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Chapter 1: A Stranger in My Mind
The rain had been falling for hours. Cold, relentless, and almost personal—as if the sky itself was trying to wash away something it couldn't bear to remember.
She woke up on a hospital bed, IV in her arm, wires tracking a heart that beat too fast. Her eyes fluttered open, and the sterile white ceiling stared back like a void. No name surfaced in her mind. Not hers. Not anyone's.
"Do you know who you are?" the nurse asked gently.
Silence.
She didn't.
A week passed. They called her "Anna." It was the name on her ID, but it felt borrowed. Her memories were gone—ripped out clean, like pages torn from a book.
Then he came.
A tall man with dark eyes and a stillness that made her skin tighten. He sat beside her bed, smiled like he knew every inch of her soul.
"I'm your fiancé," he said softly. "You don't remember me. But I remember everything."
Her heart skipped. Not from recognition… from fear.
He brought her photos. Letters. A ring. A story that fit too perfectly.
But something was wrong.
Every night, she woke screaming. Blood on the floor. A scream in her ears. A man's shadow. But it was never his face she saw. It was someone else.
And one night, she found it.
A journal. Hidden under the floorboards of her apartment.
"If you're reading this… it means you forgot again. And he lied. He always lies. Don't trust the man who says he loves you. He is not who you think he is. He is the reason you're broken."
Anna stared at the handwriting.
It was hers.
🕯️ Chapter 2: The Smile That Didn't Reach His Eyes
Anna had always liked the silence—at least, she assumed she had. Now, it pressed against her like a second skin, suffocating and strangely loud.
She sat at the kitchen table of her so-called apartment, tracing the edge of a chipped mug. Everything inside the apartment felt like someone else's life. Pictures of her and "Ethan" smiled down from the walls. They looked happy. Convincingly so.
But no matter how hard she stared into the frozen images, she felt nothing. No flicker of familiarity. No warmth. Just… dread.
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Ethan had been kind—too kind.
He cooked. Cleaned. Told stories about their love. About the ring on her finger. He touched her gently, cautiously, as if afraid she might break. Or remember.
And that terrified her more than forgetting ever could.
Every night, the same nightmare returned.
She stood in a hallway. A door at the end. Blood pooling beneath it. Her hand on the knob, trembling. And just before she opened it—
A whisper behind her:
"You shouldn't have come back."
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Anna hadn't told Ethan about the dream.
She wasn't sure why. Maybe it was the way he watched her when he thought she wasn't looking. Or the way his smile stopped just short of his eyes. It felt rehearsed. Polished.
Like everything else.
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That morning, she opened the bottom drawer of her desk. Random receipts, dried pens, and beneath them… the journal again.
She had hidden it last night. She was sure of it.
Yet there it was. Like it had returned on its own.
Hands shaking, she opened to the second page.
"He will do everything to make you love him again. He's done it before.
But you must never trust the love that erases who you are.
The blood isn't in your dream.
It's real."
The doorbell rang.
She snapped the journal shut, shoved it under the mattress.
Ethan stood there, smiling.
He held a bouquet of white lilies.
Her favorite flowers.
But she'd never told him that.
Not even since the accident.
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🌑 To be continued…