The world breaks around me like a sheet of thin glass, shattering into a storm of sound and blinding white shards. I stumble into the rupture, arms reaching for anything steady—but there is nothing steady here. Nothing solid. The ground beneath me melts, reforms, tilts sideways, then disappears entirely.
I fall.
Through darkness.
Through light.
Through a tunnel with no gravity and too many directions.
For a moment, I think this is death.
Not the Boundary Land's version of death.
Not the ghost world's slow decay.
But real death—pure, clean absence.
But then the darkness thickens under me, turning from fog to tar to something like stone. My feet hit a surface, and my knees buckle. I collapse onto my hands, gasping as the air coughs into existence around me.
The ground is cold.
Hard.
Textured like concrete.
The lights flicker overhead—long, humming tubes of white fluorescence, clicking into life one by one in a slow chain that stretches forward into a long, straight hallway.
A hallway I know.
My chest tightens.
"No…" I whisper. "Not here."
But I am here.
The Corridor of Memories.
It looks like the hospital… but younger. Cleaner. The version from my first job twelve years ago. The version before the night shifts broke my spirit, before losing a baby broke my heart, before the Boundary Land broke my life.
I push myself up, legs trembling.
The hallway is unnaturally long. Longer than any real hospital corridor could be. It stretches so far into the distance that the lights at the far end shrink to pinpoints.
Something hums beneath the floor.
Not machinery.
Not electricity.
Something alive.
I brace a hand on the wall, which feels warm. Too warm. When I pull my hand away, a pale imprint of my palm stays behind, glowing softly before fading.
This hallway is made of memory.
And it is awake.
A static crackle sizzles behind me.
I freeze.
A monitor—one of the old rolling vitals monitors we no longer use—appears beside me with a sudden mechanical flicker. Its screen lights up with green waveforms.
Heart rate: 156 bpm.
Blood pressure: 168/104.
My vitals.
The numbers distort, glitching, then settle back into high readings.
"Yeah," I whisper shakily. "No surprise."
Then a new line appears, typed letter by letter across the monitor:
YOU'RE NOT ALONE.
I jump back. My pulse spikes even higher.
The monitor wheels squeak as it rolls slowly forward into the corridor—as if inviting me to follow.
A test.
A trap.
A memory.
Probably all three.
I hesitate only a second. Then I move.
I have no choice.
My daughter is somewhere beyond this corridor.
Beyond whatever test the Boundary realm thinks I must survive.
The lights flicker as I step deeper into the hall, and the air shifts. A faint scent rises around me—one I haven't smelled in years.
Antiseptic.
Wet metal.
And baby powder.
My throat closes.
"No," I whisper, shaking my head. "Not this. Please—not this."
The corridor responds.
A door materializes on my left.
Room 214.
The Labor Suite.
My Labor Suite.
The place where my child was born.
But not the daughter I'm searching for now.
The first one.
My knees weaken as my hand lifts on its own, trembling uncontrollably. My fingertips touch the handle, cold as a morgue drawer.
A voice whispers behind my ear.
"Go ahead."
I spin, heart hammering, but no one is there.
Of course he's not.
This place doesn't need him physically present.
It knows what to show me.
I push the door open.
The fluorescent lights hum to life, revealing the room exactly as it was that night—the sheets folded back, the monitors beeping steadily, the cot beside the bed still empty.
I step inside.
My heartbeat is loud in my ears, drowning the soft rhythm of the monitor.
And then I see her.
The nurse.
Not a ghost.
Not a distorted creature.
Just the nurse I had that night—Marina—sitting calmly in the chair by the sink, hands folded in her lap. Her face is shadowed, but I know her.
"Marina?" My voice cracks.
She doesn't answer.
She just lifts her head slowly.
And instead of eyes…
Her eye sockets are filled with static.
White noise.
Like a TV screen when the channel is dead.
My lungs seize. I stumble back, hitting the edge of the bed.
"Don't do this," I breathe. "Please don't show me this memory."
Her head tilts.
"You lost her."
My legs nearly give out.
"Stop."
"You failed."
"Please—"
"You killed your own daughter."
The words hit like a knife to my chest.
"I didn't—she—she was already—" My voice breaks into choking sobs.
The monitor in the corner reacts violently—flatlining, beeping, warping, rewriting the word:
MURDER.
"No." The word tears out of my throat. "NO—NO—I DIDN'T—"
But the static nurse rises slowly from her chair, limb by limb unfolding like something not meant to move.
She limps forward, each step echoing.
"You never deserved the child you have now."
My breath stops entirely.
My living daughter.
My girl.
My reason to keep breathing.
"I DO DESERVE HER!" I scream.
But the nurse lunges.
Her static-filled eye sockets emit a scream—not a human scream, but the sound of a thousand broken memories shrieking at once.
I grab the IV pole beside the bed and swing it hard.
It passes through her like smoke.
She reforms instantly—now inches from my face.
Her voice is a whisper made of razors:
"You won't find her."
Something inside me snaps.
I don't run.
I don't hide.
I grab the cot—the empty cot where my first baby should have slept—and hurl it through the static nurse's form.
The cot dissolves.
The nurse dissolves.
The room dissolves.
And suddenly I am back in the hallway, collapsing to my knees as tears stream down my face.
The corridor hums gently, as if satisfied.
"Is that what you wanted?" I choke into the floor. "For me to break? For me to sob until I can't breathe? For me to relive every trauma you think defines me?"
The corridor flickers.
Then shifts.
Ahead of me, dozens—no, hundreds—of doors appear on either side of the hallway. Each one labeled with a date. A moment. A memory.
My mother dying.
My father's abandonment.
My wedding to the ghost husband.
My first beating.
My first betrayal.
The gender reveal.
The cut.
The silent birth.
The night I ran.
The night he found me.
All my memories.
Laid out like a museum.
My museum of pain.
And at the far end—
Faint, small, flickering—
A silhouette of a child.
My daughter.
My living, breathing daughter.
"Baby…" My voice breaks. "I'm coming."
I step forward.
The corridor reacts instantly.
The first door on my right bursts open—my wedding night with the ghost husband—and his skeletal hand reaches out, grabbing for me.
I jerk back, slamming the door shut.
But another door opens—my childhood home, with shadows whispering from the corners.
Then another—my stalker lurking behind my first apartment window.
More doors fling open, memories storming the hall like predators released from cages.
"I won't stop!" I shout, pushing forward.
A shadow grabs my ankle.
I kick it away.
A hand grabs my hair.
I rip free.
Every fear I have ever known pours into the hallway—walking, crawling, dragging themselves from their doors.
But I keep going.
Because she is at the end of this corridor.
My daughter.
My miracle.
My anchor.
And the Corridor of Memories can throw every nightmare I've ever lived at me—
I will burn through all of them.
For her.
The hallway narrows, doors slamming shut behind me.
The silhouette ahead grows clearer—small hands, small feet, shaking shoulders.
She's crying.
"Mama!!"
My heart fractures and reforms at the same time.
"I'M HERE!" I scream. "DON'T MOVE—I'M HERE—BABY, I'M COMING—"
But then—
Just as I reach her—
A new door materializes between us, massive and black, swallowing her tiny form behind it.
I slam my hands against it.
"MAMA!! HELP ME!"
I shove.
Kick.
Rip at the doorframe.
The black surface pulses with heat.
Then words carve themselves across it, glowing red-hot like molten metal:
THE ROOM OF REGRET
My stomach drops.
The next test.
The next memory.
The one I tried hardest to bury.
"No…" I whisper, forehead pressing to the door. "Not that. Please—anything but that—"
But the lock clicks.
The door slowly begins to open.
And the smell hits me.
Hospitals.
Rot.
Baby powder.
Blood.
The memory I feared most.
The one I never wanted to face again.
The dead baby.
My dead baby.
I step inside.
The door slams behind me.
And I'm trapped again.
--