short fiction · 2026-10-26

The Line That Repeats in Silence

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

Mara found it first on page three: "I am still here" in blue ballpoint, her handwriting but not her memory. Page seven, black rollerball. Page twelve, fountain pen, ink feathered into the fibers. By page forty she stopped counting. Seventeen times. Each fresh as breath on glass. The silence between appearances was the only space large enough to hold the repetition — not empty, but shaped like a held breath. She tried different notebooks. Different rooms. Woke at 3 AM to find the line waiting on the nightstand pad in pencil so light it might have been imagined. The last time, the notebook was blank. Forty pages of clean white. She ran her fingertips over each sheet, reading the ghost-ridges like braille, pressed deep by a hand she did not remember being. Then she picked up a pen and wrote it herself, one final time, and the silence answered.