The House We Couldn't Leave

It started with a teacup.

White porcelain, chipped at the rim. A small crack that spidered down its side like a hairline fracture in a bone.

Aria had picked it up from the sideboard in the dining room just before breakfast. It had caught her eye not because of its design—plain, almost ugly—but because she remembered it breaking the day before.

She was sure of it.

Tara had knocked it over. It had shattered.

But here it was again. Intact. Sitting in the same place. Crack and all.

She stared at it for a full minute before walking away.

That was the first loop.

Or the first one she noticed.

After that, it came in pieces.

The way Sofi dropped her spoon at breakfast twice, and looked just as surprised both times.

The way Reya asked, "Have you seen my pencil?" three times in the same hour—each time like it was the first.

And Tara… Tara didn't speak much at all anymore. But sometimes Aria caught her blinking too slowly, like she was syncing to something none of them could see.

Aria had always been the one to keep lists.

On the first night in the house, she'd torn a page from a dusty old book and started logging the house's layout—each door, each hallway, each window. She'd drawn a crude map and updated it daily.

The map had stopped making sense a week ago.

Now, she kept track of time.

Not hours.

Not days.

Moments.

She marked them on the wall with a piece of blue chalk she'd found under the radiator.

Each tick was a repeat.

Each line, a sentence someone said again.

Each X, a feeling she'd had before.

The marks filled the back of her wardrobe.

Sometimes she woke to find them erased.

Sometimes they doubled overnight.

That morning, she found Reya in the east hallway, sketching on the floor with a torn-out page.

"Didn't you already draw this?" Aria asked.

Reya looked up, startled. "No. This is new."

Aria knelt beside her.

The sketch showed a room lined with mirrors. A black door. A girl.

Not Reya. Not Sofi. Not Tara.

Not Lina.

Someone else.

A name scribbled faintly in the margin: Naomi.

Aria's breath caught.

The word pulled at something in her chest.

Not a memory.

A hole.

She didn't ask who Naomi was.

She just nodded.

And left.

Because part of her didn't want to know.

Later that day, she sat in the nursery.

It was empty, but it felt full.

She touched the crib's edge.

The nameplate now read: "NO ONE."

Before that, it said "She's not here anymore."

Before that, Tara.

She remembered.

She knew it had changed.

She knew it wasn't supposed to.

But when she tried to write it down, her pencil snapped.

And when she fetched another—

The nameplate was blank.

She started testing the house again.

Small things.

She'd spin the hallway rug slightly out of place. Then wait.

The next day, it was straight again.

She turned a painting upside-down.

Reya stared at it the next morning and asked if it had always been like that.

She said yes.

Just to see what would happen.

At night, she watched the ceiling instead of sleeping.

The house creaked.

But not like old houses creak.

It creaked in patterns.

Three short.

Two long.

Then silence.

Then again.

She tapped it back.

Three short.

Two long.

Silence.

Three short.

But the reply didn't come.

The next time she saw the mirror in her room, something new had been placed in front of it.

A scrap of white fabric, torn and worn.

She picked it up carefully.

Embroidered into the corner in red thread: Naomi.

It hadn't been there the night before.

She turned to Reya's sketchbook on the table. The page had changed.

The mirror in the sketch now showed Aria's face.

And someone standing behind her.

Aria backed away from the mirror, her fingers tightening on the scrap of fabric.

She turned—and no one was there.

But the reflection lingered just a moment longer than it should have.

That night, she told Tara.

Whispered the truth while they sat on the cold floor of the music room, where no one else could hear.

"I think I'm next."

Tara didn't flinch.

"I know," she said.

"How?"

"Because I remember you disappearing. Once."

Aria stared at her. "What?"

"Just for a moment. A day. Maybe two. You weren't here. And no one noticed."

Aria shook her head. "That's not possible."

Tara just looked at her.

Her eyes weren't scared.

They were resigned.

"It is," she said. "This house gives you back. But it changes you first."

Aria didn't sleep.

She stayed up reading the chalk marks again.

And this time, she found one she hadn't written.

A phrase in shaky letters:

"I was Naomi once."

She touched the words with her fingers.

Then wiped them away.

And began a new column.

Labeled simply:

"If I disappear—"