The door shut behind him without a sound.
Theo turned instinctively, but there was no knob, no seam—just seamless wall. Blank. Featureless. Trapping. The room curved inward like a padded womb, suffocating in its softness. No windows. No corners. No clocks.
Just silence.
But not the kind that soothed. This was the silence of breath held too long. The silence after a punchline that never lands. The silence that Eden had known all too well.
At the center of the room sat a single desk.
A chair.
A screen embedded in the wall.
A keyboard, too clean, almost surgical, waited under sterile white light. Everything gleamed with the kind of purity that accused. There was no dust here. No decay.
Only judgment.
Theo approached cautiously, each step muffled by the floor's padded give. His reflection blinked faintly on the black monitor, ghostlike.
Then the looping began.
The screen flickered to life without touch or signal.
Headlines appeared in a slow, deliberate scroll.
"Too Broken for Comedy: The Unraveling of Eden Gray."
"Tragedy or Talentless?"
"Mental Meltdowns and Microphones: A Comedian's Final Days."
His breath caught in his throat.
They were his words. Every headline. Every skewed angle. Every viral hit.
He took a step back. The screen followed. No matter where he moved, the glowing text stayed with him, persistent and close, like breath on his neck. The walls rippled slightly, responding not to motion but to heartbeat.
Then came the voices.
From every wall, faceless narrators began reading his articles aloud. The tone was mocking, warped, distorted just enough to sound unfamiliar—yet it was still undeniably him.
His words.
His voice.
Twisted.
He turned in a slow circle, trapped in a panorama of his own cruelty. Each headline bled into the next. The cadence grew faster. Harsher. The voices overlapping until they became one loud, judgmental echo.
"She was unwell. It's not cruelty to say so—it's honesty."
"Comedians crack eventually. We just caught it on tape."
"Maybe she wasn't funny. Maybe she was just sad."
The lights dimmed until only the glow of the monitors remained. The keyboard pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat. A cursor blinked on the center screen—waiting. Asking.
Demanding.
Theo hesitated. His hands hovered above the keys, trembling.
Then the screen glitched.
And Eden appeared.
But not the version he remembered in the final spotlight.
This was a fractured Eden—rocking, sobbing, curled in on herself like she was trying to disappear into her own skin. Makeup smudged. Hair matted. Her clothes hung on her like a costume she couldn't take off. Her stage persona rotting on her bones.
Above her, a headline blinked like a neon sign:
"Tragedy or Talentless?"
Each repetition etched itself across her arms, her chest, her face—text seared into flesh like branding. She didn't cry out. She just wept.
Theo reached forward.
"Stop."
His voice barely registered—soft, trembling, swallowed by the room.
The screen didn't care.
"You said you were telling the truth," Eden whispered. Her mouth didn't move. The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. Warped. Distant. Like she was speaking underwater—or from beneath a grave.
"But you were telling your truth. Not mine."
He stumbled back. The chair scraped loudly against the floor.
His shadow, however, did not move.
It stayed seated.
Then… it twitched.
Laughed.
The sound was thick. Wet. Guttural. Theo turned.
His shadow was changing—limbs stretching unnaturally, back arching at the wrong angles. Its mouth elongated into a snout. Its hands warped into claws.
It grinned at him with too many teeth.
A hyena.
Not quite beast. Not quite human.
It laughed again—his laugh. Gleeful. Cruel. Empty.
The hyena slammed its paw on the desk. The keyboard cracked. The lights flickered.
"This'll go viral."
"People love a fall."
"You're helping her by exposing her. Really—it's a favor."
"She's already gone. Might as well use it."
The words spilled from the creature's mouth—his voice cut into pieces and fed back through razors.
Theo covered his ears.
But the screens kept playing.
A clip now.
The moment he hit "publish." His finger, frozen mid-click. His face washed in blue monitor light. His lips half-curved in a grin that didn't reach his eyes.
The hyena mimicked him. Raised a paw. Slammed it down like a mouse click.
And howled.
Eden screamed.
The screen cracked.
Then shattered.
She spilled out of it like smoke.
And stood before him.
Life-size.
Real.
Breathing.
But broken.
"Why did you get to walk away?" she asked.
Theo sank to his knees.
"I didn't know it would be the last thing people read before she—before you—"
"You did know," she said.
"You chose the headline."
She circled him slowly now. Ink bloomed with each step she took, staining the padded floor in her wake like footprints of memory.
"I was drowning," she said. "I reached out. I asked for help."
He looked up, voice cracking. "I thought… if I just showed people how bad it was, someone would step in. Someone better than me. Someone who could help."
She knelt beside him.
"And no one did."
"Because they thought it was a joke."
He nodded, the words too heavy for his throat.
Behind him, the hyena whimpered.
It began to break apart, flaking into ash—until it was gone.
Only his true shadow remained.
Eden placed her hand on his cheek.
"I don't want revenge, Theo."
"I just wanted to be seen."
Her touch lingered—warm, sad, human.
"Do you see me now?"
His voice broke into a whisper.
"Yes."
The room exhaled.
One of the screens blinked out.
Then another.
Silence returned—but this time, it felt softer.
He stood, approached the desk, and sat once more.
The cursor blinked.
He typed:
"She was never the tragedy. The tragedy was ours. We called it comedy to feel better about what we did."
He hit enter.
The light above flickered once.
Then steadied.
Eden smiled.
Soft. Tired.
But peaceful.
"That's closer," she said.
And then she walked toward the last screen. Not glitching. Not ghostlike. Just Eden, stepping forward—into the light like it was a curtain.
She disappeared.
The screen cracked.
Then shattered.
The room dissolved with it—walls melting into white mist.
And Theo…
Woke up.
He gasped, dirt in his throat, the taste of ink clinging to his tongue. His hands gripped soft grass.
The field.
Again.
Empty. Whole.
Grayfall was gone.
But something remained.
In his pocket—the final punchline.
Still folded.
Still silent.
But no longer forgotten.