They found an empty table tucked near the back of the coffee shop, nestled between a bookshelf and a low window fogged with steam. It was quiet here, a small pocket of calm away from the chatter at the counter and the hiss of the espresso machine. Somewhere near the front, a group of teens laughed too loudly over iced drinks, their voices rising above the soft clink of mugs and the hum of conversation.

Paige dropped her bag and pulled out her notebook, flipping past messy doodles and half-written lines until she found a clean page, stark white and waiting.

Ezra sat opposite her, the rich scent of coffee in the air doing little to warm the chill in his bones.

“All right,” Paige said, uncapping her pen. “Let’s try to be systematic.”

Ezra raised an eyebrow, a flicker of something close to a smile touching his lips. “Systematic?”

“If this is real,” she said, her gaze steady, “and not some stress-induced psychosis or elaborate prank, then it must follow rules. Even horror films follow rules.” She gestured for his phone.

He opened his photo app, navigating to the blurred, fading image of the girl in the background. The more he looked at it, the more the edges seemed to ripple, as if the light itself struggled to hold her form. He pushed the phone across the table. “Okay. First rule: people forget her, completely. Not just a little. It’s like she never existed.”

“Right.” Paige scribbled furiously, her pen scratching against the paper. Total erasure of individual from human memory. She looked up at him, her dark fringe falling across her face. “But you still remember her.”

“Barely,” he admitted, the word a raw confession. “I can feel parts of her slipping. I forgot her middle name earlier. I used to know it without thinking.” The thought was a sharp pang, like a phantom limb ache. His mind was a sieve, and Willow was the water, draining away with every passing second.

“Do you think that means you’re next?” Paige asked softly, her voice low. “Like you’ll forget her too?”

Ezra did not answer. He could not. The thought was too heavy, and it was pressing down on his chest. If he forgot her… would that mean she had never existed at all? The real horror was not just her disappearance. It was the slow, creeping doubt gnawing at the edges of his mind. What if he was not losing her, but he was losing himself? If she vanished from his memory completely, would he just be a hollowed-out version of who he used to be, living a lie that felt like the truth?

Paige kept writing, her pen moving with a quiet urgency. “So maybe rule two is: if someone remembers, then the memories degrade.”

Ezra nodded slowly, a grim confirmation. “Yeah. Not all at once. It’s like… rot. It starts at the edges and works its way in.” He thought of the feeling of her hand in his, once so vivid, now only a vague warmth. The sound of her laugh, once so distinct, now just a general echo of mirth.

She wrote: Memory degrades over time. Starts with details, not emotions. She tapped the pen against the paper. Her gaze was fixed on the list. “Okay. What about physical stuff? The bracelet in the photo is still there.”

Ezra turned his phone screen towards her again. “Look closer.”

Paige leaned in, her eyes narrowing. The charm bracelet shimmered faintly, still visible, but the colours had dulled, as if it was being bleached by an unseen force. The silver looked greyish. The little cloud charm was not quite a cloud anymore. It was more like a smudge of light, a ghostly impression. “It’s fading,” she said quietly.

“I think maybe objects fade slower,” Ezra said, his voice flat. “Photos, maybe stuff she touched a lot. But eventually…”

“They vanish too.”

He nodded. “She gave me a keyring once. A little red fox. I had it on my bag for months. This morning it was just… gone.”

Paige frowned. “You sure it didn’t fall off?”

“I checked. The clip was still there. Just the charm was missing. Like it was unhooked from reality.” The phrase felt absurd, yet perfectly accurate. The physical world was unravelling around him, piece by agonizing piece. It was a subtle, insidious attack, leaving him with fragments of proof that no one else could see, that even he could barely hold onto.

She added: Objects degrade, but slower than memory. Physical anchors.

They sat in silence for a moment, the list between them growing more unsettling with each new detail. The overhead lights flickered slightly, casting strange, jittery shadows across the tabletop, as if time itself was stuttering. The comforting hum of the coffee shop had shifted. Conversations blurred into a low drone, and the clatter of cups felt too sharp, too distant. It was like they were the only two people still anchored in the present while everything else unravelled into something warped and unfamiliar.

“What about digital stuff?” Paige asked, breaking the spell. “You said you searched for her.”

“Everything was gone. Photos, messages, tags, mentions. There’s nothing. You know how they say the internet is forever and that nothing is ever really deleted? It’s not like she was deleted, because then there should be something somewhere, but it’s as if she was never there to begin with.” He felt a surge of frustration, hot and bitter. The sheer impossibility of it was maddening.

She wrote: Digital records overwritten as if never created.

Ezra leaned back, rubbing his eyes, a dull ache was throbbing behind them. “It’s like the universe just… edited her out. Seamless. Like she never fit the final draft.”

“Except she did. You’re proof of that.”

“Barely,” he said, the word raw. “And even I’m not stable. What happens when I forget entirely? Does she vanish completely, leaving no trace, and no possibility of ever being remembered again?” The question hung in the air, heavy and terrifying. It was the ultimate deletion, a death beyond comprehension.

Paige met his eyes, a fierce determination hardening her gaze. “Not if we figure out how it works, and how to stop it.”

He nodded. His hope, tenuous as it was, clung to her unwavering conviction.

Paige tapped her pen against her lower lip, thinking deeply. “Okay, here’s another one. You said people react weirdly when you mention her?”

“Yeah. Jamie thought I meant Melanie. My parents acted like I was delusional, like I was fabricating an entire person out of thin air.” The dismissal was almost as painful as the loss itself.

“So… maybe rule five is that the brain fills in the gap. It doesn’t just leave a blank, it patches over it, creating a new, false reality for everyone else.”

Ezra’s stomach turned, a cold, unpleasant sensation. “Like a corrupted file being replaced with placeholder text, something that makes sense but is fundamentally untrue.”

“Exactly.” Paige wrote: Gaps are filled by false memories or substitutions.

Another moment of silence stretched between them, broken only by the hiss of the espresso machine and the clatter of a spoon against a ceramic cup.

“And me?” Paige asked softly, her gaze steady. “Where do I fit in?”

Ezra looked at her, truly seeing her for the first time that day, a beacon of possibility in his deepening nightmare. “You’re the only other person who’s even come close to remembering. Everyone else just… doesn’t know the name. You recognized it, even if you couldn’t place it.”

“Why me?” she pressed.

“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “Maybe we were all supposed to forget, but something didn’t take with you… or me. A cosmic error, a malfunction in the re-write.”

She flipped the notebook around so he could see what she had written, her precise handwriting a stark contrast to the chaotic nature of their predicament. Six lines, chillingly concise:

Total erasure of individual from human memory.

Memory degrades over time. Starts with details, not emotions.

Objects degrade slower. Physical anchors may delay erasure.

Digital records overwritten as if never created.

Gaps are filled by false memories or substitutions.

(Unknown variable): Selective retention. Some individuals resist erasure.

They stared at the page in silence, the truth of it sinking in, colder and heavier than any dread Ezra had ever felt before.

“It’s not just forgetting,” Ezra said finally, his voice barely a whisper. “Our memories, and the world’s, are being rewritten. It feels like a violation, an invasion of our minds.

Paige nodded, then added one final, chilling note beneath the others, her pen pressing firmly: If forgetting is contagious… can remembering be, too?

As Ezra stared at the words, he had a desperate, wild idea. “We should test it,” he said, the thought electrifying him. “See if we can make someone else remember her.”

“And if we can’t?” Paige asked, her voice cautious.

Ezra’s voice was steady, infused with a newfound determination. “Then I’m the last person who remembers her, and you’re the only one who believes me. That has to be enough to keep trying.”

CONTINUE READING