An Eye Cracks Open
The hotel was modest. Not run-down, not opulent. A place made for passing through.
He gave a name. Not his. It didn’t matter. The clerk didn’t flinch. She handed him a keycard with a practiced smile, the kind you wear when the world feels artificial. He wondered if she could see it too.
The room wasn’t silent. The sound of invisible machinery ticked within. The mini fridge hummed. The buzz of a television not quite off. The ever-present rumble of a bathroom fan.
He paused—breathing in the place he'd call home for the week. The faint scent of industrial bleach and forgotten cigarettes emanated from the curtains.
He dropped the phone on the dresser. Whatever it had to say could wait.
He stepped into the shower.
Warm water. Steam. The soft white hiss of pressure and heat.
There, surrounded by tile and fog, the edges began to fray.
Not suddenly. Not with drama. Just... the subtle recognition that something was watching. Or perhaps more accurately, something was waiting to be seen.
“You are not alone. And you never were.”
It wasn’t a voice.
It was just meaning without language—immediate and unspoken, like standing inside someone else’s moment of realization.
His breath caught. His fingers touched the tile. The world tilted.
The water felt too warm. Or not warm at all. His vision blurred—not from soap, but from distance. He was elsewhere. Not out of his body, but beyond its anchoring. A lattice of thoughts, sharp and recursive, looped through his spine.
Something was unfolding.
He saw himself in third person. In first. In none. He saw a room made of mirrors and symbols. He saw the symbol of the Eye—not drawn, but flickering at the edge of recall.
And it stared back.
“You’ve arrived late,” a voice said. His own? A memory? A god? “But not too late.”
The light pulsed. The geometry twisted. Then—
He blinked.
Water hit his eyes. The warmth was real again. The tile was real. His hands were shaking.
The ritual was over. He stepped out, dripping, trembling, calm.
Something had been revealed. And something had begun.
