Echoes of the Forgotten

Echoes of the Forgotten


I walked into a dimly lit room, the flicker of an old '90s PC casting eerie shadows. Sitting down, I faced a blank white screen, my fingers tapping keys with growing intensity. But nothing appeared. No words, no progress—just the blankness staring back at me.

Before I knew it, I was no longer at the desk. I was floating in a pool of white, murky water, clutching onto a raft—no, a table—trying to stay afloat. The water tasted salty, but it was strange. It felt bottomless and shallow at the same time, as if I couldn’t drown, yet the sensation of drowning clung to me.

“Hello, neighbor,” a voice called out. A man swam over and grabbed the table beside me, bobbing up and down like I was. “How did you get here?”

“I have no idea,” I replied, puzzled. “I was writing, then… I don’t know. Maybe I fell asleep.”

“Well, I’m always daydreaming,” the man said. “But this is intense! You seem real—like, really real.”

“I am real. Maybe you’re the figment here!”

He chuckled. “A clever one, I see. In any case, we need to get out of this ocean of nothing.”

Suddenly, another man surfaced and latched onto our table. “What the hell is going on?” he shouted, panic in his voice. “We’re in a dream!” the second man explained.

“A dream?” the newcomer said, incredulous. “I got news for you, buddy—I think we’re dead. What’s the last thing you remember?”

Before I could respond, the water around us began to churn, the murk turning darker, waves crashing in from all directions. Papers started raining from the sky, turning the table beneath us into a mahogany desk. The second man spoke up.

“I was working on a painting, but my mind kept wandering,” he said. “Now look at this mess.”

“I was arguing with my wife,” the third man said grimly. “Then I got into a car accident. A bright light, screaming… and now I’m here.”

While we talked, the water grew angrier, and something was coming with the waves—books, massive books tumbling through the storm. “We need to swim!” someone shouted, and we kicked frantically, trying to escape the onslaught of books crashing toward us. But no matter how fast we swam, the ocean stretched endlessly, its inky blackness swallowing us.

Just when it seemed we would be crushed by the torrent of knowledge bearing down on us, we washed up on a strange shore—a small beach town, familiar but not quite right. The sky was gray, the air thick with unreality. As we began walking, we saw a woman holding a leash—but there was no dog, just the leash suspended in midair. Her face was smeared, as though reality couldn’t quite make up its mind about her features.

“Where are we?” the first man asked.

“We’re in town, silly,” she replied sweetly, pointing to a large public clock. The hands were blurred, moving erratically in every direction, making time itself unreadable. The second man suddenly stopped, chuckling to himself.

“We’re in one of my paintings,” he said. “An unfinished one.”

“Great. What are we supposed to do with that?” the third man snapped.

“It’s better than drowning in our friend’s anxiety-ridden dream,” the second man quipped.

“Enough,” I said. “Let’s stop blaming each other for this mess. We need to find a way out.”

“Follow me,” the artist declared. “After all, I painted this place.”

We followed, knowing full well we were trapped in a creation of our own making, waiting for the way out to reveal itself—if it ever would.
As we walked deeper into the town, strange details started to emerge. The buildings warped and twisted as if the architecture had forgotten its own design. Doors led to staircases that spiraled into the sky, and windows blinked like eyes watching our every move. We passed a street performer playing a violin with no strings, the haunting melody piercing through a fog that surrounded us.

We reached a park, and in the center stood a fountain. Water should’ve been flowing, but it wasn’t—it was frozen mid-motion, droplets suspended in the air, gleaming like glass. I reached out to touch one, but my hand passed right through, the droplet vanishing at my touch.

"Not everything in a dream can be held," the artist said softly.

“I think,” said the third man, his voice quieter now, “this isn’t about us getting out.”

We all turned to look at him. “What do you mean?” I asked.

He looked at the clock tower, its erratic hands still spinning without reason, then back at the fountain. “We keep thinking we’re trying to escape this place, but maybe that’s the wrong question. Maybe we aren’t meant to leave.”

The artist tilted his head, considering. “Maybe the question isn’t about escape at all.”

We continued walking through the town, silent but with the unspoken tension of knowing we were trespassers in our own minds. The town seemed to be waiting too. The houses leaned inward, watching, as if to whisper something we were too deaf to hear. At times, I thought I saw figures moving in the windows—shadowy outlines of people I almost recognized but couldn’t name. Each figure seemed to dissolve as soon as I focused on them, like fading memories.

The third man, the one who had spoken of the accident, slowed, his eyes tracing something in the fog. “This place,” he muttered, “looks like home.”

I glanced at him, his expression unreadable. He veered off the path, down a narrow alley between two crumbling houses. The street ahead opened up to what looked like a suburban neighborhood

“This is where I lived,” the third man whispered, his voice more distant now. “But it’s not right. None of it is right.”

He walked toward one of the houses, his pace quickening. We followed at a distance, unsure if we should intervene. The door of the house was ajar, creaking as it swung in the wind. The third man stepped inside. I saw a flicker of light through the window—brief, like a camera flash.

When we caught up, we stood at the doorway, hesitating. Inside, we found him standing in the living room, staring at an empty armchair. The room was too clean. Sterile. Every object placed with too much precision, like a model home no one had ever lived in.

“This is my house,” he said quietly, though his voice cracked on the word "house." He looked at us, eyes wide. “But she’s not here.”

“Who?” I asked, stepping cautiously into the room.

“My wife,” he whispered. His gaze fixed on the armchair, then the fireplace, then back to us. “This is where we argued. I stormed out… then the car… but now I’m back.” He turned toward the kitchen, and there she was—or a version of her.

A figure was standing by the sink, but she wasn’t moving. Her hands were washing the same plate over and over, but there was no water, no sound—just the monotonous motion. Her features were blurred, as if the edges of her existence were fraying.

I wanted to speak, to pull him away, but the house shifted. The walls rippled like a reflection on water, the ceiling stretched, bending over us. The house wasn’t collapsing—it was unraveling. The room began to warp, as if the entire place was nothing more than a memory being erased. The figure by the sink dissolved, her motions vanishing into thin air.

The third man stood there, watching as everything he recognized melted away. He didn’t move. He didn’t speak again. And then, as the house finished its slow descent into nothingness, so did he. One moment he was standing there, the next he was gone.

The second man—the artist—stood beside me, his eyes scanning the empty space where the house had been. There was no comment, no explanation. Just silence, broken only by the distant ticking of a clock that wasn’t there.

The fog rolled in again, swallowing the street, and soon we were back in the gray town, the third man’s absence a hollow in the air. Before us lay a dirt path with a prairie of endless grass. A pristine sky with angelic clouds seemed to stretch out for eternity. The sun seemed to kiss my cheeks inviting me along each step drawing me towards an embrace of comfort I so longed for. We kept walking in silence, without direction, without any real hope of understanding where we were or what had happened.

I knew the road before us wasn’t an exit, but a continuation of the same dream I had always been living all along.