The rain hadn't stopped for two days.
Senna Calix liked it that way. Storms covered her steps. They swallowed sound. They gave her an excuse not to move, not to leave, not to explain anything to anyone not even herself.
She sat cross-legged in the corner of the cabin, pages spread out in a half-moon arc around her. Dozens of them. Unnumbered. Untitled. Uncontrolled. Her ink bled at the edges from where the paper had gotten damp.
One mistake, she thought. Just one.
She never should've sent the manuscript.
But part of her wanted someone to see. To notice. To understand that what she'd written wasn't a story, it was a breadcrumb trail. A map. A warning. Maybe a confession.
And now, someone had answered her.
She glanced at the photo on the floor. A copy of the image that had arrived in the envelope. Her words, not just quoted, used. Her phrase, mirrored. Mocked.
Same alley. Same hesitation. Different victim.
She'd written that line without thinking, barely conscious of her own hand. Now she couldn't stop thinking about it. Not because it had come true but because someone else had known it would.
She stood abruptly.
The cabin felt smaller lately. Every wall too close. Every window a target. She walked to the kitchen, poured herself a glass of water with shaking hands, then dumped it out without drinking.
Noise crackled outside branches slapping the cabin's side. Wind screamed through the trees like something alive. She didn't flinch. She was used to sounds that tried to frighten her.
She only feared the quiet ones now.
That night, she tried to sleep. Failed.
Instead, she returned to her journal. A different one this time, black cover, thick paper. Not for fiction. This one was real.
She flipped to a blank page and began to write, slow and deliberate.
"They've found the first body."
She paused.
"I didn't want this."
The next sentence hurt to write.
"But I think he's back."
Her hand trembled. She stopped, capped the pen.
She hadn't said his name in years. The man she based the killer on. The man who may have never existed… or may never have stopped existing. Sometimes she wondered if he was even real or just the part of her mind that had split under the weight of memory.
But someone had picked up the thread.
And now the story had started again.
At dawn, she ventured outside. The sky was a dull bruise, gray and violet, with the sun still hiding.
She crossed the clearing behind her cabin and reached the treeline.
Buried beneath a fallen log was a sealed metal box. Old. Rusted. She dug it out with her hands, dirt packing beneath her nails. It hadn't been opened in five years.
Inside.....clippings.
Police reports. Photos. Her own notes. The ones she'd sworn to forget.
She sifted through them, setting aside three:
1. An article about an unsolved series of murders labeled The Narrator Killings.
2. A photo of a man's back, face turned from the camera. Captioned only: "E."
3. A transcript from one of her old therapy sessions with Marianne. The line circled: "He only stops when I stop writing."
Senna closed the box.
It wasn't over. It never had been.
Back inside, she opened her newest notebook.
She began again.
Chapter One.
Not fiction this time.
Not a novel.
A record.
A confession.
If someone was writing back…
Then she would write louder.
She would finish what she started.