I sat there on the curb, my body curled tightly against the cold stone.
The posture was so familiar—exactly like that late night when it all began. I remembered the moment Daniel had thrown me and my suitcase out of the house; Luna had tried to hand me a hundred-dollar bill, but I had clenched my fists until they were white, refusing her charity.
But now, that suitcase appeared silently by my side.
It emerged out of thin air, as if it had always been growing in the shadows, only choosing to manifest now. I remembered clearly that when I was forced to leave that house later on, I hadn't taken this suitcase with me at all.
I crouched down with trembling hands and snapped open the latches. The suitcase slid open, releasing a draft of stale, cold air. It was filled with the remnants that proved I had once lived: a photocopy of my ID, a student card, even a few letters I had never sent. All the handwriting seemed to writhe uneasily under the streetlights.
A pair of exquisite high heels stopped in front of the suitcase.
Luna looked down at me, her expression tender, almost merciful. Her long shadow stretched across the asphalt, while beneath my feet lay only a jarring blankness.
"I only completed a memory substitution," she whispered. "I didn't kill you. I simply lived as you inside everyone's mind."
As if taking inventory of her trophies, she murmured, "Your parents, your lover, your past... everything is mine now."
I lunged upward, my fingertips fueled by a desperate hatred as I clawed for her throat. But my body passed straight through her. I felt as though I were passing through a layer of freezing mist; I stumbled and hit the ground, my hands grasping nothing but the cold midnight dust.
Luna didn't even flinch. She leaned down gracefully and pried open my stiff palms, forcing several thin bills into them.
It was exactly one hundred dollars.
"Once you first accept my money, the rules are established. A contract exists between us." She gazed at me calmly, a chilling light flickering in the depths of her eyes.
She stood straight and looked down at me from above.
"This money is yours. You still have a chance to start over. Go now—hunt your readers."
She leaned in slightly, her voice hollow as if coming from another dimension. "Existence, after all, has always begun with being noticed. Go... do as I once did."
With that, she turned and dissolved into the mottled shadows of the streetlamps.
I sat back down on the curb and took out my own phone—the one with the shattered screen. The web of cracks across the glass looked like a giant spiderweb, ensnaring the last flickering remnants of my consciousness.
I logged onto the fiction platform and opened a blank document.
It was blindingly white. White like a shroud laid over the face of a corpse.
The cursor for creating a new story blinked steadily in the center of the screen. Blinked. Like a dying heart, emitting a cold, stable, yet maddening pulse in the void.
I stared at it for a long time, feeling my fingertips grow ice-cold.
Finally, I reached out my hand and slowly typed out a single line:
Don't Read Short Stories at Night.
THE END