10/09/25

I was waiting for Mum. The school was empty by then, footsteps and laughter from the day fading into silence. I sat on the curb with my bag beside me, staring at the car park stretched out like an empty stage. The lamps hummed overhead, casting pale yellow circles that looked more like bruises than light, the kind that linger after a punch. The air pressed close around me, thicker than it should have been. Even the sound of my own breathing felt wrong, like it belonged to someone else. A scrap of paper drifted across the lot, twisting in the wind before stopping dead at my feet. I bent to look at it, but the words had been rubbed away, as though the page itself didn’t want to be read. Then I saw him. 

At first, just a figure at the far end of the lot. He stood where the lamps didn’t quite reach, where the dark pressed hardest. His shape looked almost normal, like someone else waiting to be picked up, but the longer I stared the stranger it seemed. His outline quivered. The edges of his body weren’t fixed, more like a sketch smudged by careless fingers. My chest tightened. He didn’t move, but I knew he was waiting. For me. 

I told myself it was nothing. Just the tiredness of the day, or a shadow playing tricks. But my head wouldn’t let it go. Lately my thoughts have been piling up like books in a library. Not neat stacks, but the kind of mess you’d shove in a corner until something gave. And libraries are just cemeteries pretending to be useful. Every shelf is a row of gravestones. Every title is a memory of something gone. And if a library is a cemetery, then who digs the graves? The figure wavered, and for a second I thought I saw a face. Pale, thin, hollow-eyed. 

Father. 

The word fell from my mouth before I could stop it. My chest burned. But it couldn’t be. My father was dead. I was there when the coffin shut, when the earth swallowed him. Yet here he stood, just close enough to believe, just far enough to doubt. I pushed myself to my feet, legs dragging like they were full of wet sand. My thoughts tangled in knots. Maybe it was him. Maybe it was what grief does when it finds you alone. I remembered his voice calling me in from the backyard, calm and steady, but now it sounded twisted, like metal scraping. I stepped forward. The car park tilted. The lamps bent like they were melting, dripping their light down onto the ground. Cars sagged into the asphalt, their wheels sinking, their doors soft as wax. My footsteps echoed wrong, like claps in an empty hall. Too loud. Too hollow. Too something I couldn’t name. 

The figure grew clearer, though he hadn’t moved at all. His face was pale, marble-still. His lips shifted like he was speaking, but no sound came. Instead, the noise slipped into my skull, vibrating like it had always been there, waiting for me to notice. I ran. And my mind broke open. The library I carried inside me toppled. Shelves fell. Books split. Pages scattered like ash. Memories opened without my permission, spilling nonsense. I wasn’t sure if I was chasing him, or if he was leading me, pulling me deeper into the cemetery of my thoughts where the dead sit louder than the living. 

The ground changed. It wasn’t asphalt anymore but stone. Cold, grey, carved with names. Gravestones stretched out in every direction. The silence felt so heavy it nearly rang, like a bell that never stopped. And there, in front of me, my father’s name. Etched deep into the slab. Letters carved so sharply it hurt to look at them. I fell to my knees. I thought of the last time I had seen his handwriting, his letters looped and careful on the birthday card he left me. But these letters on the stone were jagged, cut deep, as if the earth itself wanted to keep him here forever. I could almost hear his voice behind me, low and steady, but every word came out twisted, broken. My hands pressed against the stone, clawing at it as if I could pull him back through. My skin tore but I didn’t stop. The stone was rough, grinding against me, but I kept going. I swore I could feel something beneath, something just out of reach. 

I laughed, or maybe I screamed. It was the same sound, split down the middle. I told myself he was beneath me, waiting for me to pull him up, waiting for me to rescue him from the dirt. But another voice, colder, steadier, whispered that he was never there at all. That I was only tearing through my own head, unearthing nothing but dust. I looked up and the figure towered over me. His eyes weren’t my father’s. They were blank, shelves stripped bare, no words, no books, nothing. He raised a hand, and for a heartbeat I thought he would lift me. But the weight pressed heavier, like he wanted me buried with him. 

And then silence. 

I was back on the curb. My bag by my feet. The lamps buzzed overhead, shadows stretching long across the lot. My hands stung, raw and red, though I told myself they were clean. Across the car park, no figure. No gravestones. Just empty asphalt and the faint hum of crickets. I pulled my bag closer and breathed, slow and steady, anchoring myself in the cool night air. Mum would be here soon. She always came. 

I sat still, staring at the dark stretch of pavement, forcing myself to believe it was only shadows. The cemetery in my head quieted, its shelves locked for now. I let the stillness settle over me, thin but solid, like glass. The world was steady again. At least, until the books rattled open.