The Forgotten Shadows

It was quiet now. The kind of silence that didn’t just surround you—it crawled inside your bones, twisting its way through your mind, wrapping tightly around your voice. Lily sat still, her fingers gripping the edge of her worn notebook. She hadn’t written anything in days, maybe weeks. She couldn’t remember when she last heard her own thoughts. They’d been drowned out by him—by the voice she never invited in, yet couldn't escape.

She could still hear him, though. His words, always so smooth, so persuasive, tangled in her memories. He had a way of making his whispers feel like commands. She thought he cared, thought he wanted to guide her, but every suggestion, every “helpful” remark chipped away at her until she couldn’t recognize herself anymore.

She flourished under his influence at first—her art, her words, her entire world seemed to expand in his presence. He knew exactly what to say to pull out her creativity, pushing her to new heights. But as time went on, Lily began to realize that the inspiration he offered wasn’t hers. The words she penned didn’t belong to her anymore. They were his.

The first time she sensed the shift, it was subtle, like a shadow creeping in at the edges of her mind. His encouragement felt heavier, more possessive. His compliments began to sound like control.

"You’re nothing without me," he would say, though never directly. It came through in the pauses, the looks, and the way he rewrote her every move, dictating what she should say, and she should think. He painted her world with his colors, but they felt wrong—like borrowed shades that clashed with the essence of who she truly was.

One night, she sat alone, the light in her room flickering. The silence was back, suffocating, and the notebook in her hands felt foreign. Pages of ideas that once flowed from her soul were now marked by his ink. She could feel his presence even when he wasn’t there—a phantom rewriting her, erasing the end of every sentence, every dream she tried to hold onto.

Lily stood up abruptly, the chair scraping the floor. Enough. She couldn’t do this anymore—couldn’t live in a story he was writing for her, couldn’t bear to let his voice be the only one she heard. Her heart pounded as she crossed the room, her hands trembling as they hovered over the light switch. She was going to shut it all off. No more half-dimmed light, no more letting him dictate the shadows.

But just as she reached for the switch, she heard it—his voice, again.

“Don’t, Lily. You need me. You’re nothing without me.”

The words echoed in her head, but this time, something inside her stirred. Something raw, something that had been buried for far too long.

“I’m not nothing,” she whispered, though her voice was fragile, like the first breath after drowning. She flipped the switch. Darkness swallowed the room, and for a moment, it felt like his grip tightened. But then she breathed deeply—her breath, her air—and in that darkness, she found the faintest flicker of light within herself.

Lily returned to her desk, not to the notebook filled with his stories, but to a blank page. She picked up her pen, feeling the weight of his presence still lingering, but she wrote anyway. The words didn’t come easily, and they weren’t pretty at first, but they were hers. They were raw and real, and every letter she scrawled onto the page felt like reclaiming a part of herself.

He didn’t write for him anymore. She wasn’t his to narrate. She was her own story, and she was going to write her ending—no matter how long it took, no matter how hard she had to fight to silence his voice.

And as the night wore on, Lily realized something. The silence wasn’t empty. It wasn’t a void. It was space—space for her own voice to finally be heard.