The Room of Memories

By [saad shah]

Simon was a lonely man who lived on the edge of the city, in an old, abandoned hospital—
a place where time had stopped, and the walls still breathed whispers of the past.
The hospital no longer healed anyone, but there was one room that did something else entirely.

They called it “The Room of Memories.”
No one knew how it came to be or how long it had existed. There were no medical records about it, no blueprints marking its location. But those who stepped inside—if they were brave enough—found themselves face-to-face with something they thought was lost forever.

Not a ghost.
Not a trick.
A memory.

A real, living, breathing moment pulled from the deepest part of the soul.

Simon had worked there for years. Cleaning, guarding, watching.
The hospital was a shell, hollow and mostly forgotten.
Yet, people still came. Not many, and never loudly.
Just quiet people with something unfinished in their hearts.

Simon had never entered the room himself.
He had been tempted—but fear, and perhaps a deep sense of unworthiness, kept him out.

Until the girl arrived.


---

Her name was Ella.

She couldn’t have been more than twenty.
She wore a threadbare green coat, boots with cracked soles, and carried no bag—just a folded piece of paper clenched in her hand.

“I want to see my mother’s last laugh,” she told Simon.

Her voice was low and hoarse, like someone who hadn’t spoken in a long time.
“I’ve forgotten it. And that laugh was the only thing that held us together.”

Simon looked at her for a moment, then unlocked the door without a word.

She stepped inside.


---

The door remained closed for hours.

Simon waited. He usually didn’t, but something about her unsettled him.

When she finally emerged, she looked as if she’d aged and healed at the same time.
Her eyes were red, but her face was peaceful.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “Now I can go.”

She didn’t say where.
She didn’t need to.

She never came back.


---

Simon resumed his routine.
He swept the same halls, stared at the same windows, watched the same leaves flutter outside broken glass.

But Ella had changed something.

> “If I go inside… what memory would find me?”



He asked himself that over and over.
Sometimes at night, he’d wake up from dreams of childhood smells and faraway laughter.
Sometimes he’d walk to the door, touch the handle, and turn back around.

He wasn’t ready.

But readiness doesn’t always come with warning.
Sometimes, it comes with surrender.

One night, under the weak light of a flickering moon, he made his way to the room.


---

The door was colder than usual.
As if it knew the moment had finally arrived.

Simon took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and turned the handle.

Darkness met him first.

Then… a slow, soft glow.

Not from the walls, but from the memory itself.

Before him, a boy sat in a small wooden chair, barely six years old, wrapped in a wool blanket.

Rain tapped gently on the window.

Across from the boy sat a woman—his mother—reading from a worn-out children’s book.
Her voice danced between words, her eyes filled with love.
She was laughing. Not loudly, but deeply—like each sound was soaked in joy.

The boy—Simon—was giggling too, holding a small wooden owl in one hand.

He remembered this. The book, the toy, the exact sound of the rain.
He had buried it, layer by layer, beneath years of grief and solitude.

But here it was, whole.

He watched, tears rolling freely down his cheeks, but he didn’t speak.
The memory didn’t ask anything from him.
It simply offered him a truth:

> You were loved.
You were seen.
You mattered.




---

He stayed there until the glow began to fade.

Then he stepped out, closed the door behind him, and walked to his small desk.
For the first time in decades, he picked up a pen and wrote something—
not for a report, not for a file, but for someone else.

He taped the note gently to the door.

The next morning, Simon was gone.

No one knows where he went.

But his note remained, written in soft, careful handwriting:

> “It’s easy to bury memories.
But it takes courage to let them live.
If you step inside, be ready to speak the truth.”




---

They say the room still stands.

And sometimes, when the wind is just right, you can hear a page turning,
a mother’s laugh, or the quiet giggle of a boy holding a wooden owl.

The room doesn’t hold magic.
It holds honesty.

And sometimes, that’s even more powerful.

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