The Forgotten Door

There was only one rule: don’t open the door.

.The rule wasn’t written. No one had told me. It was simply known, as though it had always been a part of me, as essential as breathing. Or perhaps, more essential—because I could no longer recall the feel of breath in my lungs.

The house was vast and endless, a labyrinth of shadowed halls and empty rooms. No windows. No sun. Just darkness that pressed against my skin like a living thing. The library was my only solace, its shelves stretching into infinity, filled with books that spoke of lives I’d never lived, of worlds I couldn’t touch. The stories were vivid, but hollow—echoes of something I was supposed to understand but couldn’t.

Only the rule made sense. Don’t open the door.

Then, the knocking began.

It was faint at first, like a whisper against wood, so soft I thought I’d imagined it. I ignored it, burying myself in the pages of the library. But it persisted, growing louder with each passing hour, each day, until it became a hammering that reverberated through the walls, shaking the very air.

“Let me in,” a voice said.

I froze. The voice was soft, almost gentle, but it wasn’t mine.

“Who’s there?” I asked, my voice a crack in the silence.

“You know me,” it replied.

I didn’t. I couldn’t. Yet, deep inside, something stirred—a flicker of recognition, like the memory of a dream.

“You can’t come in,” I said, the rule echoing in my mind like a chant.

“But I already have,” the voice whispered.

The knocking stopped.

The silence that followed was worse. The house seemed heavier, darker, as though the shadows themselves had thickened. I tried to distract myself with the books, but the words twisted on the page, their meanings slipping through my fingers.

The whispers started that night.

They came from the walls, from the floor, from the air itself. They spoke of sins I couldn’t remember, of truths I didn’t want to face. They called me a liar, a coward, a monster.

By the third day, the door began to open on its own.

It creaked, slowly, agonizingly, revealing a figure standing in the threshold. It was me—or something that wore my face. Its features were twisted, stretched into a grotesque parody of my own. Its eyes burned with a hunger that made my stomach churn.

“I told you to let me in,” it said, stepping into the room.

I stumbled back, my legs trembling. “What are you?”

The thing smiled, a jagged, terrible grin. “I’m the part of you you tried to lock away. The part you wanted to forget.”

“No,” I whispered, shaking my head. “That’s not true.”

It advanced, its voice a low, venomous growl. “You built this prison for yourself. You locked me behind that door because you couldn’t face what you did. But the truth always finds a way.”

The library crumbled around us, the books dissolving into ash. The walls closed in, suffocating, as the thing reached for me.

“You thought the rule would save you,” it said, its voice almost tender now. “But the rule wasn’t for you. It was for them.”

Its hands closed around my throat, and as the darkness swallowed me, I remembered.

I remembered the blood. The screams. The hunger.

I remembered why I was locked away.

And I remembered that now, I was free.