An Autofiction by Someone

<p>Years have passed. The distinct sightings, the uncanny glitches—they've mostly faded into a baseline stillness. She reflects on the lifelong pattern, accepting the ambiguity. But just as a strange calm settles in...

<p>The distinct sightings have mostly stopped. Now, it's different. A change in the texture of the day. A feeling that precedes small disruptions. Not seeing him clearly anymore is somehow more unsettling. She starts to...

<p>Years pass. She's navigating adulthood, commutes, new cities. Then, waiting for a train on a crowded platform, she sees him again. The tall figure. Unmistakable now. He's boarding a train heading somewhere completely...

<p>Years after that hazy childhood memory, she sees him again. Or someone like him. After a school assembly, amidst the noise and shuffling crowds, she spots a tall figure near an exit door. The familiarity is instant...

<p>She has a memory—or maybe just the feeling of one—from childhood. Playing outside near dusk. There was a figure standing nearby, tall and still. She doesn't remember his face, only the unsettling length of his...

<p>Nabeel walks the same floors every night. Checks the same doors. Notes the same humming lights. Routine is his job. But sometimes... he hears things. A footstep on an empty floor. An elevator arriving when no one...

<p>Adel arrives before the sun. He wipes down the tables, sweeps the floor, arranges the chairs just so. He finds things sometimes—a forgotten earring, a folded note, a name crossed out on a napkin. He doesn't read...

<p>Yasmine mostly blends into the background at the co-working space. But one day, a woman—someone she'd seen around, maybe named Diana?—stops and looks at her. Really looks. Then nods. Since then, Yasmine feels like...

<p>Rami was only there to check the sound system. He wasn't supposed to listen. But the speaker had a way of pausing... a way that made the silence feel louder than the words. Rami sat in the back, invisible, and...

<p>Lina sat across from Diana once. Just once. It was enough. Something Diana said—quietly, like an afterthought—lodged itself in Lina’s memory and never left. Since then, they’ve shared spaces but never exchanged...

<p>It was late. The apartment was still. And then—barely louder than a breath—Diana heard her name from the other room. Just once. She waited for a second call, a laugh, a reason. But it didn’t come. And somehow, that...

<p>In the middle of brushing her teeth, Diana catches her reflection doing something she doesn’t remember doing. It lasts less than a second. Maybe less than that. But what follows is an entire day of displacement, as...

<p>In the bottom of a storage drawer, Diana finds an object she doesn’t remember owning—labeled with her name in handwriting she can’t place. As she turns it over in her hands, she begins to question not just where it...

<p>Diana wakes up certain it’s Monday. But small details—unspoken glances, an unopened email, a cereal box that shouldn’t be there—make her wonder whose version of the day she’s living. Maybe it’s hers. Maybe it isn’t...

<p>Diana steps into a government building for a simple errand—at least, that’s what she tells herself. But between flickering fluorescent lights, worn-down furniture, and the smell of something faintly electric, she...