Past ( psychosis II)

If you’re reading this, I’m already dead.
The conversation I never had about a place I never saw.

I placed the roses on the bar and ordered the bartender’s favorite drink. I was waiting for the only thing I had ever asked for: a dinner with my ghosts.

That would come later.

Earlier that day, I’d received an email about an event I’d never signed up for. I figured that must be the dinner—secret, maybe symbolic. Something like that.

The bartender brought the drink and asked about the roses. Nearly two hours had passed, and no one had come for them.

I told him he wouldn’t believe the story—and that he’d probably stop serving me if I did.

He insisted.

So I told him.

About three years ago, I listened to a podcast. As insane as it sounds, that’s where it started. The episode was about the inventor of the library system—or something like that. I don’t remember the name. The host said he was a creep. That detail stuck.

Around that time, I started writing notes on my phone. Quotes. Questions. The occasional poem for a woman who would never see it. Cringey stuff. Embarrassing if anyone ever read it.

The podcasts were the first clue—direct ones—about the existence of something online related to me. I know that doesn’t make sense.

It felt like wherever I logged in, it followed. Like I could sense someone watching me during Zoom calls. Like a woman in the grid leaned away when I leaned toward her square. Like someone told her to stop staring and she turned off her camera.

That night I wrote: I’m not what you say I am.

I kept bingeing podcasts. The feeling grew.

I don’t think I’m the kind of person who believes the radio talks to him. A good show can make anyone feel seen, right?

Until the radio started talking to me.

But I’ll get to that.

Another podcast suggested an SEO trick: if people are talking about you online, start your own website so it’s the first thing they find.

So I did.

It became my notes app, but public. Less cringey. Or at least an attempt.

Around the same time, a new social media app launched. I joined, mostly indifferent. I was also building a playlist—just beautiful voices to help me sleep.

Choosing a headline was hard. Nothing sounded right. I wrote a few, deleted them.

The bartender interrupted to ask if I wanted another drink. It was an expensive bar. I didn’t have a job. I said yes.

He pushed for a name—for the roses.

I told him I had to leave soon anyway. That she might never come.

It wasn’t long before it showed up on the new app. Then in an online course I was taking. Not screenshots—references. Repeated topics. Echoes.

At some point, I had to ask myself: am I making the pattern, or is the pattern there?

Then came the confessions. The horror-movie reel of every bad thing I’d ever done, replaying at night. Waking me from sleep.

So I confessed. In my notes. Everything.

That’s when the game started.

“What game?” the bartender asked.

I’d write something, and later hear a reference to it in a podcast. Or see it in an email. Not replies—references. I called it a game so I wouldn’t lose my mind.

I started calling the unknown place the place.

This was during the pandemic. I worked constantly. Took more courses. Stayed busy. No time to think.

The bartender offered another drink. He was listening now.

The tone of the podcasts changed. Sometimes it was forgiveness. Sometimes it was hunting season.

Inside the writing, though, the focus stayed on creation. What could be written. What could be done.

Then came the green eyes.

A nameless nurse in a story I wrote—barely described. Somehow, everyone with green eyes thought it was about them.

The woman I liked had green eyes. They weren’t hers.

By then, I was sure everyone everywhere knew about the place.

I started writing to the ghosts—named after The Ghost in the Wires. It was easier to turn confusion into stories.

Eventually it became too much. I deleted apps. Avoided email. Closed my laptop.

That’s when the laptop stopped working unless I opened certain things.

The radio came next.

Songs started lining up with podcasts. Instagram followed. Posts, captions, faces.

I tested it. Wrote a story. Drove. Turned on the radio. There it was.

That’s when I wrote back.

By then, it felt like access—like I could see into the place. Which made everything worse.

Work got involved. They thought I was crazy.

At some point I wrote that Instagram wanted me dead. They went live to deny it.

So I knew something was happening.

Eventually I changed a password to: I don’t want to play this game anymore.

Everything broke.

Then I learned about keystroke logging on a podcast.

And suddenly—everything made sense.

I knew it was strange that no one had ever talked to me directly about the place, and yet so many people close to me seemed to have seen it. Posts like “I’m going to need you to keep the same distance when I start winning” began appearing in my feed.

I liked those posts so others would see them. At that point, the people behind the feed seemed to believe I had already seen the place. Every post felt instructional—how to react, what to do. Motivational on the surface, but only if you understood the rest of the windows.

That’s how I knew about the “friends” talking behind my back. Later, after it grew bigger, they apologized—at least symbolically. One post showed a handshake, but one hand turned into a snake and bit the other.

The handshake happened in real life. One day at volleyball. It felt strange—he never shook hands like that. Then there was a smile, contained, like he knew he’d gotten away with something.

It’s probably a good time to mention the police.

I began writing every night at the same time—nine o’clock. I’d like to say it was all fantastical stories with beautiful women, but words were the only defense I had.

When I was angry, I wrote horror. When podcasts mocked me, I let them know—through stories—that I knew they were inside. From the outside, it didn’t look good. At best, I sounded unwell. At worst, dangerous.

I don’t know when it started, or who brought them in, but they knew my routine.

Whenever I didn’t write at nine, I’d see two patrol cars. Sometimes behind me—until that became too obvious—then passing in the opposite direction. Always two.

The bartender leaned back slightly. I didn’t comment.

This was part of the pattern I had to hold as maybe. Maybe it was happening. Maybe it wasn’t.

One night I wrote about a pickup truck. The next day, a patrol pickup drove past me going the opposite direction.

There are coincidences, and then there’s that.

This is the first time I’ve ever said this out loud. I can’t prove it. I don’t even know if it happened because I wrote it. Sometimes, even that isn’t enough.

The pickup trucks became another symbol. Not the same one—just the same lights. I started to think they were reading the notes too. To test it, I wrote them a poem. Everything I thought a police officer would hate.

I saw more trucks after that. Different faces. Good men doing bad things, or the opposite. I didn’t know. But I knew I was afraid.

Again, the same question: am I seeing patterns, or are they there?

One day at the dentist, one of the trucks was parked beside my car—without a spot. It didn’t move when I returned. I pretended to write down the plate. I didn’t—but they didn’t know that.

Then November came, and it all reset.

I hooked up with a woman at a resort in Mexico. No names exchanged. Somehow—through radio songs and Instagram posts—I became convinced she had found the place too.

That’s when I created the game.

I was done. I wanted everyone out. I warned them: I said I would kill myself if they didn’t leave.

To prove it, I opened my phone camera and cut my shoulder three times. It wasn’t dramatic. No one left.

The next day at work, a coworker walked around me, trying to see under my clothes. I didn’t understand what the plan was.

The bartender paused. I noticed his doubt. I told him it was true. The scars were gone, but it happened.

I told him if I was losing him now, he’d have to hold on tight for what came next.

In hacking, full control is called god-level access. So I talked to God through my notes.

More windows opened—videos, music apps. Everything echoed the same themes. Narcissism. Sociopathy. Psychopathy.

I binged them all.

“This hasn’t really affected my life,” I said, looking at the flowers. “Not until now.”

Even my therapist found the place—or so it felt. Tested me. I guess I passed.

The bartender looked uneasy but asked me to continue. He said he wanted to understand the flowers.

I told him I’d get there.

He went to the back for his good whiskey. On the way, he asked a coworker about me. She said I’d been there before—with different flowers.

He came back smiling. Asked if I thought I’d get to the flowers before the bottle was empty.

“Maybe the second one,” I said.

“I’m at the gates of heaven,” I added, “but they never open.”

He said he’d need the flowers to understand that.

I gave him a choice: the answer now, or the rest of the story.

He offered a bet. If he guessed right, I’d pay for both bottles.

I took it.

After I told everyone to leave, posts about missing people appeared. Not everyone left.

They started pushing me to go to the place myself. To face it.

I couldn’t.

I factory-reset my phone constantly. Bought a new router. Installed Linux from a CD. None of it worked.

A post appeared: they’re fast.

I unplugged everything.

Trying to explain this to my family only made it worse.

Any attempt to explain—podcasts, music, Instagram—ended with the same look: you’re not well.

So I agreed. I must be losing my mind.

Stores called security over the PA. Maybe for me. Maybe not.

Planes overhead felt like surveillance. Probably weren’t.

I walked home from a party once—three hours. Near the end, a man in a car stared at me like he wanted to shout, What are you doing?

Another time, a similar car stopped beside me at a red light. He tried to hide. Poorly.

One followed me until I looked at him in the mirror. He backed off immediately.

The bartender was clearly uncomfortable now.

I told him I was going to jump ahead—to reassure him I wasn’t completely gone.

I told him the only way I knew if the woman was getting closer was through the music.

A Top 40 song played. I explained its meaning. He looked at the bottle instead of me.

I said the rest would explain everything.

I began unfollowing people. Two a day. St. Patrick’s Day.

A meditation app notification appeared: now is all we have.

I re-entered the group chats and left them.

The woman I liked never left.

She folded paper cranes. I folded poems.

The radio told me I’d ruined it.

When I unfollowed her, a song played: Why you gotta be so rude?

That’s when I knew I’d messed up.

I told the bartender I could prove everything—if he let me follow him.

But not yet.

“We’re almost at the flowers,” I said.

This is where it started to get bigger.

Famous celebrities—of all kinds—found the place and started offering me things. Gifts. Deals. Money with strings attached. But I could never get there. All I could ever understand was: money, then a wish, filtered through advice posts on the feed, then echoed by the radio.

Eventually their music wasn’t “about me” anymore—about the place, I mean. Or maybe it was the opposite: their music started appearing because they found the place. I could tell who was offering what because their songs would suddenly show up on the radio.

I kept writing stories and posting every Monday because I didn’t know what else to do. Then the radio delivered the vibe of the place like a punchline: “too sexy for this fame, too sexy for this check.”

It frustrated me. Because I wanted it. I just couldn’t reach it.

I took a sip and kept going.

About ten years ago, my ex called me after we’d broken up. She said her doctor found an STD and that it was probably from me. I didn’t believe her. She’d been making out with my best friend for a year while I’d moved countries, and she was the first and only woman I’d been with. It didn’t add up.

No doctor had ever told me I had anything. I’d been tested when I moved, then tested again for residency.

But then the references started showing up. That’s the part that messed with me—because it had already been floating around in the windows before I even knew what it meant.

In Mexico, I was careful. I had condoms. I didn’t even know “warty throat” was a thing until I heard it mentioned on a podcast. Suddenly it felt like there were four women out there who had reasons to hate me.

When the woman from Mexico “found it,” the radio played: “American woman, get away from me.” Then: “I blew up, now everybody is trying to sue me.” It sounded like trouble wasn’t just possible—it was approaching.

What I didn’t expect was the shift from the usual online kill yourself noise to something that felt local—someone in my city, someone with power, someone allegedly not on the right side of the law.

Then the feed started strongly suggesting I quit my job. So I put in my two weeks.

The problem was the urgency—do it now. Some posts sounded like they were talking about work, but there was always enough ambiguity that it could also mean: go to the place. Face it. Stop hiding.

I didn’t understand what changed, or why they suddenly believed I’d seen the place and lied about it.

One quote kept appearing in my feed: “It’s better to raise strong children than to fix broken men.” Under it—always implied, never said outright—was the same accusation: Why are you lying? Why have you been messing with us? Didn’t you say you wanted it? It’s right there.

But I couldn’t go. I didn’t know what I was even looking for, or how everyone else “found it” so easily.

I think I might have seen it once.

A notification popped up. I didn’t look long enough—maybe I didn’t understand what I was seeing. I never saw my face, if that’s what I was supposed to see. It was something about assault. Two men’s faces. Later I wondered if that was the place and I’d missed it.

So I quit the job, then got confused again because podcasts kept saying: get another job before quitting the one you have. That was the worst part—never knowing if I’d misunderstood, or if nothing was centralized, or if the voices weren’t coordinated.

After one or more breakdowns—seriously considering disappearing and becoming a monk in a country whose language I didn’t speak—I followed another suggestion: I bought a ring to monitor my heart rate, connected to my phone. Proof, in a way. Proof I wasn’t doing what people imagined—mesh networks, access, spying—things I didn’t even learn existed until the podcasts.

The bartender could tell the drinks were catching up to me, but he kept listening. His shift was ending.

Before I left work, the main reason they “wanted me dead” at the place arrived as a song: “Somebody come get her, she’s dancing like a stripper.”

That was how the place showed up at work: references. Shifting with the season.

I didn’t understand who it was about until months later. It was a woman from the playlist. The radio played other songs too—lines like I don’t care who’s watching as long as you are.

Me.

The problem was: I wasn’t watching. I couldn’t. And I couldn’t understand why no one stopped it—until I realized the implication was that it was “for me,” and therefore my responsibility.

If everyone believed I was watching but refusing to go to the place, then the story becomes simple: protect the innocent from the evil. Good men doing bad things, bad men doing good things—either way, someone wanted me gone.

Before I left work, I tried one last time to ask about the place. Still nothing.

And I didn’t even know there was a person who wanted me dead. All I had were warnings through songs—music apps, radio. Even then, nobody thought to tell me directly.

Without a job, I built routines. Stayed aimlessly busy. That’s when the perceived danger grew.

On walks, a song would repeat: “I’m afraid when you leave… I think of your eyes like they are a bullet in the chest.” The radio would pile on: “I’m not playing. I’m not joking.”

I started driving for a delivery app—some money while I waited for whatever came next. I listened to the radio constantly. It kept suggesting: leave the city. A thousand miles away.

But how real can a threat be if all you have are references?

So I kept driving. Gym. Errands. Anything to stay out of the house and avoid explaining why I quit. The truth—that I quit because of posts implying there was something online about me—wasn’t explainable in the real world.

Then the meditation app hit me with a question: “What are you trying to change from your experience?” Somehow my brain translated it into rules: don’t wear blue, don’t go to the gym. That’s the thing—once your mind starts assigning meaning, it spreads everywhere.

It’s easy to dissociate danger when there’s no clear evidence of it.

Then, one day while delivering, an address came up. Later I feared it might have been his. I left the food and left. The radio played the usual “danger,” but then a new line appeared: “I do it for the thrills, for the rush.” It didn’t fit—there were no thrills, no rush.

A post later connected it: “When I die, I want a button that shows me every time I was close and it didn’t happen.”

That night I wrote: I think I delivered to his house.

The worst day came during another delivery. A meditation notification flashed: “Drop everything…” That was enough. Hunting season.

I switched from the music app to the radio to check the vibe. It sounded normal. Another delivery request came in. Because the radio sounded normal, I accepted it.

That was the mistake.

Almost immediately, the radio shifted—danger, close danger, the feeling that “this time” was the one. Everything became a sign: a car speeding, a harsh turn behind me, a face too steady at a stoplight.

I sweated through the delivery, left it at the door, then turned off requests and went home.

When I got home, I screamed at the radio for no reason.

I took another sip, looked left and right, then told the bartender something I wasn’t supposed to say: everyone at the place was in the game.

Everyone.

He looked at me with pity, then up at the speakers. A Top 40 song about being over someone played. He poured another glass anyway—off shift, curious, still chasing the flowers.

Then I gave them a test.

If they were testing me through the feed—what was true, what wasn’t—then it felt fair.

I got into my car like I used to at the height of the “danger,” but I didn’t leave. I brought a book. I turned on the car and turned off my phone’s data and Wi-Fi. The car stayed in the driveway.

But the radio still shifted—worry, threats, the same rising danger it played when I was out.

After an hour, I turned the internet back on—right when someone in the house came outside and saw me sitting there.

Then I wrote: it was a test, and they failed. No one could know I’d “left” because I never did—unless someone told them. The game needed better rules.

And after that, the radio didn’t change as violently when I left the house.

Between dodging death, being relieved I didn’t have to go to the place, and burning through my savings, I kept writing.

It was the only thing I knew how to do during the four years this had been going on.

I understood later why the people inside didn’t believe me either.

Every night I wrote about the place—things that weren’t in the references. I didn’t realize it at the time, but those details would later show up in poems and posts, and to anyone reading it looked like proof. Proof that I could see the place and was lying when I said I couldn’t.

Only much later—after everyone was already inside, after the ring was already part of my routine—did the ones who’d been there from the beginning start to believe that maybe I wasn’t lying. It made sense, in a twisted way: if it took that long for them, the people who just got pulled in weren’t going to be convinced easily. Especially because none of us understood the real missing piece—there were people behind the apps.

The game changed. Somehow I understood I was supposed to follow people as they appeared in the references. Sometimes I’d get ahead of the references because a name would show up in a lyric or a caption before the rest caught up. That would restart the doubt all over again: he’s seen it, he’s pretending he hasn’t.

So I made a bet.

By then I didn’t have a job and my savings were bleeding out by the minute. I bet the only real thing of value I had—my car. I said if I was right, if I truly hadn’t seen the place, then the money people were betting against me could go to charity. Something clean, something final. A line in the sand.

After that, it became a whole new game.

Later I understood a company had been created behind the scenes to manage it. But I’ll get to that.

At that point, for some reason, the only solution the system ever had was to bring more people inside. So—whether it was to save my life, or just to stop the stress from boiling me alive—they brought him in.

The man who wanted me dead.

That should’ve solved it, except then he would have to believe me too. And that wasn’t easy. Everyone who came in started from the same assumption: he’s lying.

Then the thing happened again. I wrote a story where I recognized a place the character was standing—this tall wall overlooking a river in a city near me.

The next night I wrote again, but this time it was about him.

A meeting at a mall, where I showed him how I could “see” the place by bringing him into the car and listening to the radio.

And then I understood.

He was reading.

He was part of the game.

That night—or the next—I wrote directly to him, assuming I was right. Assuming he was there now, watching through the same windows as everyone else.

And then he disappeared.

He wasn’t in the game anymore.

Later the music app told me she had saved my life again. I didn’t know what she did, but she was the one who made him disappear.

I didn’t want that. I wrote that maybe—instead of hunting me—we could give the liars a good scare. I think he liked that idea. It felt like a truce, or the closest thing to one.

But I couldn’t ignore the other possibility:

That I’d keep writing, and without meaning to I’d reference something I shouldn’t know, and then he would have access to every location I was ever at.

And if the threat ever became real, I’d be easy.

The “treatment” was as far away as everything else, but I still looked over my shoulder after the gym. I picked machines that faced the door. If it was coming, at least I wanted to see it first.

Then it died down.

And with everyone from the place now inside the game, I only had to worry about one thing: keeping the depression from becoming visible to everyone else in the house.

After I stopped doing deliveries—because it felt like I was tempting the worst outcome—I started spending whole days outside. Cafés. Libraries. Anywhere that let me sit without having to explain myself.

Weeks passed, and there was this constant urgency—an instant need to be doing something. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. I only knew, through the music, that time was running out.

Now it felt like everyone I’d ever loved from movies or music was listening while I woke up exhausted, while I wandered through days with busywork, never moving anything forward.

The stress stacked up:

Keeping real life intact without a job.
Running out of money.
A looming deadline I couldn’t explain—six months after the summer solstice.
And an invisible threat that could become real at any second.

So I kept writing, because I couldn’t do anything else.

Well—people would disagree.

Then July came.

The night it was finally supposed to be over.

I went to an event I’d bought tickets for months earlier. Two of the ghosts were performing live. I thought: finally, in person. Finally break the mirror.

The music was… blunt. Talking about bodies, about sex, about promises. It wasn’t seductive anymore, it was like it was trying to force the world to make sense through repetition.

I had a drink. I watched the show.

After, there was a window of time for a meet-and-greet. The show ended around eleven. We lined up. Someone from the venue came out and told us the meet-and-greet was in another room.

I looked at my phone and one of the podcast titles was: “death to the abuser.”

Once again: the place wanted my head.

It didn’t help that I was dehydrated and hungry, but my hands went cold. My mind slid away from my body. Everything felt distant.

I lined up anyway.

I kept thinking we’d eat after, that something normal would happen, that I’d step into a version of myself that wasn’t always panicking and decoding.

The moment happened. The handshake, the photo.

And then she asked my name.

And I knew—instantly—that the mirror wasn’t going to break.

To be fair, we had never met. Not officially. I don’t know what I thought was going to happen. But the gap between the fantasy and reality was too loud to ignore.

I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t fully there.

So I left the building and wrote in my notes app like I always did.

Then I went to my car and drank some water from a bottle, trying to return to my body. Trying to become a person again.

I took a supplement—something to borrow motivation from tomorrow—then went back.

There was no way in through the main entrance. The meet-and-greet exit had dumped everyone onto the street, and the front doors were closed. I waited for someone to come out, held the door, slipped back in, and went upstairs—half hoping she’d come that way too.

But when I made it up, I saw her glance at me, just as confused as I was.

And then she was escorted the opposite direction.

I was hungry and completely lost.

I left again, sat in my car, replayed the night trying to find the clue I’d missed.

She’d mentioned a hotel once. I couldn’t remember the name. I didn’t know I was supposed to memorize it.

I tried the direct way: I sent a message asking where she was staying.

No reply.

So I drove around looking for food, for something to anchor the night to reality. In this city, even drive-through felt impossible at two a.m.

And the music turned mean.

A lot of it sounded like contempt. Like I’d ruined something. Like I was ordinary in the worst way.

By the time I found food and got back to my car, it was around two.

I kept writing, hoping for a signal, hoping she’d respond.

Then I guessed a hotel—one of the big ones, the famous one. I remembered an embassy near it from paperwork we’d done once. So I found the embassy on maps, and asked the music, in the only way I knew how, if I was close.

The music shifted like a yes.

So I went.

And I waited.

I played the music at low volume and held the phone to my ear like a call, pretending I was talking to someone.

A lyric played: “your man is calling…”

I apologized into the air for leaving. For not knowing what to do.

I couldn’t understand how everything could feel fine a few hours earlier, and now it felt like I was being hated.

I tried a last resort—asked the counter if she was registered under her name.

The man said she wasn’t registered.

I sat back down and listened again.

The music suggested she’d gone somewhere else entirely—somewhere unreachable. And I knew: even if I could find the right room, I wasn’t walking into a stranger’s private space. Not with my reputation. Not with the place calling me what it called me.

So I left.

The next day I stayed behind after the beach, knowing I’d have the house to myself.

I brought out a speaker and a bottle and sang into it like it could answer me back. Like if I poured enough noise into the room, the night before would reorganize itself into something logical.

The next day the music sounded uplifting again.

Another chance.

So I drove back to the hotel.

Waited.

Listened.

And the story kept repeating—except now the windows didn’t agree. The music said one thing, the feed said another. A woman built out of warnings versus a woman built out of longing. And I was stuck in the middle, trying to decide which one was real.

I started waiting in my car across from the hotel—cheaper, quieter, less visible.

But she never came down.

And that’s when I realized: the radio wasn’t just outside anymore.

They’d made it inside.

And another layer of the story landed on me like a label I didn’t ask for:

Apparently, I was the sun.

The feed would warn me about the men, and the music app would insist that I go.

The friend—maybe once, but even then I doubt it.
The bartender.
The maybe-knock at the door.
Alcohol deleting pieces of memory.

But the music never changed.

The first time I brought roses, I left them with a bellboy. He was surprised when I told him the name they were for. Seeing my defeated posture and the way I spoke, all he said was that he would talk to his manager.

I heard on the radio that they had made it to the other side. It was the first time I felt there might be a connection. It never happened—but I’ll get to that.

The timeline is blurry now, but at some point I stopped going altogether. One of the “hacker gods” had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, or at least that’s what I understood from the music.

He was the one who wanted us together. When I learned about the diagnosis, I went back.

I couldn’t understand why—after everything, after knowing the feed had been telling me I was being played—she would bring me to the hotel knowing she wasn’t going to come down. But I thought he had a reason.

The second time I brought flowers, I wrote three notes and put them inside.

I wasn’t wearing the fancy clothes I had worn the first time, so sending them up felt different. When I explained that I didn’t know the room number or even the name, the energy shifted. The flowers were cheaper this time—I hadn’t gone to the same shop and had stopped at a random one.

The pink petals matched her dress. I have no idea how I knew that.

Not knowing what else to do, I left the flowers on a garbage can outside the hotel and wrote in my notes app where they were. Later, a post referenced them. That’s how I knew she had received them.

Then came the white flowers. I left those in a drawer.

Eventually I grew tired of sitting in the lobby and not wanting to spend money. I went upstairs to floors that were accessible. There were chairs and tables, and in one of them was a large drawer, like a nightstand.

I didn’t want to wander the hotel without a room or a name, so I placed the flowers inside the drawer with a note and took a picture.

Then came the pink roses again.

By that time, waiting four or five hours had become normal—almost expected.

On the last day I ever went, I decided to make it a game. I hid three notes on the floors I could access and told myself that if that didn’t work, I would never come back.

I imagined hiding and watching her find them, but I didn’t know how long I would have to wait. So I sat in the lobby, then the bar, then left—like always.

The drive home followed the same routine. The music screamed at me, telling me she had been working so hard to make herself beautiful and I had left again.

In the songs, I left her naked on a bathroom floor, or crying in the streets, or drunk and calling my name.

It was always my fault. No one else to blame.

At first, I tried not leaving my room while she was at the hotel. It seemed fair, and it was expected. But after the first month—before most of the flowers—I planned a trip: a ten-hour drive so I could wait two days at the hotel.

The waiting times only grew longer.

After four days, she was still there. I was expected to return again after another ten-hour drive.

Eventually, I tried to live as if it wasn’t happening. Nothing I did changed anything. I went to the beach when I was supposed to go to the hotel.

But I couldn’t escape it. The music followed me everywhere—her tears, how I had left her alone.

I couldn’t reach the other side, but I couldn’t live fully on this one either.

Even on that trip, at a club, the DJ wore a shirt that said Hacked. When they noticed me, he put on a hoodie and the music changed.

The bartender looked up at the speakers again.

“Bring Me Higher Love.”
“I Wish I Knew You Wanted Me.”

I explained that the music told my side too.

The dinner came and went. Then it came and went again. Every time I woke up in the middle of the night, the posts were there.

The weekend before Halloween, there was an incredible costume party—everyone dressed as iconic characters. I woke up in the middle of it again and saw the posts. The next day, another image appeared, and I realized everyone had been there.

So I went back the next day. I waited the usual five hours. Then I left.

By then, another woman was waiting at the hotel.

She posted a picture so striking that I wrote a story about her. She became a character, even took on a nickname I had written after deciding it was better not to use real names.

I only ever saw her as a friend. I had watched an interview where she spoke about her boyfriend and how important he was. I never hoped for more.

Until I realized she was waiting instead of the moon.

In the photo, she held the moon in her hands and captioned it La Luna.

Somewhere between the two women, the bets began.

Would I go to the hotel, or would I stay home?

Each time I returned from the hotel, I broke down. I didn’t understand why no one would tell me how long to wait, or answer messages, or call.

But the music always blamed me. For an hour and a half, I listened to songs about how I left her alone, crying, beautiful.

That’s when I started cutting again.

It didn’t happen immediately, but once it started, it escalated—one cut, then three, then five. When I reached fifteen, I stopped because twenty-one felt like too much.

On the feed, I saw when money was made. Some people allegedly lost millions betting on whether I would go.

Staying home wasn’t better. Leaving meant the music followed me. Staying meant hiding in my room, unable to explain my life when I didn’t understand it myself.

At home, I was supposed to be improving myself—taking courses, learning from the best of the best.

I was expected to reach their level in six months. I didn’t even know what I was supposed to be doing.

I think money was sent through a cousin at some point. It never reached me.

Then came the company.

Posts referred to me as “the boss,” and I had no idea what I was supposed to be the boss of, or why I was being called an asshole.

Later, I understood there was an imagined hierarchy of companies, employees, investors—everything branching from the hack on my phone.

Both women were supposed to have brought gifts. A million dollars each. Because I left them waiting, the money was split or spent.

The radio sang about watching money burn while I drained my savings and maxed my cards.

By September, I had nothing left and was still expected to go to the hotel.

One day, I texted my old job. They needed help. Then the company returned.

Occasionally posts about boundaries appeared. The stalemate continued: don’t go to the hotel, but nothing else was allowed either.

I went back once more for the second woman. I brought both flowers and nice clothes, but there was another man upstairs.

It became too much.

I broke down piece by piece until I wasn’t who I used to be.

Eventually, everything became a signal—the weather app, the computer icons, the screensaver. There was always something pointing back to the hotel.

I reached a point where I couldn’t live like that anymore.

I noticed the clock. It was almost eleven. I told the bartender I was supposed to wait until midnight—but I couldn’t even see the numbers clearly.

He said I had missed the event.

The music told me it wasn’t the dinner, so missing it was fine.

I finished my drink.

I told him it was the last time I’d be there—at the bar or the hotel. I left the flowers behind.

Before leaving, I followed him on social media. As I reached the stairs, I looked back and saw his reaction—pale, overwhelmed.

I smiled, walked down, pushed open the glass door, crossed the street, passed the green door, and found my car.