibration under his skin, traveling up through his bones. A child’s voice whispered, muffled, as though coming through the wires.

He backed toward the door, but it had already swung shut.

The store stretched longer than it should. Where there should have been a single narrow room, the shelves seemed to repeat, receding into distance. He saw boxes he didn’t remember keeping: one labeled “WINTER,” another “REPAIRS,” another with no label at all, only his name written in chalk.

His chest tightened.

Memories pressed forward uninvited—his father’s hand guiding a brush across a wall, his mother’s laughter when the light went out during a storm, his own voice saying I’m fine when he wasn’t.

He reached for the unlabeled box. It was lighter than expected, almost empty. Inside lay only a cracked mirror.

The reflection wasn’t his.

The face staring back was thinner, paler, eyes darker than his own, lips twitching into a smile that didn’t belong to him.

“Why did you lock me in here?” the reflection asked.

His throat closed. “Who—”

“You,” it said, and the smile widened.

The store trembled. Paint cans rattled, lids knocking like knuckles on wood. Wires twisted from their bundles, forming shapes—letters he almost recognized, words he had once spoken but never admitted.

He dropped the box. The mirror did not fall; it hovered, pulsing faint light. His reflection stepped through it, barefoot, water dripping from nowhere.

“I’ve been here since you closed the door,” it whispered. Its voice was his own but heavier, carrying years he hadn’t lived.

“I didn’t close anything,” Arman said, but even as he spoke, he remembered—each time he had chosen silence instead of truth, each time he had said tomorrow instead of now.

“You buried me in wires and paint,” the double said. “You kept me with broken clocks and things you never wanted to see again. But things wait. Things keep time.”

The broken clock ticked, steady now.

Arman stumbled back. The double moved forward, calm, inevitable.

“Why now?” he asked.

“Because you finally opened the door,” it said. “And because silence isn’t enough anymore.”

The bulb above them flared, then shattered. Darkness fell, but the objects glowed faintly—paint cans like coals, wires like veins. The store no longer felt like a room but a passage. A threshold.

The double extended its hand.

“Come,” it said. “Or stay here with your boxes. But know this—the knocking never stops. It only waits.”

Arman’s breath came shallow. The store pulsed with his name. He looked at the shelves, the wires, the faint imprint of memories he had spent years avoiding. His ribs ached, as if a key were pressed inside them.

Slowly, he reached.

Their hands met—cold, warm, both. The room shifted.

The door at the far end of the store opened into darkness that breathed.

They stepped through.

Later—minutes, hours, he couldn’t tell—Arman found himself sitting at the kitchen table. The store door was closed behind him, silent. His hand still bore the faint mark of a grip not entirely his own.

The house smelled of paint, faintly, as though something had been freshly done. The broken clock on the wall ticked in rhythm.

From somewhere deep, three knocks sounded—not on the door, but within the walls themselves.

Arman didn’t rise. He only said, very softly:

“I hear you.”

The silence that followed was not empty. It was full, alive, and listening.