u/TwistedUrbanTales

Before you start looking through your contacts and trying to figure out who would post something like this, don't bother. You don't know me anymore.

You won't remember ever knowing me, and you'll never know me again.

Confused?

It was never supposed to happen this way. Let me explain.

I was eight years old when I saw my idol for the first time on TV. He’s a famous actor, he's been in a lot of movies. You’ve probably seen at least one of them, even if you don’t remember his name. He made me see that acting could be more than pretending. He became every character he played, to the point that I stopped seeing the man underneath. I wished I could do that.

So I emailed him.

Subject: You are my favorite acter

It was a very long and embarrassingly earnest email about wanting to become an actor, with a dozen spelling mistakes. I told him that I had seen all his films over and over. That one day I wanted to grow up to be just like him.

I didn't expect a reply, but he did. He thanked me for writing and told me to keep working hard… then offered to fly me out to meet him. I couldn't believe it. That day, I was so nervous that I couldn't eat. I remember shaking his hand and trying desperately not to let him see that my palm was sweating. Mostly, I remember looking at him and thinking, that's going to be me.

And I did keep working hard. I acted in school plays, joined amateur theatre groups and went to acting classes. I attended audition after audition.

I got close enough to keep going, which was the cruel part. I got callbacks, extra roles and tiny parts with one line. I once spent an entire day on a film set only to discover that later, the scene had been cut. Eventually, I stopped telling people I was going to make it.

Meanwhile, my idol's career just kept going. Every few years there'd be another blockbuster, and he'd win another award. I'd see another interview, another photograph of him standing beside some beautiful woman on a red carpet, smiling like the world had been built specifically to accommodate him. I tried to remain inspired rather than jealous, and for a while, I actually succeeded.

Then I took a job in production. It wasn't glamorous - no kid ever tells you they want to grow up to spend twelve hours carrying equipment, checking call sheets and fetching coffee for people who don't know your name. But it paid the bills and kept me around film sets.

That was how I ended up working on one of his movies. The morning I saw him again, it was twenty years later and he barely looked a day older. I watched as he walked onto set. The man I'd spent half my life trying to become. Everyone moved right around him. People straightened when he passed, and assistants appeared from nowhere. Someone handed him coffee before he'd even asked for it.

I stood twenty feet away holding a coil of cable.

The cameras turned towards him as he entered. When everyone looked at him, I felt physically sick. It was then that I realized I couldn't lie to myself anymore - I still wanted it. No, not the roles, or even the money.

I wanted everyone in the room to turn when I walked in. For people to know my name before I introduced myself, the person everyone was waiting to see. I wanted to be famous.

I wanted to be him.

There was a private celebration when the film wrapped up. It was for the cast, director and a handful of people important enough to have their names on the invitation. There was an open bar, expensive food nobody touched and a rooftop terrace.

I was only there to help clear the equipment. But of course, I'd spent the whole evening watching him from the edge of the room. He was exactly as I'd remembered him from when I was a kid - older, but somehow unchanged in the ways that mattered, with all that effortless quality I had spent my entire adult life trying to manufacture. Then someone handed me a drink, and another. By midnight, I was drunk enough to stop pretending I wasn't watching.

I found him alone on the terrace. For once, nobody was swarming to him. He was leaning against the railing with a glass of whisky, looking out over the city.

I walked over without thinking, stumbling slightly in my drunken state.

"Hey, remember me?" I blurted out, the words slurring, "I met you when I was a kid."

"Did you?"

Of course he didn't recognize me.

"I emailed you."

A pause.

"Ah wait, I do remember that."

But it didn't matter to me anymore.

"I wanted to be you," I said. "I've spent my whole life trying to do what you did."

He chuckled.

"There's only one of me."

I glared at him.

"That's the problem."

His smile faded.

"I've watched you get everything," I continued. "Every damn thing. The roles. The money. The models. The awards. People lose their minds when you walk into a room. Meanwhile, I threw away my entire childhood trying to be seen. And now I'm still carrying cables. Still invisible."

The alcohol had stripped away whatever part of me still knew when to shut up. We stared at each other.

"What do you want me to say to that?" He finally asked.

"I don't want you to say anything. I wish you'd just disappear."

He looked down at his whisky, then back at me.

"You want me to disappear… and you want to be seen instead?"

The question was so calm that it sobered me for a second. I stared at him. In that moment, I could have apologized. Told him I was drunk and didn't mean any of it. Instead, I spat out one final word.

"Sure."

Then I looked down at the glass in my hand. Now you've done it, you absolute idiot, I thought. Might as well start looking for a new job tomorrow.

But when I looked back up, he was gone.

I stood there for a few seconds, staring at the empty space where he'd been. Then I looked behind me, expecting to see him walking back through the doors. Nothing. I glanced over the railing. Nothing.

For a moment, I wondered if I'd imagined the whole conversation. Maybe he'd gone back inside while I was looking at my drink, and none of it had happened at all. When I went inside to check if he was there, the party was still going. There was music, laughter, people talking over one another. Then someone grabbed my shoulder.

"Congratulations!" Shouted one of the producers, as he tapped me on the back. I blinked.

"For what?"

"Don't play it cool now," He laughed.

I smiled awkwardly, assuming I'd misunderstood. Then a member of the cast came over and grinned at me.

"Seriously, you were so good. You deserve it."

People were smiling at me, and a few were raising their glasses. I had no clue what for. Then I turned towards the television mounted above the bar. The film's trailer was playing. As I saw a close-up of the lead character, my eyes widened, and I stopped breathing immediately.

My face. Not his.

Mine.

The scene changed, and there I was again. Another scene. Not him, me.

I looked around. Nobody else was confused like I was, or even seemed to think there was anything strange about it. I saw the poster for the film displayed in the venue on the ground floor. I'd seen it hundreds of times during production, and knew exactly what it looked like. But this time, his face was gone, and mine was there instead. My name was printed underneath in enormous letters. I stared at it for so long that someone walking past had to step around me.

I should have been terrified, but I was too busy staring at myself on the poster. Because underneath the confusion and the impossible feeling that I might be in the middle of a dream, I was feeling something I'd spent twenty years waiting to feel.

What it was like to be famous. Known. Seen.

Him.

The next morning, my phone wouldn't stop ringing. My agent, an agent I didn't remember having, called first, followed by my publicist. Next came the director, and people I'd never spoken to before who apparently knew me very well. There were meetings and interviews scheduled for me.

The film opened that weekend and broke records. I started seeing my face on billboards, magazine covers and at bus stops. Within a year, I couldn't walk down the street without someone recognizing me.

Within another year, I could barely walk down the street at all.

People shouted my name from cars, and children begged for autographs. Grown adults cried when they met me. I went on talk shows and sat beneath bright lights while strangers told me how much I meant to them.

Then came the awards and paychecks. I bought a house I couldn't afford before, and then a bigger one because I liked the view. I flew first class and stayed in hotels where the staff knew my name. The world's most beautiful models wanted to be with me. The world's most powerful men started to dress like me.

But above all, for the first time, everyone turned when I walked into a room. And I loved every second of it.

After everything I'd sacrificed, after every failed audition, every rejection and every night I'd gone home wondering whether I'd wasted my life, surely I had finally gotten what I deserved. I should have felt guilty that he had been erased from existence, but I didn't. As I sipped a glass of wine in my penthouse overlooking the city, I felt like I'd finally won.

Then I learned what came with it.

The paparazzi became impossible to escape. They waited outside restaurants, followed my car and camped outside my house. Fans started turning up wherever I went, too. Some were harmless, but others weren't so understanding. People found my address, and packages started arriving that I hadn't ordered. I received letters from strangers telling me they loved me, hated me, or knew me better than anyone else.

Eventually, I stopped going out alone, and had to have a full fleet of security guards around me at all times.

I started feeling trapped by the life I'd spent so long trying to build, so I took a break from acting. I packed a bag, left the city and rented a small cottage in a remote rural village where, I thought, nobody would know who I was. I arranged discreet transport.

I arrived and settled into the cottage. A wave of relief washed over me instantly as I sat on the bed. For the first time in years, I thought I'd finally have some privacy.

In the evening, I went out and headed towards the town center. The first person I saw as I walked down the street was an old man. He looked to be in his eighties - thin, stooped and dressed in clothes that seemed to have survived as long as he had. He stared at me for a few seconds before smiling, then pointed at me with a shaky hand.

"I know you."

Great.

Even in a village without a cinema or television signal, the first person that sees me still knows who I am. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again.

"Hello. Which of my films have you seen?" I forced a smile.

He frowned.

"What is a film?"

I stared at him.

"You don't know what a film is? Then how do you know who I am?"

The old man gestured, then turned and started walking.

"Come with me."

I followed him inside apprehensively. His house was small and old, with photographs hanging on the walls. There were family photographs of weddings, birthdays and holidays in yellowing frames. A teenage girl who I assumed was his granddaughter was sitting at the kitchen table when we walked in. The old man walked over to a cabinet and pulled out a photograph.

"This is you."

It was a photograph of me at some premiere, on glossy film paper. I was standing on a red carpet, smiling beside an actress. I frowned. Why the hell did he have that? Perhaps his granddaughter was a fan - that was the only reasonable explanation I could think of.

Then he took another photograph from the cabinet.

"And this one."

I looked down. At first, I thought it was another publicity photograph - I'd probably had thousands of those taken of me whether I was aware or not. But then I recognized the location.

The village.

More specifically, the road outside the cottage I was currently staying in. I was beside the wall, mid-step, wearing the same coat I'd arrived in. I stared at it.

"I just arrived here. Did you take this?"

Before he could reply, his granddaughter glanced my way. Her eyes widened.

"It's him."

I stopped.

"You know me too?"

"Of course."

She pulled out a slightly faded photo. In it, she was posing outside the house with some other kids. I looked at it in confusion. Then she pointed at the corner of the photograph. A man stood behind them at a distance, looking at the camera with a neutral expression. I looked closer.

The man was me.

I froze, and all the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

Then the old man immediately pulled out another photograph and showed it to me. This one was much older, and in black and white. A family stood outside a house that looked nothing like the one I was standing in.

"Forty years ago," the old man said.

There were maybe ten people in it, including children, adults and an elderly couple. And in the background, standing half-hidden behind the others… was me. A man with my face, my eyes, my hair.

I hadn't even been born forty years ago.

I took a step back. Then I glanced back towards the photograph his granddaughter had showed me.

This time, every face in the photo had changed.

Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine.

Five children with my face were staring back at me from the faded paper.

I scrambled away from them and ran out of the house. I could hear them shouting behind me, asking me to wait and come back, but I didn't turn. I made it a good distance away when I glanced back towards their house. They stood in front of their door watching me, looking disappointed, but they weren't following. I covered my face and walked briskly back to the cottage.

As I bolted the door behind me, I convinced myself that was some kind of hallucination. Perhaps it was exhaustion or the stress of everything that had happened since becoming famous. There had to be an explanation.

The next morning, I didn't leave until I was sure nobody was outside.

I was halfway through the village when I noticed a girl sitting on a bench, reading a book. She looked up as I passed. Then she looked again and stared for a few seconds.

"Excuse me?"

Not again. I forced a polite smile back and took my hand away from my face. Her eyes widened.

"I knew you looked familiar."

She started flicking through the book she was reading, some kind of history textbook. Then she stopped at a page. There was a Renaissance painting printed across the top.

I felt the blood drain from my face.

The painting was of me. My eyes. My nose. My hair. The caption said 'painted in the sixteenth century'.

She kept turning the pages further back. She stopped again.

This time, a prehistoric cave painting filled the page. It showed a group of primitive figures stood around a fire holding spears.

One of them had my face.

"That's weird." She looked at the cave painting, then back at me. I couldn't answer.

Then a voice came from behind me.

"You've got to be kidding me."

A man was hurrying towards us, holding a newspaper. He looked excited as he shoved the newspaper into my hands. The headline was about an archaeological discovery of an ancient statue had recently been uncovered thousands of miles away. The photograph underneath showed a stone figure.

My face was carved into it.

"How could this be?" He said in awe as he stared at me. I dropped the newspaper.

People had started gathering around. More villagers emerged from shops and houses, many of them approaching to stare. Then an elderly man pushed through the crowd, wearing a white doctor's coat.

"This isn't possible," he said. "I saw you in the morgue just yesterday! There was a corpse who looked exactly like you!"

I backed away from the crowd surrounding me. Then something brushed against my leg.

I looked down and saw a cat. It rubbed itself against my ankle, purring, then stared back at me with wide eyes. I let out an exasperated choke.

"Not you as well."

The cat meowed. I could feel that the people had closed in around me now. I looked back up... and all their faces had changed.

Every face in the crowd looking back at me was mine.

The girl. The doctor. The old man. Everyone had my face.

I looked down at the cat, and it was looking back at me.

With my face.

I screamed.

Then I ran. I didn't care where I was going, I just needed to get away. I pushed through the crowd of hundreds of identical versions of me staring back as I ran between them. I made it to the edge of the town square and a flock of birds suddenly burst from a rooftop. I looked up, and every single bird had my face. Tiny eyes, with tiny versions of my nose and mouth. They flew overhead, each one wearing the same neutral expression I'd seen in the photographs.

I ran faster, stumbling. The town clock tower came into view. Its enormous clock face had changed and now my face stared down at me from above the street. The hands were moving across my forehead. I looked at my watch. It had my face on it too. I ripped it from my wrist and threw it away from me, into the road.

At this point, I was sure I'd gone insane. The sun was disappearing behind the hills, and the sky darkened, but I just kept running. And as the clouds parted and moon rose above the village, I finally stopped and looked up into the sky. Then I fell backwards. The moon had my face.

And that was when I understood.

You want me to disappear… and you want to be seen instead?

I had spent my entire life wanting people to know my face. Now, everything that could have a face would have mine. I had become the most seen thing that had ever existed. Everywhere I looked, there I was.

I ran until I couldn't run anymore. I don't know how long it was - maybe several hours. The sun was already emerging from behind the hills by the time I finally stopped. I stumbled into an empty bus.

Then I remembered the email.

The thought came so suddenly, but once the idea formed, I had to execute on it. I pulled my phone from my pocket and opened my inbox. Hundreds of thousands of emails were sitting there from agents, journalists, fans and people I didn't remember speaking to. I sorted them by oldest and scrolled.

Then I saw it.

Subject: You are my favorite acter

I opened the email I'd sent to him when I was eight. My hands started shaking. The spelling mistakes were still there, along with the ridiculous paragraphs about how much I loved his movies. The part where I'd told him I wanted to grow up to be just like him.

And underneath it, by some miracle, was his reply - the only proof that he'd existed. Proof that there had once been a world where I wasn't the only face in existence.

I stared at the screen, then took a breath and hit reply. I didn't know whether anyone would receive it, but I kept typing anyway.

Subject: I'm sorry.

Then:

I was wrong, I don't want this. Please come back. Please fix it.

I pressed send, then put my phone beside me and closed my eyes, the exhaustion of running from my face for an entire afternoon having drained me. I don't remember falling asleep that night.

When I woke up, the sun was rising. For a few seconds, I didn't move. Then I looked up.

The moon was still visible above the hills. Normal. Just the moon.

I sat up. A bird landed on the roof of the shelter. A normal bird with a beak.

Then I looked towards the village. The clock tower was still there, but this time, the face was just numbers.

I stood up and walked towards the road. People passed me, but nobody stared or pointed. One man walked straight past without even looking at me. Nobody recognized me.

I paused as I looked around, watching the people walk around me with indifference. I couldn't believe it had actually worked… and it never felt so great to be invisible again.

When I reached the cottage, I went inside and stood in the middle of the room, then I packed my things. Now that this ordeal was over, I just wanted to go home.

The journey felt strangely ordinary. I just drove back. Even though I didn't have security, no paparazzi followed me, no one attempted to stop the car and nobody recognized me at the petrol station or asked for a photograph. Then I saw the billboard above the road on the outskirts of town, advertising the film that had started everything.

My old idol was back. His face was on the poster… not mine. His name was underneath.

I laughed. He was back, and so was everything else, just like I asked for. I drove the rest of the way home with tears in my eyes. When I reached my family's house, I stood outside for a moment before knocking. My mother answered.

"Hello. Can I help you?"

I smiled.

"Mom, I'm back."

She frowned.

"I'm sorry? Who are you?"

I laughed nervously.

"Very funny."

She didn't laugh. My heart started racing. I told her my name, my birthday and where I went to school. I told her about the scar on my elbow from when I was nine, where she patched me up while I sat on her knee. I told her about the treehouse I had built with dad in the garden.

She just kept staring in silence. I kept pleading with her, and eventually, she called my father. He came downstairs and stood beside her, watching me with suspicion.

"Who are you?"

"I'm your son," I said, my voice breaking.

I pulled out my phone and opened the photographs I'd taken over the years. Every photograph of my family was still there - birthdays, Christmases and holidays. I had decade old photos of my parents and friends. But I wasn't in any of them. My dad's expression changed into one of horror.

"Why do you have those? Have you been stalking us?"

I stared back at him. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

"Leave our property. Now," he said sternly. "I don't ever want to see you here again."

I stood on the pavement outside my childhood home while the door slammed in my face.

I didn't know where else to go, so I began walking. I walked past the houses of people I'd grown up with, and nobody recognized me. I went to the café where I used to meet my friends, and I even saw some of them there. Nobody knew me. I walked past my old school and told the receptionist my name. She looked it up, but there was no record.

If I asked someone for directions, they'd give them to me. I bought a coffee, and the barista took my money. People could still see me, hear me and talk to me. But every conversation began the same way - I'd have to introduce myself again, even if we'd spoken before.

That was when I finally understood what had happened when I asked him to “fix” it.

From that point onwards, no one would know me. There are no photographs of me. No records, films or memories. Nothing that proves I was ever here. To every person I met and will meet, I'll always be a stranger.

You used to know me. But you'll never know me again, and neither will anyone else.

Thanks for reading this anyway.

Even if it was only for a few minutes, I just wanted to be someone you knew.

"It keeps you safe," the previous owner beamed as he handed over the keys.

He had just walked me through all the security features. There were cameras covering every angle of the property, motion sensors, automatic locks, alarms, even windows that could lock themselves if they detected an impact.

“Bit much, isn't it?” I joked.

“You'll appreciate it.”

A few weeks after I moved in, I was in bed when the house suddenly came alive.

An alarm started screaming. Every light in the house switched on at once, the windows bolted closed and the locks clicked shut. I ran downstairs and looked through the window. Someone dressed in all black was running away down the street.

The police found marks around the door and said the man had been trying to get inside. I was impressed. The house had just kept an intruder out, and it was pretty cool to see those advanced security features in action for the first time.

Then, things started getting strange.

A month later, my girlfriend came over and we got into an argument. It started over something stupid, I can't even remember what. We started yelling at each other from separate rooms, and when she came down the hallway towards the room I was in, the door slammed shut between us.

The lock clicked. She was on one side and I was on the other.

“What the hell?” I tried the handle.

Nothing. I pushed harder, but it wouldn't unlock. Finally, she left, and the door only unlocked after. I thought the security system had malfunctioned.

But that wasn't the only incident.

The new neighbor was always parking in my spot. One afternoon, I saw him in his garden and decided to confront him about it. Before I could reach the fence, the sprinklers suddenly switched on. I stood there soaked as I watched him go back inside.

It was beginning to feel like the house had a mind of its own.

And a few weeks ago, I saw someone walking past the house. I've seen them before, often enough that I recognize them now. They're usually alone, and they walk past around the same time. The street was empty. There would be no witnesses. So I walked downstairs and opened the front door. It slammed shut, so I tried again. Locked. I went to the kitchen window. Locked. The back door. Locked. I stood in the hallway fuming.

Perhaps it also knew about the knife I was holding behind my back when my girlfriend visited, or the pistol in my jacket when I was watching my neighbor from the garden.

I still see you walking past the house sometimes. I've tried everything, but it never lets me out.

Shame.

Seems like it really does keep you safe.

Before you start looking through your contacts and trying to figure out who would post something like this, don't bother. You don't know me anymore.

You won't remember ever knowing me, and you'll never know me again.

Confused?

It was never supposed to happen this way. Let me explain.

I was eight years old when I saw my idol for the first time on TV. He’s a famous actor, he's been in a lot of movies. You’ve probably seen at least one of them, even if you don’t remember his name. He made me see that acting could be more than pretending. He became every character he played, to the point that I stopped seeing the man underneath. I wished I could do that.

So I emailed him.

Subject: You are my favorite acter

It was a very long and embarrassingly earnest email about wanting to become an actor, with a dozen spelling mistakes. I told him that I had seen all his films over and over. That one day I wanted to grow up to be just like him.

I didn't expect a reply, but he did. He thanked me for writing and told me to keep working hard… then offered to fly me out to meet him. I couldn't believe it. That day, I was so nervous that I couldn't eat. I remember shaking his hand and trying desperately not to let him see that my palm was sweating. Mostly, I remember looking at him and thinking, that's going to be me.

And I did keep working hard. I acted in school plays, joined amateur theatre groups and went to acting classes. I attended audition after audition.

I got close enough to keep going, which was the cruel part. I got callbacks, extra roles and tiny parts with one line. I once spent an entire day on a film set only to discover that later, the scene had been cut. Eventually, I stopped telling people I was going to make it.

Meanwhile, my idol's career just kept going. Every few years there'd be another blockbuster, and he'd win another award. I'd see another interview, another photograph of him standing beside some beautiful woman on a red carpet, smiling like the world had been built specifically to accommodate him. I tried to remain inspired rather than jealous, and for a while, I actually succeeded.

Then I took a job in production. It wasn't glamorous - no kid ever tells you they want to grow up to spend twelve hours carrying equipment, checking call sheets and fetching coffee for people who don't know your name. But it paid the bills and kept me around film sets.

That was how I ended up working on one of his movies. The morning I saw him again, it was twenty years later and he barely looked a day older. I watched as he walked onto set. The man I'd spent half my life trying to become. Everyone moved right around him. People straightened when he passed, and assistants appeared from nowhere. Someone handed him coffee before he'd even asked for it.

I stood twenty feet away holding a coil of cable.

The cameras turned towards him as he entered. When everyone looked at him, I felt physically sick. It was then that I realized I couldn't lie to myself anymore - I still wanted it. No, not the roles, or even the money.

I wanted everyone in the room to turn when I walked in. For people to know my name before I introduced myself, the person everyone was waiting to see. I wanted to be famous.

I wanted to be him.

There was a private celebration when the film wrapped up. It was for the cast, director and a handful of people important enough to have their names on the invitation. There was an open bar, expensive food nobody touched and a rooftop terrace.

I was only there to help clear the equipment. But of course, I'd spent the whole evening watching him from the edge of the room. He was exactly as I'd remembered him from when I was a kid - older, but somehow unchanged in the ways that mattered, with all that effortless quality I had spent my entire adult life trying to manufacture. Then someone handed me a drink, and another. By midnight, I was drunk enough to stop pretending I wasn't watching.

I found him alone on the terrace. For once, nobody was swarming to him. He was leaning against the railing with a glass of whisky, looking out over the city.

I walked over without thinking, stumbling slightly in my drunken state.

"Hey, remember me?" I blurted out, the words slurring, "I met you when I was a kid."

"Did you?"

Of course he didn't recognize me.

"I emailed you."

A pause.

"Ah wait, I do remember that."

But it didn't matter to me anymore.

"I wanted to be you," I said. "I've spent my whole life trying to do what you did."

He chuckled.

"There's only one of me."

I glared at him.

"That's the problem."

His smile faded.

"I've watched you get everything," I continued. "Every damn thing. The roles. The money. The models. The awards. People lose their minds when you walk into a room. Meanwhile, I threw away my entire childhood trying to be seen. And now I'm still carrying cables. Still invisible."

The alcohol had stripped away whatever part of me still knew when to shut up. We stared at each other.

"What do you want me to say to that?" He finally asked.

"I don't want you to say anything. I wish you'd just disappear."

He looked down at his whisky, then back at me.

"You want me to disappear… and you want to be seen instead?"

The question was so calm that it sobered me for a second. I stared at him. In that moment, I could have apologized. Told him I was drunk and didn't mean any of it. Instead, I spat out one final word.

"Sure."

Then I looked down at the glass in my hand. Now you've done it, you absolute idiot, I thought. Might as well start looking for a new job tomorrow.

But when I looked back up, he was gone.

I stood there for a few seconds, staring at the empty space where he'd been. Then I looked behind me, expecting to see him walking back through the doors. Nothing. I glanced over the railing. Nothing.

For a moment, I wondered if I'd imagined the whole conversation. Maybe he'd gone back inside while I was looking at my drink, and none of it had happened at all. When I went inside to check if he was there, the party was still going. There was music, laughter, people talking over one another. Then someone grabbed my shoulder.

"Congratulations!" Shouted one of the producers, as he tapped me on the back. I blinked.

"For what?"

"Don't play it cool now," He laughed.

I smiled awkwardly, assuming I'd misunderstood. Then a member of the cast came over and grinned at me.

"Seriously, you were so good. You deserve it."

People were smiling at me, and a few were raising their glasses. I had no clue what for. Then I turned towards the television mounted above the bar. The film's trailer was playing. As I saw a close-up of the lead character, my eyes widened, and I stopped breathing immediately.

My face. Not his.

Mine.

The scene changed, and there I was again. Another scene. Not him, me.

I looked around. Nobody else was confused like I was, or even seemed to think there was anything strange about it. I saw the poster for the film displayed in the venue on the ground floor. I'd seen it hundreds of times during production, and knew exactly what it looked like. But this time, his face was gone, and mine was there instead. My name was printed underneath in enormous letters. I stared at it for so long that someone walking past had to step around me.

I should have been terrified, but I was too busy staring at myself on the poster. Because underneath the confusion and the impossible feeling that I might be in the middle of a dream, I was feeling something I'd spent twenty years waiting to feel.

What it was like to be famous. Known. Seen.

Him.

The next morning, my phone wouldn't stop ringing. My agent, an agent I didn't remember having, called first, followed by my publicist. Next came the director, and people I'd never spoken to before who apparently knew me very well. There were meetings and interviews scheduled for me.

The film opened that weekend and broke records. I started seeing my face on billboards, magazine covers and at bus stops. Within a year, I couldn't walk down the street without someone recognizing me.

Within another year, I could barely walk down the street at all.

People shouted my name from cars, and children begged for autographs. Grown adults cried when they met me. I went on talk shows and sat beneath bright lights while strangers told me how much I meant to them.

Then came the awards and paychecks. I bought a house I couldn't afford before, and then a bigger one because I liked the view. I flew first class and stayed in hotels where the staff knew my name. The world's most beautiful models wanted to be with me. The world's most powerful men started to dress like me.

But above all, for the first time, everyone turned when I walked into a room. And I loved every second of it.

After everything I'd sacrificed, after every failed audition, every rejection and every night I'd gone home wondering whether I'd wasted my life, surely I had finally gotten what I deserved. I should have felt guilty that he had been erased from existence, but I didn't. As I sipped a glass of wine in my penthouse overlooking the city, I felt like I'd finally won.

Then I learned what came with it.

The paparazzi became impossible to escape. They waited outside restaurants, followed my car and camped outside my house. Fans started turning up wherever I went, too. Some were harmless, but others weren't so understanding. People found my address, and packages started arriving that I hadn't ordered. I received letters from strangers telling me they loved me, hated me, or knew me better than anyone else.

Eventually, I stopped going out alone, and had to have a full fleet of security guards around me at all times.

I started feeling trapped by the life I'd spent so long trying to build, so I took a break from acting. I packed a bag, left the city and rented a small cottage in a remote rural village where, I thought, nobody would know who I was. I arranged discreet transport.

I arrived and settled into the cottage. A wave of relief washed over me instantly as I sat on the bed. For the first time in years, I thought I'd finally have some privacy.

In the evening, I went out and headed towards the town center. The first person I saw as I walked down the street was an old man. He looked to be in his eighties - thin, stooped and dressed in clothes that seemed to have survived as long as he had. He stared at me for a few seconds before smiling, then pointed at me with a shaky hand.

"I know you."

Great.

Even in a village without a cinema or television signal, the first person that sees me still knows who I am. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again.

"Hello. Which of my films have you seen?" I forced a smile.

He frowned.

"What is a film?"

I stared at him.

"You don't know what a film is? Then how do you know who I am?"

The old man gestured, then turned and started walking.

"Come with me."

I followed him inside apprehensively. His house was small and old, with photographs hanging on the walls. There were family photographs of weddings, birthdays and holidays in yellowing frames. A teenage girl who I assumed was his granddaughter was sitting at the kitchen table when we walked in. The old man walked over to a cabinet and pulled out a photograph.

"This is you."

It was a photograph of me at some premiere, on glossy film paper. I was standing on a red carpet, smiling beside an actress. I frowned. Why the hell did he have that? Perhaps his granddaughter was a fan - that was the only reasonable explanation I could think of.

Then he took another photograph from the cabinet.

"And this one."

I looked down. At first, I thought it was another publicity photograph - I'd probably had thousands of those taken of me whether I was aware or not. But then I recognized the location.

The village.

More specifically, the road outside the cottage I was currently staying in. I was beside the wall, mid-step, wearing the same coat I'd arrived in. I stared at it.

"I just arrived here. Did you take this?"

Before he could reply, his granddaughter glanced my way. Her eyes widened.

"It's him."

I stopped.

"You know me too?"

"Of course."

She pulled out a slightly faded photo. In it, she was posing outside the house with some other kids. I looked at it in confusion. Then she pointed at the corner of the photograph. A man stood behind them at a distance, looking at the camera with a neutral expression. I looked closer.

The man was me.

I froze, and all the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

Then the old man immediately pulled out another photograph and showed it to me. This one was much older, and in black and white. A family stood outside a house that looked nothing like the one I was standing in.

"Forty years ago," the old man said.

There were maybe ten people in it, including children, adults and an elderly couple. And in the background, standing half-hidden behind the others… was me. A man with my face, my eyes, my hair.

I hadn't even been born forty years ago.

I took a step back. Then I glanced back towards the photograph his granddaughter had showed me.

This time, every face in the photo had changed.

Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine.

Five children with my face were staring back at me from the faded paper.

I scrambled away from them and ran out of the house. I could hear them shouting behind me, asking me to wait and come back, but I didn't turn. I made it a good distance away when I glanced back towards their house. They stood in front of their door watching me, looking disappointed, but they weren't following. I covered my face and walked briskly back to the cottage.

As I bolted the door behind me, I convinced myself that was some kind of hallucination. Perhaps it was exhaustion or the stress of everything that had happened since becoming famous. There had to be an explanation.

The next morning, I didn't leave until I was sure nobody was outside.

I was halfway through the village when I noticed a girl sitting on a bench, reading a book. She looked up as I passed. Then she looked again and stared for a few seconds.

"Excuse me?"

Not again. I forced a polite smile back and took my hand away from my face. Her eyes widened.

"I knew you looked familiar."

She started flicking through the book she was reading, some kind of history textbook. Then she stopped at a page. There was a Renaissance painting printed across the top.

I felt the blood drain from my face.

The painting was of me. My eyes. My nose. My hair. The caption said 'painted in the sixteenth century'.

She kept turning the pages further back. She stopped again.

This time, a prehistoric cave painting filled the page. It showed a group of primitive figures stood around a fire holding spears.

One of them had my face.

"That's weird." She looked at the cave painting, then back at me. I couldn't answer.

Then a voice came from behind me.

"You've got to be kidding me."

A man was hurrying towards us, holding a newspaper. He looked excited as he shoved the newspaper into my hands. The headline was about an archaeological discovery of an ancient statue had recently been uncovered thousands of miles away. The photograph underneath showed a stone figure.

My face was carved into it.

"How could this be?" He said in awe as he stared at me. I dropped the newspaper.

People had started gathering around. More villagers emerged from shops and houses, many of them approaching to stare. Then an elderly man pushed through the crowd, wearing a white doctor's coat.

"This isn't possible," he said. "I saw you in the morgue just yesterday! There was a corpse who looked exactly like you!"

I backed away from the crowd surrounding me. Then something brushed against my leg.

I looked down and saw a cat. It rubbed itself against my ankle, purring, then stared back at me with wide eyes. I let out an exasperated choke.

"Not you as well."

The cat meowed. I could feel that the people had closed in around me now. I looked back up... and all their faces had changed.

Every face in the crowd looking back at me was mine.

The girl. The doctor. The old man. Everyone had my face.

I looked down at the cat, and it was looking back at me.

With my face.

I screamed.

Then I ran. I didn't care where I was going, I just needed to get away. I pushed through the crowd of hundreds of identical versions of me staring back as I ran between them. I made it to the edge of the town square and a flock of birds suddenly burst from a rooftop. I looked up, and every single bird had my face. Tiny eyes, with tiny versions of my nose and mouth. They flew overhead, each one wearing the same neutral expression I'd seen in the photographs.

I ran faster, stumbling. The town clock tower came into view. Its enormous clock face had changed and now my face stared down at me from above the street. The hands were moving across my forehead. I looked at my watch. It had my face on it too. I ripped it from my wrist and threw it away from me, into the road.

At this point, I was sure I'd gone insane. The sun was disappearing behind the hills, and the sky darkened, but I just kept running. And as the clouds parted and moon rose above the village, I finally stopped and looked up into the sky. Then I fell backwards. The moon had my face.

And that was when I understood.

You want me to disappear… and you want to be seen instead?

I had spent my entire life wanting people to know my face. Now, everything that could have a face would have mine. I had become the most seen thing that had ever existed. Everywhere I looked, there I was.

I ran until I couldn't run anymore. I don't know how long it was - maybe several hours. The sun was already emerging from behind the hills by the time I finally stopped. I stumbled into an empty bus.

Then I remembered the email.

The thought came so suddenly, but once the idea formed, I had to execute on it. I pulled my phone from my pocket and opened my inbox. Hundreds of thousands of emails were sitting there from agents, journalists, fans and people I didn't remember speaking to. I sorted them by oldest and scrolled.

Then I saw it.

Subject: You are my favorite acter

I opened the email I'd sent to him when I was eight. My hands started shaking. The spelling mistakes were still there, along with the ridiculous paragraphs about how much I loved his movies. The part where I'd told him I wanted to grow up to be just like him.

And underneath it, by some miracle, was his reply - the only proof that he'd existed. Proof that there had once been a world where I wasn't the only face in existence.

I stared at the screen, then took a breath and hit reply. I didn't know whether anyone would receive it, but I kept typing anyway.

Subject: I'm sorry.

Then:

I was wrong, I don't want this. Please come back. Please fix it.

I pressed send, then put my phone beside me and closed my eyes, the exhaustion of running from my face for an entire afternoon having drained me. I don't remember falling asleep that night.

When I woke up, the sun was rising. For a few seconds, I didn't move. Then I looked up.

The moon was still visible above the hills. Normal. Just the moon.

I sat up. A bird landed on the roof of the shelter. A normal bird with a beak.

Then I looked towards the village. The clock tower was still there, but this time, the face was just numbers.

I stood up and walked towards the road. People passed me, but nobody stared or pointed. One man walked straight past without even looking at me. Nobody recognized me.

I paused as I looked around, watching the people walk around me with indifference. I couldn't believe it had actually worked… and it never felt so great to be invisible again.

When I reached the cottage, I went inside and stood in the middle of the room, then I packed my things. Now that this ordeal was over, I just wanted to go home.

The journey felt strangely ordinary. I just drove back. Even though I didn't have security, no paparazzi followed me, no one attempted to stop the car and nobody recognized me at the petrol station or asked for a photograph. Then I saw the billboard above the road on the outskirts of town, advertising the film that had started everything.

My old idol was back. His face was on the poster… not mine. His name was underneath.

I laughed. He was back, and so was everything else, just like I asked for. I drove the rest of the way home with tears in my eyes. When I reached my family's house, I stood outside for a moment before knocking. My mother answered.

"Hello. Can I help you?"

I smiled.

"Mom, I'm back."

She frowned.

"I'm sorry? Who are you?"

I laughed nervously.

"Very funny."

She didn't laugh. My heart started racing. I told her my name, my birthday and where I went to school. I told her about the scar on my elbow from when I was nine, where she patched me up while I sat on her knee. I told her about the treehouse I had built with dad in the garden.

She just kept staring in silence. I kept pleading with her, and eventually, she called my father. He came downstairs and stood beside her, watching me with suspicion.

"Who are you?"

"I'm your son," I said, my voice breaking.

I pulled out my phone and opened the photographs I'd taken over the years. Every photograph of my family was still there - birthdays, Christmases and holidays. I had decade old photos of my parents and friends. But I wasn't in any of them. My dad's expression changed into one of horror.

"Why do you have those? Have you been stalking us?"

I stared back at him. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

"Leave our property. Now," he said sternly. "I don't ever want to see you here again."

I stood on the pavement outside my childhood home while the door slammed in my face.

I didn't know where else to go, so I began walking. I walked past the houses of people I'd grown up with, and nobody recognized me. I went to the café where I used to meet my friends, and I even saw some of them there. Nobody knew me. I walked past my old school and told the receptionist my name. She looked it up, but there was no record.

If I asked someone for directions, they'd give them to me. I bought a coffee, and the barista took my money. People could still see me, hear me and talk to me. But every conversation began the same way - I'd have to introduce myself again, even if we'd spoken before.

That was when I finally understood what had happened when I asked him to “fix” it.

From that point onwards, no one would know me. There are no photographs of me. No records, films or memories. Nothing that proves I was ever here. To every person I met and will meet, I'll always be a stranger.

You used to know me. But you'll never know me again, and neither will anyone else.

Thanks for reading this anyway.

Even if it was only for a few minutes, I just wanted to be someone you knew.

Before you start looking through your contacts and trying to figure out who would post something like this, don't bother. You don't know me anymore.

You won't remember ever knowing me, and you'll never know me again.

Confused?

It was never supposed to happen this way. Let me explain.

I was eight years old when I saw my idol for the first time on TV. He’s a famous actor, he's been in a lot of movies. You’ve probably seen at least one of them, even if you don’t remember his name. He made me see that acting could be more than pretending. He became every character he played, to the point that I stopped seeing the man underneath. I wished I could do that.

So I emailed him.

Subject: You are my favorite acter

It was a very long and embarrassingly earnest email about wanting to become an actor, with a dozen spelling mistakes. I told him that I had seen all his films over and over. That one day I wanted to grow up to be just like him.

I didn't expect a reply, but he did. He thanked me for writing and told me to keep working hard… then offered to fly me out to meet him. I couldn't believe it. That day, I was so nervous that I couldn't eat. I remember shaking his hand and trying desperately not to let him see that my palm was sweating. Mostly, I remember looking at him and thinking, that's going to be me.

And I did keep working hard. I acted in school plays, joined amateur theatre groups and went to acting classes. I attended audition after audition.

I got close enough to keep going, which was the cruel part. I got callbacks, extra roles and tiny parts with one line. I once spent an entire day on a film set only to discover that later, the scene had been cut. Eventually, I stopped telling people I was going to make it.

Meanwhile, my idol's career just kept going. Every few years there'd be another blockbuster, and he'd win another award. I'd see another interview, another photograph of him standing beside some beautiful woman on a red carpet, smiling like the world had been built specifically to accommodate him. I tried to remain inspired rather than jealous, and for a while, I actually succeeded.

Then I took a job in production. It wasn't glamorous - no kid ever tells you they want to grow up to spend twelve hours carrying equipment, checking call sheets and fetching coffee for people who don't know your name. But it paid the bills and kept me around film sets.

That was how I ended up working on one of his movies. The morning I saw him again, it was twenty years later and he barely looked a day older. I watched as he walked onto set. The man I'd spent half my life trying to become. Everyone moved right around him. People straightened when he passed, and assistants appeared from nowhere. Someone handed him coffee before he'd even asked for it.

I stood twenty feet away holding a coil of cable.

The cameras turned towards him as he entered. When everyone looked at him, I felt physically sick. It was then that I realized I couldn't lie to myself anymore - I still wanted it. No, not the roles, or even the money.

I wanted everyone in the room to turn when I walked in. For people to know my name before I introduced myself, the person everyone was waiting to see. I wanted to be famous.

I wanted to be him.

There was a private celebration when the film wrapped up. It was for the cast, director and a handful of people important enough to have their names on the invitation. There was an open bar, expensive food nobody touched and a rooftop terrace.

I was only there to help clear the equipment. But of course, I'd spent the whole evening watching him from the edge of the room. He was exactly as I'd remembered him from when I was a kid - older, but somehow unchanged in the ways that mattered, with all that effortless quality I had spent my entire adult life trying to manufacture. Then someone handed me a drink, and another. By midnight, I was drunk enough to stop pretending I wasn't watching.

I found him alone on the terrace. For once, nobody was swarming to him. He was leaning against the railing with a glass of whisky, looking out over the city.

I walked over without thinking, stumbling slightly in my drunken state.

"Hey, remember me?" I blurted out, the words slurring, "I met you when I was a kid."

"Did you?"

Of course he didn't recognize me.

"I emailed you."

A pause.

"Ah wait, I do remember that."

But it didn't matter to me anymore.

"I wanted to be you," I said. "I've spent my whole life trying to do what you did."

He chuckled.

"There's only one of me."

I glared at him.

"That's the problem."

His smile faded.

"I've watched you get everything," I continued. "Every damn thing. The roles. The money. The models. The awards. People lose their minds when you walk into a room. Meanwhile, I threw away my entire childhood trying to be seen. And now I'm still carrying cables. Still invisible."

The alcohol had stripped away whatever part of me still knew when to shut up. We stared at each other.

"What do you want me to say to that?" He finally asked.

"I don't want you to say anything. I wish you'd just disappear."

He looked down at his whisky, then back at me.

"You want me to disappear… and you want to be seen instead?"

The question was so calm that it sobered me for a second. I stared at him. In that moment, I could have apologized. Told him I was drunk and didn't mean any of it. Instead, I spat out one final word.

"Sure."

Then I looked down at the glass in my hand. Now you've done it, you absolute idiot, I thought. Might as well start looking for a new job tomorrow.

But when I looked back up, he was gone.

I stood there for a few seconds, staring at the empty space where he'd been. Then I looked behind me, expecting to see him walking back through the doors. Nothing. I glanced over the railing. Nothing.

For a moment, I wondered if I'd imagined the whole conversation. Maybe he'd gone back inside while I was looking at my drink, and none of it had happened at all. When I went inside to check if he was there, the party was still going. There was music, laughter, people talking over one another. Then someone grabbed my shoulder.

"Congratulations!" Shouted one of the producers, as he tapped me on the back. I blinked.

"For what?"

"Don't play it cool now," He laughed.

I smiled awkwardly, assuming I'd misunderstood. Then a member of the cast came over and grinned at me.

"Seriously, you were so good. You deserve it."

People were smiling at me, and a few were raising their glasses. I had no clue what for. Then I turned towards the television mounted above the bar. The film's trailer was playing. As I saw a close-up of the lead character, my eyes widened, and I stopped breathing immediately.

My face. Not his.

Mine.

The scene changed, and there I was again. Another scene. Not him, me.

I looked around. Nobody else was confused like I was, or even seemed to think there was anything strange about it. I saw the poster for the film displayed in the venue on the ground floor. I'd seen it hundreds of times during production, and knew exactly what it looked like. But this time, his face was gone, and mine was there instead. My name was printed underneath in enormous letters. I stared at it for so long that someone walking past had to step around me.

I should have been terrified, but I was too busy staring at myself on the poster. Because underneath the confusion and the impossible feeling that I might be in the middle of a dream, I was feeling something I'd spent twenty years waiting to feel.

What it was like to be famous. Known. Seen.

Him.

The next morning, my phone wouldn't stop ringing. My agent, an agent I didn't remember having, called first, followed by my publicist. Next came the director, and people I'd never spoken to before who apparently knew me very well. There were meetings and interviews scheduled for me.

The film opened that weekend and broke records. I started seeing my face on billboards, magazine covers and at bus stops. Within a year, I couldn't walk down the street without someone recognizing me.

Within another year, I could barely walk down the street at all.

People shouted my name from cars, and children begged for autographs. Grown adults cried when they met me. I went on talk shows and sat beneath bright lights while strangers told me how much I meant to them.

Then came the awards and paychecks. I bought a house I couldn't afford before, and then a bigger one because I liked the view. I flew first class and stayed in hotels where the staff knew my name. The world's most beautiful models wanted to be with me. The world's most powerful men started to dress like me.

But above all, for the first time, everyone turned when I walked into a room. And I loved every second of it.

After everything I'd sacrificed, after every failed audition, every rejection and every night I'd gone home wondering whether I'd wasted my life, surely I had finally gotten what I deserved. I should have felt guilty that he had been erased from existence, but I didn't. As I sipped a glass of wine in my penthouse overlooking the city, I felt like I'd finally won.

Then I learned what came with it.

The paparazzi became impossible to escape. They waited outside restaurants, followed my car and camped outside my house. Fans started turning up wherever I went, too. Some were harmless, but others weren't so understanding. People found my address, and packages started arriving that I hadn't ordered. I received letters from strangers telling me they loved me, hated me, or knew me better than anyone else.

Eventually, I stopped going out alone, and had to have a full fleet of security guards around me at all times.

I started feeling trapped by the life I'd spent so long trying to build, so I took a break from acting. I packed a bag, left the city and rented a small cottage in a remote rural village where, I thought, nobody would know who I was. I arranged discreet transport.

I arrived and settled into the cottage. A wave of relief washed over me instantly as I sat on the bed. For the first time in years, I thought I'd finally have some privacy.

In the evening, I went out and headed towards the town center. The first person I saw as I walked down the street was an old man. He looked to be in his eighties - thin, stooped and dressed in clothes that seemed to have survived as long as he had. He stared at me for a few seconds before smiling, then pointed at me with a shaky hand.

"I know you."

Great.

Even in a village without a cinema or television signal, the first person that sees me still knows who I am. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again.

"Hello. Which of my films have you seen?" I forced a smile.

He frowned.

"What is a film?"

I stared at him.

"You don't know what a film is? Then how do you know who I am?"

The old man gestured, then turned and started walking.

"Come with me."

I followed him inside apprehensively. His house was small and old, with photographs hanging on the walls. There were family photographs of weddings, birthdays and holidays in yellowing frames. A teenage girl who I assumed was his granddaughter was sitting at the kitchen table when we walked in. The old man walked over to a cabinet and pulled out a photograph.

"This is you."

It was a photograph of me at some premiere, on glossy film paper. I was standing on a red carpet, smiling beside an actress. I frowned. Why the hell did he have that? Perhaps his granddaughter was a fan - that was the only reasonable explanation I could think of.

Then he took another photograph from the cabinet.

"And this one."

I looked down. At first, I thought it was another publicity photograph - I'd probably had thousands of those taken of me whether I was aware or not. But then I recognized the location.

The village.

More specifically, the road outside the cottage I was currently staying in. I was beside the wall, mid-step, wearing the same coat I'd arrived in. I stared at it.

"I just arrived here. Did you take this?"

Before he could reply, his granddaughter glanced my way. Her eyes widened.

"It's him."

I stopped.

"You know me too?"

"Of course."

She pulled out a slightly faded photo. In it, she was posing outside the house with some other kids. I looked at it in confusion. Then she pointed at the corner of the photograph. A man stood behind them at a distance, looking at the camera with a neutral expression. I looked closer.

The man was me.

I froze, and all the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

Then the old man immediately pulled out another photograph and showed it to me. This one was much older, and in black and white. A family stood outside a house that looked nothing like the one I was standing in.

"Forty years ago," the old man said.

There were maybe ten people in it, including children, adults and an elderly couple. And in the background, standing half-hidden behind the others… was me. A man with my face, my eyes, my hair.

I hadn't even been born forty years ago.

I took a step back. Then I glanced back towards the photograph his granddaughter had showed me.

This time, every face in the photo had changed.

Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine.

Five children with my face were staring back at me from the faded paper.

I scrambled away from them and ran out of the house. I could hear them shouting behind me, asking me to wait and come back, but I didn't turn. I made it a good distance away when I glanced back towards their house. They stood in front of their door watching me, looking disappointed, but they weren't following. I covered my face and walked briskly back to the cottage.

As I bolted the door behind me, I convinced myself that was some kind of hallucination. Perhaps it was exhaustion or the stress of everything that had happened since becoming famous. There had to be an explanation.

The next morning, I didn't leave until I was sure nobody was outside.

I was halfway through the village when I noticed a girl sitting on a bench, reading a book. She looked up as I passed. Then she looked again and stared for a few seconds.

"Excuse me?"

Not again. I forced a polite smile back and took my hand away from my face. Her eyes widened.

"I knew you looked familiar."

She started flicking through the book she was reading, some kind of history textbook. Then she stopped at a page. There was a Renaissance painting printed across the top.

I felt the blood drain from my face.

The painting was of me. My eyes. My nose. My hair. The caption said 'painted in the sixteenth century'.

She kept turning the pages further back. She stopped again.

This time, a prehistoric cave painting filled the page. It showed a group of primitive figures stood around a fire holding spears.

One of them had my face.

"That's weird." She looked at the cave painting, then back at me. I couldn't answer.

Then a voice came from behind me.

"You've got to be kidding me."

A man was hurrying towards us, holding a newspaper. He looked excited as he shoved the newspaper into my hands. The headline was about an archaeological discovery of an ancient statue had recently been uncovered thousands of miles away. The photograph underneath showed a stone figure.

My face was carved into it.

"How could this be?" He said in awe as he stared at me. I dropped the newspaper.

People had started gathering around. More villagers emerged from shops and houses, many of them approaching to stare. Then an elderly man pushed through the crowd, wearing a white doctor's coat.

"This isn't possible," he said. "I saw you in the morgue just yesterday! There was a corpse who looked exactly like you!"

I backed away from the crowd surrounding me. Then something brushed against my leg.

I looked down and saw a cat. It rubbed itself against my ankle, purring, then stared back at me with wide eyes. I let out an exasperated choke.

"Not you as well."

The cat meowed. I could feel that the people had closed in around me now. I looked back up... and all their faces had changed.

Every face in the crowd looking back at me was mine.

The girl. The doctor. The old man. Everyone had my face.

I looked down at the cat, and it was looking back at me.

With my face.

I screamed.

Then I ran. I didn't care where I was going, I just needed to get away. I pushed through the crowd of hundreds of identical versions of me staring back as I ran between them. I made it to the edge of the town square and a flock of birds suddenly burst from a rooftop. I looked up, and every single bird had my face. Tiny eyes, with tiny versions of my nose and mouth. They flew overhead, each one wearing the same neutral expression I'd seen in the photographs.

I ran faster, stumbling. The town clock tower came into view. Its enormous clock face had changed and now my face stared down at me from above the street. The hands were moving across my forehead. I looked at my watch. It had my face on it too. I ripped it from my wrist and threw it away from me, into the road.

At this point, I was sure I'd gone insane. The sun was disappearing behind the hills, and the sky darkened, but I just kept running. And as the clouds parted and moon rose above the village, I finally stopped and looked up into the sky. Then I fell backwards. The moon had my face.

And that was when I understood.

You want me to disappear… and you want to be seen instead?

I had spent my entire life wanting people to know my face. Now, everything that could have a face would have mine. I had become the most seen thing that had ever existed. Everywhere I looked, there I was.

I ran until I couldn't run anymore. I don't know how long it was - maybe several hours. The sun was already emerging from behind the hills by the time I finally stopped. I stumbled into an empty bus.

Then I remembered the email.

The thought came so suddenly, but once the idea formed, I had to execute on it. I pulled my phone from my pocket and opened my inbox. Hundreds of thousands of emails were sitting there from agents, journalists, fans and people I didn't remember speaking to. I sorted them by oldest and scrolled.

Then I saw it.

Subject: You are my favorite acter

I opened the email I'd sent to him when I was eight. My hands started shaking. The spelling mistakes were still there, along with the ridiculous paragraphs about how much I loved his movies. The part where I'd told him I wanted to grow up to be just like him.

And underneath it, by some miracle, was his reply - the only proof that he'd existed. Proof that there had once been a world where I wasn't the only face in existence.

I stared at the screen, then took a breath and hit reply. I didn't know whether anyone would receive it, but I kept typing anyway.

Subject: I'm sorry.

Then:

I was wrong, I don't want this. Please come back. Please fix it.

I pressed send, then put my phone beside me and closed my eyes, the exhaustion of running from my face for an entire afternoon having drained me. I don't remember falling asleep that night.

When I woke up, the sun was rising. For a few seconds, I didn't move. Then I looked up.

The moon was still visible above the hills. Normal. Just the moon.

I sat up. A bird landed on the roof of the shelter. A normal bird with a beak.

Then I looked towards the village. The clock tower was still there, but this time, the face was just numbers.

I stood up and walked towards the road. People passed me, but nobody stared or pointed. One man walked straight past without even looking at me. Nobody recognized me.

I paused as I looked around, watching the people walk around me with indifference. I couldn't believe it had actually worked… and it never felt so great to be invisible again.

When I reached the cottage, I went inside and stood in the middle of the room, then I packed my things. Now that this ordeal was over, I just wanted to go home.

The journey felt strangely ordinary. I just drove back. Even though I didn't have security, no paparazzi followed me, no one attempted to stop the car and nobody recognized me at the petrol station or asked for a photograph. Then I saw the billboard above the road on the outskirts of town, advertising the film that had started everything.

My old idol was back. His face was on the poster… not mine. His name was underneath.

I laughed. He was back, and so was everything else, just like I asked for. I drove the rest of the way home with tears in my eyes. When I reached my family's house, I stood outside for a moment before knocking. My mother answered.

"Hello. Can I help you?"

I smiled.

"Mom, I'm back."

She frowned.

"I'm sorry? Who are you?"

I laughed nervously.

"Very funny."

She didn't laugh. My heart started racing. I told her my name, my birthday and where I went to school. I told her about the scar on my elbow from when I was nine, where she patched me up while I sat on her knee. I told her about the treehouse I had built with dad in the garden.

She just kept staring in silence. I kept pleading with her, and eventually, she called my father. He came downstairs and stood beside her, watching me with suspicion.

"Who are you?"

"I'm your son," I said, my voice breaking.

I pulled out my phone and opened the photographs I'd taken over the years. Every photograph of my family was still there - birthdays, Christmases and holidays. I had decade old photos of my parents and friends. But I wasn't in any of them. My dad's expression changed into one of horror.

"Why do you have those? Have you been stalking us?"

I stared back at him. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

"Leave our property. Now," he said sternly. "I don't ever want to see you here again."

I stood on the pavement outside my childhood home while the door slammed in my face.

I didn't know where else to go, so I began walking. I walked past the houses of people I'd grown up with, and nobody recognized me. I went to the café where I used to meet my friends, and I even saw some of them there. Nobody knew me. I walked past my old school and told the receptionist my name. She looked it up, but there was no record.

If I asked someone for directions, they'd give them to me. I bought a coffee, and the barista took my money. People could still see me, hear me and talk to me. But every conversation began the same way - I'd have to introduce myself again, even if we'd spoken before.

That was when I finally understood what had happened when I asked him to “fix” it.

From that point onwards, no one would know me. There are no photographs of me. No records, films or memories. Nothing that proves I was ever here. To every person I met and will meet, I'll always be a stranger.

You used to know me. But you'll never know me again, and neither will anyone else.

Thanks for reading this anyway.

Even if it was only for a few minutes, I just wanted to be someone you knew.

Before you start looking through your contacts and trying to figure out who would post something like this, don't bother. You don't know me anymore.

You won't remember ever knowing me, and you'll never know me again.

Confused?

It was never supposed to happen this way. Let me explain.

I was eight years old when I saw my idol for the first time on TV. He’s a famous actor, he's been in a lot of movies. You’ve probably seen at least one of them, even if you don’t remember his name. He made me see that acting could be more than pretending. He became every character he played, to the point that I stopped seeing the man underneath. I wished I could do that.

So I emailed him.

Subject: You are my favorite acter

It was a very long and embarrassingly earnest email about wanting to become an actor, with a dozen spelling mistakes. I told him that I had seen all his films over and over. That one day I wanted to grow up to be just like him.

I didn't expect a reply, but he did. He thanked me for writing and told me to keep working hard… then offered to fly me out to meet him. I couldn't believe it. That day, I was so nervous that I couldn't eat. I remember shaking his hand and trying desperately not to let him see that my palm was sweating. Mostly, I remember looking at him and thinking, that's going to be me.

And I did keep working hard. I acted in school plays, joined amateur theatre groups and went to acting classes. I attended audition after audition.

I got close enough to keep going, which was the cruel part. I got callbacks, extra roles and tiny parts with one line. I once spent an entire day on a film set only to discover that later, the scene had been cut. Eventually, I stopped telling people I was going to make it.

Meanwhile, my idol's career just kept going. Every few years there'd be another blockbuster, and he'd win another award. I'd see another interview, another photograph of him standing beside some beautiful woman on a red carpet, smiling like the world had been built specifically to accommodate him. I tried to remain inspired rather than jealous, and for a while, I actually succeeded.

Then I took a job in production. It wasn't glamorous - no kid ever tells you they want to grow up to spend twelve hours carrying equipment, checking call sheets and fetching coffee for people who don't know your name. But it paid the bills and kept me around film sets.

That was how I ended up working on one of his movies. The morning I saw him again, it was twenty years later and he barely looked a day older. I watched as he walked onto set. The man I'd spent half my life trying to become. Everyone moved right around him. People straightened when he passed, and assistants appeared from nowhere. Someone handed him coffee before he'd even asked for it.

I stood twenty feet away holding a coil of cable.

The cameras turned towards him as he entered. When everyone looked at him, I felt physically sick. It was then that I realized I couldn't lie to myself anymore - I still wanted it. No, not the roles, or even the money.

I wanted everyone in the room to turn when I walked in. For people to know my name before I introduced myself, the person everyone was waiting to see. I wanted to be famous.

I wanted to be him.

There was a private celebration when the film wrapped up. It was for the cast, director and a handful of people important enough to have their names on the invitation. There was an open bar, expensive food nobody touched and a rooftop terrace.

I was only there to help clear the equipment. But of course, I'd spent the whole evening watching him from the edge of the room. He was exactly as I'd remembered him from when I was a kid - older, but somehow unchanged in the ways that mattered, with all that effortless quality I had spent my entire adult life trying to manufacture. Then someone handed me a drink, and another. By midnight, I was drunk enough to stop pretending I wasn't watching.

I found him alone on the terrace. For once, nobody was swarming to him. He was leaning against the railing with a glass of whisky, looking out over the city.

I walked over without thinking, stumbling slightly in my drunken state.

"Hey, remember me?" I blurted out, the words slurring, "I met you when I was a kid."

"Did you?"

Of course he didn't recognize me.

"I emailed you."

A pause.

"Ah wait, I do remember that."

But it didn't matter to me anymore.

"I wanted to be you," I said. "I've spent my whole life trying to do what you did."

He chuckled.

"There's only one of me."

I glared at him.

"That's the problem."

His smile faded.

"I've watched you get everything," I continued. "Every damn thing. The roles. The money. The models. The awards. People lose their minds when you walk into a room. Meanwhile, I threw away my entire childhood trying to be seen. And now I'm still carrying cables. Still invisible."

The alcohol had stripped away whatever part of me still knew when to shut up. We stared at each other.

"What do you want me to say to that?" He finally asked.

"I don't want you to say anything. I wish you'd just disappear."

He looked down at his whisky, then back at me.

"You want me to disappear… and you want to be seen instead?"

The question was so calm that it sobered me for a second. I stared at him. In that moment, I could have apologized. Told him I was drunk and didn't mean any of it. Instead, I spat out one final word.

"Sure."

Then I looked down at the glass in my hand. Now you've done it, you absolute idiot, I thought. Might as well start looking for a new job tomorrow.

But when I looked back up, he was gone.

I stood there for a few seconds, staring at the empty space where he'd been. Then I looked behind me, expecting to see him walking back through the doors. Nothing. I glanced over the railing. Nothing.

For a moment, I wondered if I'd imagined the whole conversation. Maybe he'd gone back inside while I was looking at my drink, and none of it had happened at all. When I went inside to check if he was there, the party was still going. There was music, laughter, people talking over one another. Then someone grabbed my shoulder.

"Congratulations!" Shouted one of the producers, as he tapped me on the back. I blinked.

"For what?"

"Don't play it cool now," He laughed.

I smiled awkwardly, assuming I'd misunderstood. Then a member of the cast came over and grinned at me.

"Seriously, you were so good. You deserve it."

People were smiling at me, and a few were raising their glasses. I had no clue what for. Then I turned towards the television mounted above the bar. The film's trailer was playing. As I saw a close-up of the lead character, my eyes widened, and I stopped breathing immediately.

My face. Not his.

Mine.

The scene changed, and there I was again. Another scene. Not him, me.

I looked around. Nobody else was confused like I was, or even seemed to think there was anything strange about it. I saw the poster for the film displayed in the venue on the ground floor. I'd seen it hundreds of times during production, and knew exactly what it looked like. But this time, his face was gone, and mine was there instead. My name was printed underneath in enormous letters. I stared at it for so long that someone walking past had to step around me.

I should have been terrified, but I was too busy staring at myself on the poster. Because underneath the confusion and the impossible feeling that I might be in the middle of a dream, I was feeling something I'd spent twenty years waiting to feel.

What it was like to be famous. Known. Seen.

Him.

The next morning, my phone wouldn't stop ringing. My agent, an agent I didn't remember having, called first, followed by my publicist. Next came the director, and people I'd never spoken to before who apparently knew me very well. There were meetings and interviews scheduled for me.

The film opened that weekend and broke records. I started seeing my face on billboards, magazine covers and at bus stops. Within a year, I couldn't walk down the street without someone recognizing me.

Within another year, I could barely walk down the street at all.

People shouted my name from cars, and children begged for autographs. Grown adults cried when they met me. I went on talk shows and sat beneath bright lights while strangers told me how much I meant to them.

Then came the awards and paychecks. I bought a house I couldn't afford before, and then a bigger one because I liked the view. I flew first class and stayed in hotels where the staff knew my name. The world's most beautiful models wanted to be with me. The world's most powerful men started to dress like me.

But above all, for the first time, everyone turned when I walked into a room. And I loved every second of it.

After everything I'd sacrificed, after every failed audition, every rejection and every night I'd gone home wondering whether I'd wasted my life, surely I had finally gotten what I deserved. I should have felt guilty that he had been erased from existence, but I didn't. As I sipped a glass of wine in my penthouse overlooking the city, I felt like I'd finally won.

Then I learned what came with it.

The paparazzi became impossible to escape. They waited outside restaurants, followed my car and camped outside my house. Fans started turning up wherever I went, too. Some were harmless, but others weren't so understanding. People found my address, and packages started arriving that I hadn't ordered. I received letters from strangers telling me they loved me, hated me, or knew me better than anyone else.

Eventually, I stopped going out alone, and had to have a full fleet of security guards around me at all times.

I started feeling trapped by the life I'd spent so long trying to build, so I took a break from acting. I packed a bag, left the city and rented a small cottage in a remote rural village where, I thought, nobody would know who I was. I arranged discreet transport.

I arrived and settled into the cottage. A wave of relief washed over me instantly as I sat on the bed. For the first time in years, I thought I'd finally have some privacy.

In the evening, I went out and headed towards the town center. The first person I saw as I walked down the street was an old man. He looked to be in his eighties - thin, stooped and dressed in clothes that seemed to have survived as long as he had. He stared at me for a few seconds before smiling, then pointed at me with a shaky hand.

"I know you."

Great.

Even in a village without a cinema or television signal, the first person that sees me still knows who I am. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again.

"Hello. Which of my films have you seen?" I forced a smile.

He frowned.

"What is a film?"

I stared at him.

"You don't know what a film is? Then how do you know who I am?"

The old man gestured, then turned and started walking.

"Come with me."

I followed him inside apprehensively. His house was small and old, with photographs hanging on the walls. There were family photographs of weddings, birthdays and holidays in yellowing frames. A teenage girl who I assumed was his granddaughter was sitting at the kitchen table when we walked in. The old man walked over to a cabinet and pulled out a photograph.

"This is you."

It was a photograph of me at some premiere, on glossy film paper. I was standing on a red carpet, smiling beside an actress. I frowned. Why the hell did he have that? Perhaps his granddaughter was a fan - that was the only reasonable explanation I could think of.

Then he took another photograph from the cabinet.

"And this one."

I looked down. At first, I thought it was another publicity photograph - I'd probably had thousands of those taken of me whether I was aware or not. But then I recognized the location.

The village.

More specifically, the road outside the cottage I was currently staying in. I was beside the wall, mid-step, wearing the same coat I'd arrived in. I stared at it.

"I just arrived here. Did you take this?"

Before he could reply, his granddaughter glanced my way. Her eyes widened.

"It's him."

I stopped.

"You know me too?"

"Of course."

She pulled out a slightly faded photo. In it, she was posing outside the house with some other kids. I looked at it in confusion. Then she pointed at the corner of the photograph. A man stood behind them at a distance, looking at the camera with a neutral expression. I looked closer.

The man was me.

I froze, and all the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

Then the old man immediately pulled out another photograph and showed it to me. This one was much older, and in black and white. A family stood outside a house that looked nothing like the one I was standing in.

"Forty years ago," the old man said.

There were maybe ten people in it, including children, adults and an elderly couple. And in the background, standing half-hidden behind the others… was me. A man with my face, my eyes, my hair.

I hadn't even been born forty years ago.

I took a step back. Then I glanced back towards the photograph his granddaughter had showed me.

This time, every face in the photo had changed.

Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine.

Five children with my face were staring back at me from the faded paper.

I scrambled away from them and ran out of the house. I could hear them shouting behind me, asking me to wait and come back, but I didn't turn. I made it a good distance away when I glanced back towards their house. They stood in front of their door watching me, looking disappointed, but they weren't following. I covered my face and walked briskly back to the cottage.

As I bolted the door behind me, I convinced myself that was some kind of hallucination. Perhaps it was exhaustion or the stress of everything that had happened since becoming famous. There had to be an explanation.

The next morning, I didn't leave until I was sure nobody was outside.

I was halfway through the village when I noticed a girl sitting on a bench, reading a book. She looked up as I passed. Then she looked again and stared for a few seconds.

"Excuse me?"

Not again. I forced a polite smile back and took my hand away from my face. Her eyes widened.

"I knew you looked familiar."

She started flicking through the book she was reading, some kind of history textbook. Then she stopped at a page. There was a Renaissance painting printed across the top.

I felt the blood drain from my face.

The painting was of me. My eyes. My nose. My hair. The caption said 'painted in the sixteenth century'.

She kept turning the pages further back. She stopped again.

This time, a prehistoric cave painting filled the page. It showed a group of primitive figures stood around a fire holding spears.

One of them had my face.

"That's weird." She looked at the cave painting, then back at me. I couldn't answer.

Then a voice came from behind me.

"You've got to be kidding me."

A man was hurrying towards us, holding a newspaper. He looked excited as he shoved the newspaper into my hands. The headline was about an archaeological discovery of an ancient statue had recently been uncovered thousands of miles away. The photograph underneath showed a stone figure.

My face was carved into it.

"How could this be?" He said in awe as he stared at me. I dropped the newspaper.

People had started gathering around. More villagers emerged from shops and houses, many of them approaching to stare. Then an elderly man pushed through the crowd, wearing a white doctor's coat.

"This isn't possible," he said. "I saw you in the morgue just yesterday! There was a corpse who looked exactly like you!"

I backed away from the crowd surrounding me. Then something brushed against my leg.

I looked down and saw a cat. It rubbed itself against my ankle, purring, then stared back at me with wide eyes. I let out an exasperated choke.

"Not you as well."

The cat meowed. I could feel that the people had closed in around me now. I looked back up... and all their faces had changed.

Every face in the crowd looking back at me was mine.

The girl. The doctor. The old man. Everyone had my face.

I looked down at the cat, and it was looking back at me.

With my face.

I screamed.

Then I ran. I didn't care where I was going, I just needed to get away. I pushed through the crowd of hundreds of identical versions of me staring back as I ran between them. I made it to the edge of the town square and a flock of birds suddenly burst from a rooftop. I looked up, and every single bird had my face. Tiny eyes, with tiny versions of my nose and mouth. They flew overhead, each one wearing the same neutral expression I'd seen in the photographs.

I ran faster, stumbling. The town clock tower came into view. Its enormous clock face had changed and now my face stared down at me from above the street. The hands were moving across my forehead. I looked at my watch. It had my face on it too. I ripped it from my wrist and threw it away from me, into the road.

At this point, I was sure I'd gone insane. The sun was disappearing behind the hills, and the sky darkened, but I just kept running. And as the clouds parted and moon rose above the village, I finally stopped and looked up into the sky. Then I fell backwards. The moon had my face.

And that was when I understood.

You want me to disappear… and you want to be seen instead?

I had spent my entire life wanting people to know my face. Now, everything that could have a face would have mine. I had become the most seen thing that had ever existed. Everywhere I looked, there I was.

I ran until I couldn't run anymore. I don't know how long it was - maybe several hours. The sun was already emerging from behind the hills by the time I finally stopped. I stumbled into an empty bus.

Then I remembered the email.

The thought came so suddenly, but once the idea formed, I had to execute on it. I pulled my phone from my pocket and opened my inbox. Hundreds of thousands of emails were sitting there from agents, journalists, fans and people I didn't remember speaking to. I sorted them by oldest and scrolled.

Then I saw it.

Subject: You are my favorite acter

I opened the email I'd sent to him when I was eight. My hands started shaking. The spelling mistakes were still there, along with the ridiculous paragraphs about how much I loved his movies. The part where I'd told him I wanted to grow up to be just like him.

And underneath it, by some miracle, was his reply - the only proof that he'd existed. Proof that there had once been a world where I wasn't the only face in existence.

I stared at the screen, then took a breath and hit reply. I didn't know whether anyone would receive it, but I kept typing anyway.

Subject: I'm sorry.

Then:

I was wrong, I don't want this. Please come back. Please fix it.

I pressed send, then put my phone beside me and closed my eyes, the exhaustion of running from my face for an entire afternoon having drained me. I don't remember falling asleep that night.

When I woke up, the sun was rising. For a few seconds, I didn't move. Then I looked up.

The moon was still visible above the hills. Normal. Just the moon.

I sat up. A bird landed on the roof of the shelter. A normal bird with a beak.

Then I looked towards the village. The clock tower was still there, but this time, the face was just numbers.

I stood up and walked towards the road. People passed me, but nobody stared or pointed. One man walked straight past without even looking at me. Nobody recognized me.

I paused as I looked around, watching the people walk around me with indifference. I couldn't believe it had actually worked… and it never felt so great to be invisible again.

When I reached the cottage, I went inside and stood in the middle of the room, then I packed my things. Now that this ordeal was over, I just wanted to go home.

The journey felt strangely ordinary. I just drove back. Even though I didn't have security, no paparazzi followed me, no one attempted to stop the car and nobody recognized me at the petrol station or asked for a photograph. Then I saw the billboard above the road on the outskirts of town, advertising the film that had started everything.

My old idol was back. His face was on the poster… not mine. His name was underneath.

I laughed. He was back, and so was everything else, just like I asked for. I drove the rest of the way home with tears in my eyes. When I reached my family's house, I stood outside for a moment before knocking. My mother answered.

"Hello. Can I help you?"

I smiled.

"Mom, I'm back."

She frowned.

"I'm sorry? Who are you?"

I laughed nervously.

"Very funny."

She didn't laugh. My heart started racing. I told her my name, my birthday and where I went to school. I told her about the scar on my elbow from when I was nine, where she patched me up while I sat on her knee. I told her about the treehouse I had built with dad in the garden.

She just kept staring in silence. I kept pleading with her, and eventually, she called my father. He came downstairs and stood beside her, watching me with suspicion.

"Who are you?"

"I'm your son," I said, my voice breaking.

I pulled out my phone and opened the photographs I'd taken over the years. Every photograph of my family was still there - birthdays, Christmases and holidays. I had decade old photos of my parents and friends. But I wasn't in any of them. My dad's expression changed into one of horror.

"Why do you have those? Have you been stalking us?"

I stared back at him. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

"Leave our property. Now," he said sternly. "I don't ever want to see you here again."

I stood on the pavement outside my childhood home while the door slammed in my face.

I didn't know where else to go, so I began walking. I walked past the houses of people I'd grown up with, and nobody recognized me. I went to the café where I used to meet my friends, and I even saw some of them there. Nobody knew me. I walked past my old school and told the receptionist my name. She looked it up, but there was no record.

If I asked someone for directions, they'd give them to me. I bought a coffee, and the barista took my money. People could still see me, hear me and talk to me. But every conversation began the same way - I'd have to introduce myself again, even if we'd spoken before.

That was when I finally understood what had happened when I asked him to “fix” it.

From that point onwards, no one would know me. There are no photographs of me. No records, films or memories. Nothing that proves I was ever here. To every person I met and will meet, I'll always be a stranger.

You used to know me. But you'll never know me again, and neither will anyone else.

Thanks for reading this anyway.

Even if it was only for a few minutes, I just wanted to be someone you knew.

Before you start looking through your contacts and trying to figure out who would post something like this, don't bother. You don't know me anymore.

You won't remember ever knowing me, and you'll never know me again.

Confused?

It was never supposed to happen this way. Let me explain.

I was eight years old when I saw my idol for the first time on TV. He’s a famous actor, he's been in a lot of movies. You’ve probably seen at least one of them, even if you don’t remember his name. He made me see that acting could be more than pretending. He became every character he played, to the point that I stopped seeing the man underneath. I wished I could do that.

So I emailed him.

Subject: You are my favorite acter

It was a very long and embarrassingly earnest email about wanting to become an actor, with a dozen spelling mistakes. I told him that I had seen all his films over and over. That one day I wanted to grow up to be just like him.

I didn't expect a reply, but he did. He thanked me for writing and told me to keep working hard… then offered to fly me out to meet him. I couldn't believe it. That day, I was so nervous that I couldn't eat. I remember shaking his hand and trying desperately not to let him see that my palm was sweating. Mostly, I remember looking at him and thinking, that's going to be me.

And I did keep working hard. I acted in school plays, joined amateur theatre groups and went to acting classes. I attended audition after audition.

I got close enough to keep going, which was the cruel part. I got callbacks, extra roles and tiny parts with one line. I once spent an entire day on a film set only to discover that later, the scene had been cut. Eventually, I stopped telling people I was going to make it.

Meanwhile, my idol's career just kept going. Every few years there'd be another blockbuster, and he'd win another award. I'd see another interview, another photograph of him standing beside some beautiful woman on a red carpet, smiling like the world had been built specifically to accommodate him. I tried to remain inspired rather than jealous, and for a while, I actually succeeded.

Then I took a job in production. It wasn't glamorous - no kid ever tells you they want to grow up to spend twelve hours carrying equipment, checking call sheets and fetching coffee for people who don't know your name. But it paid the bills and kept me around film sets.

That was how I ended up working on one of his movies. The morning I saw him again, it was twenty years later and he barely looked a day older. I watched as he walked onto set. The man I'd spent half my life trying to become. Everyone moved right around him. People straightened when he passed, and assistants appeared from nowhere. Someone handed him coffee before he'd even asked for it.

I stood twenty feet away holding a coil of cable.

The cameras turned towards him as he entered. When everyone looked at him, I felt physically sick. It was then that I realized I couldn't lie to myself anymore - I still wanted it. No, not the roles, or even the money.

I wanted everyone in the room to turn when I walked in. For people to know my name before I introduced myself, the person everyone was waiting to see. I wanted to be famous.

I wanted to be him.

There was a private celebration when the film wrapped up. It was for the cast, director and a handful of people important enough to have their names on the invitation. There was an open bar, expensive food nobody touched and a rooftop terrace.

I was only there to help clear the equipment. But of course, I'd spent the whole evening watching him from the edge of the room. He was exactly as I'd remembered him from when I was a kid - older, but somehow unchanged in the ways that mattered, with all that effortless quality I had spent my entire adult life trying to manufacture. Then someone handed me a drink, and another. By midnight, I was drunk enough to stop pretending I wasn't watching.

I found him alone on the terrace. For once, nobody was swarming to him. He was leaning against the railing with a glass of whisky, looking out over the city.

I walked over without thinking, stumbling slightly in my drunken state.

"Hey, remember me?" I blurted out, the words slurring, "I met you when I was a kid."

"Did you?"

Of course he didn't recognize me.

"I emailed you."

A pause.

"Ah wait, I do remember that."

But it didn't matter to me anymore.

"I wanted to be you," I said. "I've spent my whole life trying to do what you did."

He chuckled.

"There's only one of me."

I glared at him.

"That's the problem."

His smile faded.

"I've watched you get everything," I continued. "Every damn thing. The roles. The money. The models. The awards. People lose their minds when you walk into a room. Meanwhile, I threw away my entire childhood trying to be seen. And now I'm still carrying cables. Still invisible."

The alcohol had stripped away whatever part of me still knew when to shut up. We stared at each other.

"What do you want me to say to that?" He finally asked.

"I don't want you to say anything. I wish you'd just disappear."

He looked down at his whisky, then back at me.

"You want me to disappear… and you want to be seen instead?"

The question was so calm that it sobered me for a second. I stared at him. In that moment, I could have apologized. Told him I was drunk and didn't mean any of it. Instead, I spat out one final word.

"Sure."

Then I looked down at the glass in my hand. Now you've done it, you absolute idiot, I thought. Might as well start looking for a new job tomorrow.

But when I looked back up, he was gone.

I stood there for a few seconds, staring at the empty space where he'd been. Then I looked behind me, expecting to see him walking back through the doors. Nothing. I glanced over the railing. Nothing.

For a moment, I wondered if I'd imagined the whole conversation. Maybe he'd gone back inside while I was looking at my drink, and none of it had happened at all. When I went inside to check if he was there, the party was still going. There was music, laughter, people talking over one another. Then someone grabbed my shoulder.

"Congratulations!" Shouted one of the producers, as he tapped me on the back. I blinked.

"For what?"

"Don't play it cool now," He laughed.

I smiled awkwardly, assuming I'd misunderstood. Then a member of the cast came over and grinned at me.

"Seriously, you were so good. You deserve it."

People were smiling at me, and a few were raising their glasses. I had no clue what for. Then I turned towards the television mounted above the bar. The film's trailer was playing. As I saw a close-up of the lead character, my eyes widened, and I stopped breathing immediately.

My face. Not his.

Mine.

The scene changed, and there I was again. Another scene. Not him, me.

I looked around. Nobody else was confused like I was, or even seemed to think there was anything strange about it. I saw the poster for the film displayed in the venue on the ground floor. I'd seen it hundreds of times during production, and knew exactly what it looked like. But this time, his face was gone, and mine was there instead. My name was printed underneath in enormous letters. I stared at it for so long that someone walking past had to step around me.

I should have been terrified, but I was too busy staring at myself on the poster. Because underneath the confusion and the impossible feeling that I might be in the middle of a dream, I was feeling something I'd spent twenty years waiting to feel.

What it was like to be famous. Known. Seen.

Him.

The next morning, my phone wouldn't stop ringing. My agent, an agent I didn't remember having, called first, followed by my publicist. Next came the director, and people I'd never spoken to before who apparently knew me very well. There were meetings and interviews scheduled for me.

The film opened that weekend and broke records. I started seeing my face on billboards, magazine covers and at bus stops. Within a year, I couldn't walk down the street without someone recognizing me.

Within another year, I could barely walk down the street at all.

People shouted my name from cars, and children begged for autographs. Grown adults cried when they met me. I went on talk shows and sat beneath bright lights while strangers told me how much I meant to them.

Then came the awards and paychecks. I bought a house I couldn't afford before, and then a bigger one because I liked the view. I flew first class and stayed in hotels where the staff knew my name. The world's most beautiful models wanted to be with me. The world's most powerful men started to dress like me.

But above all, for the first time, everyone turned when I walked into a room. And I loved every second of it.

After everything I'd sacrificed, after every failed audition, every rejection and every night I'd gone home wondering whether I'd wasted my life, surely I had finally gotten what I deserved. I should have felt guilty that he had been erased from existence, but I didn't. As I sipped a glass of wine in my penthouse overlooking the city, I felt like I'd finally won.

Then I learned what came with it.

The paparazzi became impossible to escape. They waited outside restaurants, followed my car and camped outside my house. Fans started turning up wherever I went, too. Some were harmless, but others weren't so understanding. People found my address, and packages started arriving that I hadn't ordered. I received letters from strangers telling me they loved me, hated me, or knew me better than anyone else.

Eventually, I stopped going out alone, and had to have a full fleet of security guards around me at all times.

I started feeling trapped by the life I'd spent so long trying to build, so I took a break from acting. I packed a bag, left the city and rented a small cottage in a remote rural village where, I thought, nobody would know who I was. I arranged discreet transport.

I arrived and settled into the cottage. A wave of relief washed over me instantly as I sat on the bed. For the first time in years, I thought I'd finally have some privacy.

In the evening, I went out and headed towards the town center. The first person I saw as I walked down the street was an old man. He looked to be in his eighties - thin, stooped and dressed in clothes that seemed to have survived as long as he had. He stared at me for a few seconds before smiling, then pointed at me with a shaky hand.

"I know you."

Great.

Even in a village without a cinema or television signal, the first person that sees me still knows who I am. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again.

"Hello. Which of my films have you seen?" I forced a smile.

He frowned.

"What is a film?"

I stared at him.

"You don't know what a film is? Then how do you know who I am?"

The old man gestured, then turned and started walking.

"Come with me."

I followed him inside apprehensively. His house was small and old, with photographs hanging on the walls. There were family photographs of weddings, birthdays and holidays in yellowing frames. A teenage girl who I assumed was his granddaughter was sitting at the kitchen table when we walked in. The old man walked over to a cabinet and pulled out a photograph.

"This is you."

It was a photograph of me at some premiere, on glossy film paper. I was standing on a red carpet, smiling beside an actress. I frowned. Why the hell did he have that? Perhaps his granddaughter was a fan - that was the only reasonable explanation I could think of.

Then he took another photograph from the cabinet.

"And this one."

I looked down. At first, I thought it was another publicity photograph - I'd probably had thousands of those taken of me whether I was aware or not. But then I recognized the location.

The village.

More specifically, the road outside the cottage I was currently staying in. I was beside the wall, mid-step, wearing the same coat I'd arrived in. I stared at it.

"I just arrived here. Did you take this?"

Before he could reply, his granddaughter glanced my way. Her eyes widened.

"It's him."

I stopped.

"You know me too?"

"Of course."

She pulled out a slightly faded photo. In it, she was posing outside the house with some other kids. I looked at it in confusion. Then she pointed at the corner of the photograph. A man stood behind them at a distance, looking at the camera with a neutral expression. I looked closer.

The man was me.

I froze, and all the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

Then the old man immediately pulled out another photograph and showed it to me. This one was much older, and in black and white. A family stood outside a house that looked nothing like the one I was standing in.

"Forty years ago," the old man said.

There were maybe ten people in it, including children, adults and an elderly couple. And in the background, standing half-hidden behind the others… was me. A man with my face, my eyes, my hair.

I hadn't even been born forty years ago.

I took a step back. Then I glanced back towards the photograph his granddaughter had showed me.

This time, every face in the photo had changed.

Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine.

Five children with my face were staring back at me from the faded paper.

I scrambled away from them and ran out of the house. I could hear them shouting behind me, asking me to wait and come back, but I didn't turn. I made it a good distance away when I glanced back towards their house. They stood in front of their door watching me, looking disappointed, but they weren't following. I covered my face and walked briskly back to the cottage.

As I bolted the door behind me, I convinced myself that was some kind of hallucination. Perhaps it was exhaustion or the stress of everything that had happened since becoming famous. There had to be an explanation.

The next morning, I didn't leave until I was sure nobody was outside.

I was halfway through the village when I noticed a girl sitting on a bench, reading a book. She looked up as I passed. Then she looked again and stared for a few seconds.

"Excuse me?"

Not again. I forced a polite smile back and took my hand away from my face. Her eyes widened.

"I knew you looked familiar."

She started flicking through the book she was reading, some kind of history textbook. Then she stopped at a page. There was a Renaissance painting printed across the top.

I felt the blood drain from my face.

The painting was of me. My eyes. My nose. My hair. The caption said 'painted in the sixteenth century'.

She kept turning the pages further back. She stopped again.

This time, a prehistoric cave painting filled the page. It showed a group of primitive figures stood around a fire holding spears.

One of them had my face.

"That's weird." She looked at the cave painting, then back at me. I couldn't answer.

Then a voice came from behind me.

"You've got to be kidding me."

A man was hurrying towards us, holding a newspaper. He looked excited as he shoved the newspaper into my hands. The headline was about an archaeological discovery of an ancient statue had recently been uncovered thousands of miles away. The photograph underneath showed a stone figure.

My face was carved into it.

"How could this be?" He said in awe as he stared at me. I dropped the newspaper.

People had started gathering around. More villagers emerged from shops and houses, many of them approaching to stare. Then an elderly man pushed through the crowd, wearing a white doctor's coat.

"This isn't possible," he said. "I saw you in the morgue just yesterday! There was a corpse who looked exactly like you!"

I backed away from the crowd surrounding me. Then something brushed against my leg.

I looked down and saw a cat. It rubbed itself against my ankle, purring, then stared back at me with wide eyes. I let out an exasperated choke.

"Not you as well."

The cat meowed. I could feel that the people had closed in around me now. I looked back up... and all their faces had changed.

Every face in the crowd looking back at me was mine.

The girl. The doctor. The old man. Everyone had my face.

I looked down at the cat, and it was looking back at me.

With my face.

I screamed.

Then I ran. I didn't care where I was going, I just needed to get away. I pushed through the crowd of hundreds of identical versions of me staring back as I ran between them. I made it to the edge of the town square and a flock of birds suddenly burst from a rooftop. I looked up, and every single bird had my face. Tiny eyes, with tiny versions of my nose and mouth. They flew overhead, each one wearing the same neutral expression I'd seen in the photographs.

I ran faster, stumbling. The town clock tower came into view. Its enormous clock face had changed and now my face stared down at me from above the street. The hands were moving across my forehead. I looked at my watch. It had my face on it too. I ripped it from my wrist and threw it away from me, into the road.

At this point, I was sure I'd gone insane. The sun was disappearing behind the hills, and the sky darkened, but I just kept running. And as the clouds parted and moon rose above the village, I finally stopped and looked up into the sky. Then I fell backwards. The moon had my face.

And that was when I understood.

You want me to disappear… and you want to be seen instead?

I had spent my entire life wanting people to know my face. Now, everything that could have a face would have mine. I had become the most seen thing that had ever existed. Everywhere I looked, there I was.

I ran until I couldn't run anymore. I don't know how long it was - maybe several hours. The sun was already emerging from behind the hills by the time I finally stopped. I stumbled into an empty bus.

Then I remembered the email.

The thought came so suddenly, but once the idea formed, I had to execute on it. I pulled my phone from my pocket and opened my inbox. Hundreds of thousands of emails were sitting there from agents, journalists, fans and people I didn't remember speaking to. I sorted them by oldest and scrolled.

Then I saw it.

Subject: You are my favorite acter

I opened the email I'd sent to him when I was eight. My hands started shaking. The spelling mistakes were still there, along with the ridiculous paragraphs about how much I loved his movies. The part where I'd told him I wanted to grow up to be just like him.

And underneath it, by some miracle, was his reply - the only proof that he'd existed. Proof that there had once been a world where I wasn't the only face in existence.

I stared at the screen, then took a breath and hit reply. I didn't know whether anyone would receive it, but I kept typing anyway.

Subject: I'm sorry.

Then:

I was wrong, I don't want this. Please come back. Please fix it.

I pressed send, then put my phone beside me and closed my eyes, the exhaustion of running from my face for an entire afternoon having drained me. I don't remember falling asleep that night.

When I woke up, the sun was rising. For a few seconds, I didn't move. Then I looked up.

The moon was still visible above the hills. Normal. Just the moon.

I sat up. A bird landed on the roof of the shelter. A normal bird with a beak.

Then I looked towards the village. The clock tower was still there, but this time, the face was just numbers.

I stood up and walked towards the road. People passed me, but nobody stared or pointed. One man walked straight past without even looking at me. Nobody recognized me.

I paused as I looked around, watching the people walk around me with indifference. I couldn't believe it had actually worked… and it never felt so great to be invisible again.

When I reached the cottage, I went inside and stood in the middle of the room, then I packed my things. Now that this ordeal was over, I just wanted to go home.

The journey felt strangely ordinary. I just drove back. Even though I didn't have security, no paparazzi followed me, no one attempted to stop the car and nobody recognized me at the petrol station or asked for a photograph. Then I saw the billboard above the road on the outskirts of town, advertising the film that had started everything.

My old idol was back. His face was on the poster… not mine. His name was underneath.

I laughed. He was back, and so was everything else, just like I asked for. I drove the rest of the way home with tears in my eyes. When I reached my family's house, I stood outside for a moment before knocking. My mother answered.

"Hello. Can I help you?"

I smiled.

"Mom, I'm back."

She frowned.

"I'm sorry? Who are you?"

I laughed nervously.

"Very funny."

She didn't laugh. My heart started racing. I told her my name, my birthday and where I went to school. I told her about the scar on my elbow from when I was nine, where she patched me up while I sat on her knee. I told her about the treehouse I had built with dad in the garden.

She just kept staring in silence. I kept pleading with her, and eventually, she called my father. He came downstairs and stood beside her, watching me with suspicion.

"Who are you?"

"I'm your son," I said, my voice breaking.

I pulled out my phone and opened the photographs I'd taken over the years. Every photograph of my family was still there - birthdays, Christmases and holidays. I had decade old photos of my parents and friends. But I wasn't in any of them. My dad's expression changed into one of horror.

"Why do you have those? Have you been stalking us?"

I stared back at him. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

"Leave our property. Now," he said sternly. "I don't ever want to see you here again."

I stood on the pavement outside my childhood home while the door slammed in my face.

I didn't know where else to go, so I began walking. I walked past the houses of people I'd grown up with, and nobody recognized me. I went to the café where I used to meet my friends, and I even saw some of them there. Nobody knew me. I walked past my old school and told the receptionist my name. She looked it up, but there was no record.

If I asked someone for directions, they'd give them to me. I bought a coffee, and the barista took my money. People could still see me, hear me and talk to me. But every conversation began the same way - I'd have to introduce myself again, even if we'd spoken before.

That was when I finally understood what had happened when I asked him to “fix” it.

From that point onwards, no one would know me. There are no photographs of me. No records, films or memories. Nothing that proves I was ever here. To every person I met and will meet, I'll always be a stranger.

You used to know me. But you'll never know me again, and neither will anyone else.

Thanks for reading this anyway.

Even if it was only for a few minutes, I just wanted to be someone you knew.

Before you start looking through your contacts and trying to figure out who would post something like this, don't bother. You don't know me anymore.

You won't remember ever knowing me, and you'll never know me again.

Confused?

It was never supposed to happen this way. Let me explain.

I was eight years old when I saw my idol for the first time on TV. He’s a famous actor, he's been in a lot of movies. You’ve probably seen at least one of them, even if you don’t remember his name. He made me see that acting could be more than pretending. He became every character he played, to the point that I stopped seeing the man underneath. I wished I could do that.

So I emailed him.

Subject: You are my favorite acter

It was a very long and embarrassingly earnest email about wanting to become an actor, with a dozen spelling mistakes. I told him that I had seen all his films over and over. That one day I wanted to grow up to be just like him.

I didn't expect a reply, but he did. He thanked me for writing and told me to keep working hard… then offered to fly me out to meet him. I couldn't believe it. That day, I was so nervous that I couldn't eat. I remember shaking his hand and trying desperately not to let him see that my palm was sweating. Mostly, I remember looking at him and thinking, that's going to be me.

And I did keep working hard. I acted in school plays, joined amateur theatre groups and went to acting classes. I attended audition after audition.

I got close enough to keep going, which was the cruel part. I got callbacks, extra roles and tiny parts with one line. I once spent an entire day on a film set only to discover that later, the scene had been cut. Eventually, I stopped telling people I was going to make it.

Meanwhile, my idol's career just kept going. Every few years there'd be another blockbuster, and he'd win another award. I'd see another interview, another photograph of him standing beside some beautiful woman on a red carpet, smiling like the world had been built specifically to accommodate him. I tried to remain inspired rather than jealous, and for a while, I actually succeeded.

Then I took a job in production. It wasn't glamorous - no kid ever tells you they want to grow up to spend twelve hours carrying equipment, checking call sheets and fetching coffee for people who don't know your name. But it paid the bills and kept me around film sets.

That was how I ended up working on one of his movies. The morning I saw him again, it was twenty years later and he barely looked a day older. I watched as he walked onto set. The man I'd spent half my life trying to become. Everyone moved right around him. People straightened when he passed, and assistants appeared from nowhere. Someone handed him coffee before he'd even asked for it.

I stood twenty feet away holding a coil of cable.

The cameras turned towards him as he entered. When everyone looked at him, I felt physically sick. It was then that I realized I couldn't lie to myself anymore - I still wanted it. No, not the roles, or even the money.

I wanted everyone in the room to turn when I walked in. For people to know my name before I introduced myself, the person everyone was waiting to see. I wanted to be famous.

I wanted to be him.

There was a private celebration when the film wrapped up. It was for the cast, director and a handful of people important enough to have their names on the invitation. There was an open bar, expensive food nobody touched and a rooftop terrace.

I was only there to help clear the equipment. But of course, I'd spent the whole evening watching him from the edge of the room. He was exactly as I'd remembered him from when I was a kid - older, but somehow unchanged in the ways that mattered, with all that effortless quality I had spent my entire adult life trying to manufacture. Then someone handed me a drink, and another. By midnight, I was drunk enough to stop pretending I wasn't watching.

I found him alone on the terrace. For once, nobody was swarming to him. He was leaning against the railing with a glass of whisky, looking out over the city.

I walked over without thinking, stumbling slightly in my drunken state.

"Hey, remember me?" I blurted out, the words slurring, "I met you when I was a kid."

"Did you?"

Of course he didn't recognize me.

"I emailed you."

A pause.

"Ah wait, I do remember that."

But it didn't matter to me anymore.

"I wanted to be you," I said. "I've spent my whole life trying to do what you did."

He chuckled.

"There's only one of me."

I glared at him.

"That's the problem."

His smile faded.

"I've watched you get everything," I continued. "Every damn thing. The roles. The money. The models. The awards. People lose their minds when you walk into a room. Meanwhile, I threw away my entire childhood trying to be seen. And now I'm still carrying cables. Still invisible."

The alcohol had stripped away whatever part of me still knew when to shut up. We stared at each other.

"What do you want me to say to that?" He finally asked.

"I don't want you to say anything. I wish you'd just disappear."

He looked down at his whisky, then back at me.

"You want me to disappear… and you want to be seen instead?"

The question was so calm that it sobered me for a second. I stared at him. In that moment, I could have apologized. Told him I was drunk and didn't mean any of it. Instead, I spat out one final word.

"Sure."

Then I looked down at the glass in my hand. Now you've done it, you absolute idiot, I thought. Might as well start looking for a new job tomorrow.

But when I looked back up, he was gone.

I stood there for a few seconds, staring at the empty space where he'd been. Then I looked behind me, expecting to see him walking back through the doors. Nothing. I glanced over the railing. Nothing.

For a moment, I wondered if I'd imagined the whole conversation. Maybe he'd gone back inside while I was looking at my drink, and none of it had happened at all. When I went inside to check if he was there, the party was still going. There was music, laughter, people talking over one another. Then someone grabbed my shoulder.

"Congratulations!" Shouted one of the producers, as he tapped me on the back. I blinked.

"For what?"

"Don't play it cool now," He laughed.

I smiled awkwardly, assuming I'd misunderstood. Then a member of the cast came over and grinned at me.

"Seriously, you were so good. You deserve it."

People were smiling at me, and a few were raising their glasses. I had no clue what for. Then I turned towards the television mounted above the bar. The film's trailer was playing. As I saw a close-up of the lead character, my eyes widened, and I stopped breathing immediately.

My face. Not his.

Mine.

The scene changed, and there I was again. Another scene. Not him, me.

I looked around. Nobody else was confused like I was, or even seemed to think there was anything strange about it. I saw the poster for the film displayed in the venue on the ground floor. I'd seen it hundreds of times during production, and knew exactly what it looked like. But this time, his face was gone, and mine was there instead. My name was printed underneath in enormous letters. I stared at it for so long that someone walking past had to step around me.

I should have been terrified, but I was too busy staring at myself on the poster. Because underneath the confusion and the impossible feeling that I might be in the middle of a dream, I was feeling something I'd spent twenty years waiting to feel.

What it was like to be famous. Known. Seen.

Him.

The next morning, my phone wouldn't stop ringing. My agent, an agent I didn't remember having, called first, followed by my publicist. Next came the director, and people I'd never spoken to before who apparently knew me very well. There were meetings and interviews scheduled for me.

The film opened that weekend and broke records. I started seeing my face on billboards, magazine covers and at bus stops. Within a year, I couldn't walk down the street without someone recognizing me.

Within another year, I could barely walk down the street at all.

People shouted my name from cars, and children begged for autographs. Grown adults cried when they met me. I went on talk shows and sat beneath bright lights while strangers told me how much I meant to them.

Then came the awards and paychecks. I bought a house I couldn't afford before, and then a bigger one because I liked the view. I flew first class and stayed in hotels where the staff knew my name. The world's most beautiful models wanted to be with me. The world's most powerful men started to dress like me.

But above all, for the first time, everyone turned when I walked into a room. And I loved every second of it.

After everything I'd sacrificed, after every failed audition, every rejection and every night I'd gone home wondering whether I'd wasted my life, surely I had finally gotten what I deserved. I should have felt guilty that he had been erased from existence, but I didn't. As I sipped a glass of wine in my penthouse overlooking the city, I felt like I'd finally won.

Then I learned what came with it.

The paparazzi became impossible to escape. They waited outside restaurants, followed my car and camped outside my house. Fans started turning up wherever I went, too. Some were harmless, but others weren't so understanding. People found my address, and packages started arriving that I hadn't ordered. I received letters from strangers telling me they loved me, hated me, or knew me better than anyone else.

Eventually, I stopped going out alone, and had to have a full fleet of security guards around me at all times.

I started feeling trapped by the life I'd spent so long trying to build, so I took a break from acting. I packed a bag, left the city and rented a small cottage in a remote rural village where, I thought, nobody would know who I was. I arranged discreet transport.

I arrived and settled into the cottage. A wave of relief washed over me instantly as I sat on the bed. For the first time in years, I thought I'd finally have some privacy.

In the evening, I went out and headed towards the town center. The first person I saw as I walked down the street was an old man. He looked to be in his eighties - thin, stooped and dressed in clothes that seemed to have survived as long as he had. He stared at me for a few seconds before smiling, then pointed at me with a shaky hand.

"I know you."

Great.

Even in a village without a cinema or television signal, the first person that sees me still knows who I am. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again.

"Hello. Which of my films have you seen?" I forced a smile.

He frowned.

"What is a film?"

I stared at him.

"You don't know what a film is? Then how do you know who I am?"

The old man gestured, then turned and started walking.

"Come with me."

I followed him inside apprehensively. His house was small and old, with photographs hanging on the walls. There were family photographs of weddings, birthdays and holidays in yellowing frames. A teenage girl who I assumed was his granddaughter was sitting at the kitchen table when we walked in. The old man walked over to a cabinet and pulled out a photograph.

"This is you."

It was a photograph of me at some premiere, on glossy film paper. I was standing on a red carpet, smiling beside an actress. I frowned. Why the hell did he have that? Perhaps his granddaughter was a fan - that was the only reasonable explanation I could think of.

Then he took another photograph from the cabinet.

"And this one."

I looked down. At first, I thought it was another publicity photograph - I'd probably had thousands of those taken of me whether I was aware or not. But then I recognized the location.

The village.

More specifically, the road outside the cottage I was currently staying in. I was beside the wall, mid-step, wearing the same coat I'd arrived in. I stared at it.

"I just arrived here. Did you take this?"

Before he could reply, his granddaughter glanced my way. Her eyes widened.

"It's him."

I stopped.

"You know me too?"

"Of course."

She pulled out a slightly faded photo. In it, she was posing outside the house with some other kids. I looked at it in confusion. Then she pointed at the corner of the photograph. A man stood behind them at a distance, looking at the camera with a neutral expression. I looked closer.

The man was me.

I froze, and all the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

Then the old man immediately pulled out another photograph and showed it to me. This one was much older, and in black and white. A family stood outside a house that looked nothing like the one I was standing in.

"Forty years ago," the old man said.

There were maybe ten people in it, including children, adults and an elderly couple. And in the background, standing half-hidden behind the others… was me. A man with my face, my eyes, my hair.

I hadn't even been born forty years ago.

I took a step back. Then I glanced back towards the photograph his granddaughter had showed me.

This time, every face in the photo had changed.

Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine.

Five children with my face were staring back at me from the faded paper.

I scrambled away from them and ran out of the house. I could hear them shouting behind me, asking me to wait and come back, but I didn't turn. I made it a good distance away when I glanced back towards their house. They stood in front of their door watching me, looking disappointed, but they weren't following. I covered my face and walked briskly back to the cottage.

As I bolted the door behind me, I convinced myself that was some kind of hallucination. Perhaps it was exhaustion or the stress of everything that had happened since becoming famous. There had to be an explanation.

The next morning, I didn't leave until I was sure nobody was outside.

I was halfway through the village when I noticed a girl sitting on a bench, reading a book. She looked up as I passed. Then she looked again and stared for a few seconds.

"Excuse me?"

Not again. I forced a polite smile back and took my hand away from my face. Her eyes widened.

"I knew you looked familiar."

She started flicking through the book she was reading, some kind of history textbook. Then she stopped at a page. There was a Renaissance painting printed across the top.

I felt the blood drain from my face.

The painting was of me. My eyes. My nose. My hair. The caption said 'painted in the sixteenth century'.

She kept turning the pages further back. She stopped again.

This time, a prehistoric cave painting filled the page. It showed a group of primitive figures stood around a fire holding spears.

One of them had my face.

"That's weird." She looked at the cave painting, then back at me. I couldn't answer.

Then a voice came from behind me.

"You've got to be kidding me."

A man was hurrying towards us, holding a newspaper. He looked excited as he shoved the newspaper into my hands. The headline was about an archaeological discovery of an ancient statue had recently been uncovered thousands of miles away. The photograph underneath showed a stone figure.

My face was carved into it.

"How could this be?" He said in awe as he stared at me. I dropped the newspaper.

People had started gathering around. More villagers emerged from shops and houses, many of them approaching to stare. Then an elderly man pushed through the crowd, wearing a white doctor's coat.

"This isn't possible," he said. "I saw you in the morgue just yesterday! There was a corpse who looked exactly like you!"

I backed away from the crowd surrounding me. Then something brushed against my leg.

I looked down and saw a cat. It rubbed itself against my ankle, purring, then stared back at me with wide eyes. I let out an exasperated choke.

"Not you as well."

The cat meowed. I could feel that the people had closed in around me now. I looked back up... and all their faces had changed.

Every face in the crowd looking back at me was mine.

The girl. The doctor. The old man. Everyone had my face.

I looked down at the cat, and it was looking back at me.

With my face.

I screamed.

Then I ran. I didn't care where I was going, I just needed to get away. I pushed through the crowd of hundreds of identical versions of me staring back as I ran between them. I made it to the edge of the town square and a flock of birds suddenly burst from a rooftop. I looked up, and every single bird had my face. Tiny eyes, with tiny versions of my nose and mouth. They flew overhead, each one wearing the same neutral expression I'd seen in the photographs.

I ran faster, stumbling. The town clock tower came into view. Its enormous clock face had changed and now my face stared down at me from above the street. The hands were moving across my forehead. I looked at my watch. It had my face on it too. I ripped it from my wrist and threw it away from me, into the road.

At this point, I was sure I'd gone insane. The sun was disappearing behind the hills, and the sky darkened, but I just kept running. And as the clouds parted and moon rose above the village, I finally stopped and looked up into the sky. Then I fell backwards. The moon had my face.

And that was when I understood.

You want me to disappear… and you want to be seen instead?

I had spent my entire life wanting people to know my face. Now, everything that could have a face would have mine. I had become the most seen thing that had ever existed. Everywhere I looked, there I was.

I ran until I couldn't run anymore. I don't know how long it was - maybe several hours. The sun was already emerging from behind the hills by the time I finally stopped. I stumbled into an empty bus.

Then I remembered the email.

The thought came so suddenly, but once the idea formed, I had to execute on it. I pulled my phone from my pocket and opened my inbox. Hundreds of thousands of emails were sitting there from agents, journalists, fans and people I didn't remember speaking to. I sorted them by oldest and scrolled.

Then I saw it.

Subject: You are my favorite acter

I opened the email I'd sent to him when I was eight. My hands started shaking. The spelling mistakes were still there, along with the ridiculous paragraphs about how much I loved his movies. The part where I'd told him I wanted to grow up to be just like him.

And underneath it, by some miracle, was his reply - the only proof that he'd existed. Proof that there had once been a world where I wasn't the only face in existence.

I stared at the screen, then took a breath and hit reply. I didn't know whether anyone would receive it, but I kept typing anyway.

Subject: I'm sorry.

Then:

I was wrong, I don't want this. Please come back. Please fix it.

I pressed send, then put my phone beside me and closed my eyes, the exhaustion of running from my face for an entire afternoon having drained me. I don't remember falling asleep that night.

When I woke up, the sun was rising. For a few seconds, I didn't move. Then I looked up.

The moon was still visible above the hills. Normal. Just the moon.

I sat up. A bird landed on the roof of the shelter. A normal bird with a beak.

Then I looked towards the village. The clock tower was still there, but this time, the face was just numbers.

I stood up and walked towards the road. People passed me, but nobody stared or pointed. One man walked straight past without even looking at me. Nobody recognized me.

I paused as I looked around, watching the people walk around me with indifference. I couldn't believe it had actually worked… and it never felt so great to be invisible again.

When I reached the cottage, I went inside and stood in the middle of the room, then I packed my things. Now that this ordeal was over, I just wanted to go home.

The journey felt strangely ordinary. I just drove back. Even though I didn't have security, no paparazzi followed me, no one attempted to stop the car and nobody recognized me at the petrol station or asked for a photograph. Then I saw the billboard above the road on the outskirts of town, advertising the film that had started everything.

My old idol was back. His face was on the poster… not mine. His name was underneath.

I laughed. He was back, and so was everything else, just like I asked for. I drove the rest of the way home with tears in my eyes. When I reached my family's house, I stood outside for a moment before knocking. My mother answered.

"Hello. Can I help you?"

I smiled.

"Mom, I'm back."

She frowned.

"I'm sorry? Who are you?"

I laughed nervously.

"Very funny."

She didn't laugh. My heart started racing. I told her my name, my birthday and where I went to school. I told her about the scar on my elbow from when I was nine, where she patched me up while I sat on her knee. I told her about the treehouse I had built with dad in the garden.

She just kept staring in silence. I kept pleading with her, and eventually, she called my father. He came downstairs and stood beside her, watching me with suspicion.

"Who are you?"

"I'm your son," I said, my voice breaking.

I pulled out my phone and opened the photographs I'd taken over the years. Every photograph of my family was still there - birthdays, Christmases and holidays. I had decade old photos of my parents and friends. But I wasn't in any of them. My dad's expression changed into one of horror.

"Why do you have those? Have you been stalking us?"

I stared back at him. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

"Leave our property. Now," he said sternly. "I don't ever want to see you here again."

I stood on the pavement outside my childhood home while the door slammed in my face.

I didn't know where else to go, so I began walking. I walked past the houses of people I'd grown up with, and nobody recognized me. I went to the café where I used to meet my friends, and I even saw some of them there. Nobody knew me. I walked past my old school and told the receptionist my name. She looked it up, but there was no record.

If I asked someone for directions, they'd give them to me. I bought a coffee, and the barista took my money. People could still see me, hear me and talk to me. But every conversation began the same way - I'd have to introduce myself again, even if we'd spoken before.

That was when I finally understood what had happened when I asked him to “fix” it.

From that point onwards, no one would know me. There are no photographs of me. No records, films or memories. Nothing that proves I was ever here. To every person I met and will meet, I'll always be a stranger.

You used to know me. But you'll never know me again, and neither will anyone else.

Thanks for reading this anyway.

Even if it was only for a few minutes, I just wanted to be someone you knew.

"It keeps you safe," the previous owner beamed as he handed over the keys.

He had just walked me through all the security features. There were cameras covering every angle of the property, motion sensors, automatic locks, alarms, even windows that could lock themselves if they detected an impact.

“Bit much, isn't it?” I joked.

“You'll appreciate it.”

A few weeks after I moved in, I was in bed when the house suddenly came alive.

An alarm started screaming. Every light in the house switched on at once, the windows bolted closed and the locks clicked shut. I ran downstairs and looked through the window. Someone dressed in all black was running away down the street.

The police found marks around the door and said the man had been trying to get inside. I was impressed. The house had just kept an intruder out, and it was pretty cool to see those advanced security features in action for the first time.

Then, things started getting strange.

A month later, my girlfriend came over and we got into an argument. It started over something stupid, I can't even remember what. We started yelling at each other from separate rooms, and when she came down the hallway towards the room I was in, the door slammed shut between us.

The lock clicked. She was on one side and I was on the other.

“What the hell?” I tried the handle.

Nothing. I pushed harder, but it wouldn't unlock. Finally, she left, and the door only unlocked after. I thought the security system had malfunctioned.

But that wasn't the only incident.

The new neighbor was always parking in my spot. One afternoon, I saw him in his garden and decided to confront him about it. Before I could reach the fence, the sprinklers suddenly switched on. I stood there soaked as I watched him go back inside.

It was beginning to feel like the house had a mind of its own.

And a few weeks ago, I saw someone walking past the house. I've seen them before, often enough that I recognize them now. They're usually alone, and they walk past around the same time. The street was empty. There would be no witnesses. So I walked downstairs and opened the front door. It slammed shut, so I tried again. Locked. I went to the kitchen window. Locked. The back door. Locked. I stood in the hallway fuming.

Perhaps it also knew about the knife I was holding behind my back when my girlfriend visited, or the pistol in my jacket when I was watching my neighbor from the garden.

I still see you walking past the house sometimes. I've tried everything, but it never lets me out.

Shame.

Seems like it really does keep you safe.

"It keeps you safe," the previous owner beamed as he handed over the keys.

He had just walked me through all the security features. There were cameras covering every angle of the property, motion sensors, automatic locks, alarms, even windows that could lock themselves if they detected an impact.

“Bit much, isn't it?” I joked.

“You'll appreciate it.”

A few weeks after I moved in, I was in bed when the house suddenly came alive.

An alarm started screaming. Every light in the house switched on at once, the windows bolted closed and the locks clicked shut. I ran downstairs and looked through the window. Someone dressed in all black was running away down the street.

The police found marks around the door and said the man had been trying to get inside. I was impressed. The house had just kept an intruder out, and it was pretty cool to see those advanced security features in action for the first time.

Then, things started getting strange.

A month later, my girlfriend came over and we got into an argument. It started over something stupid, I can't even remember what. We started yelling at each other from separate rooms, and when she came down the hallway towards the room I was in, the door slammed shut between us.

The lock clicked. She was on one side and I was on the other.

“What the hell?” I tried the handle.

Nothing. I pushed harder, but it wouldn't unlock. Finally, she left, and the door only unlocked after. I thought the security system had malfunctioned.

But that wasn't the only incident.

The new neighbor was always parking in my spot. One afternoon, I saw him in his garden and decided to confront him about it. Before I could reach the fence, the sprinklers suddenly switched on. I stood there soaked as I watched him go back inside.

It was beginning to feel like the house had a mind of its own.

And a few weeks ago, I saw someone walking past the house. I've seen them before, often enough that I recognize them now. They're usually alone, and they walk past around the same time. The street was empty. There would be no witnesses. So I walked downstairs and opened the front door. It slammed shut, so I tried again. Locked. I went to the kitchen window. Locked. The back door. Locked. I stood in the hallway fuming.

Perhaps it also knew about the knife I was holding behind my back when my girlfriend visited, or the pistol in my jacket when I was watching my neighbor from the garden.

I still see you walking past the house sometimes. I've tried everything, but it never lets me out.

Shame.

Seems like it really does keep you safe.

GOVERNMENT EMERGENCY ALERT

PLEASE REMAIN INDOORS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

My phone lit up and started shrieking at 7AM, along with every other connected device in my apartment block. I stared at the screen, waiting for an explanation. Terrorist attack? Weather warning? Chemical leak?

Nothing.

People panicked, and pretty much everyone obeyed at first. Those who were out at the time scrambled to get inside, awaiting a disaster. But by lunchtime, nothing had happened. By dinner, thousands had left their homes, and by the next day, there were protests.

The same message repeated every day at 7AM for the next week.

Shops closed and roads became clogged. Some remained indoors the entire time, but most left eventually. People demanded answers that never came.

I stayed inside on the first day. On the second, I went out in the evening… and there was absolutely nothing to see. Nothing was falling from the sky, and apart from the chaos in public, everything was fine. Within another few days, most people had stopped listening.

Exactly one week after the original alert, another message arrived at 7AM.

THE PREVIOUS EMERGENCY ALERT HAS ENDED. NORMAL ACTIVITY MAY RESUME.

That was it - no explanation or apology. People were furious, and within weeks the whole thing became a joke. They made memes and mocked politicians, and of course, conspiracies circulated online. But otherwise life returned to normal fairly quickly.

Exactly one year later, every phone in the country screamed again at 7AM.

GOVERNMENT EMERGENCY ALERT

PLEASE REMAIN INDOORS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

I rolled my eyes - not this again. I finished breakfast and walked to my front door to leave, my hand resting on the handle.

Something stopped me.

Perhaps it was fear or instinct, but I decided against leaving at all this time. Hours passed, then days. People online were already mocking the government again. News reports showed crowds outside, and politicians demanded that the alert be cancelled.

On the seventh day, I woke to the second message.

THE PREVIOUS EMERGENCY ALERT HAS ENDED. NORMAL ACTIVITY MAY RESUME.

Finally, I thought, as I turned on the television.

I froze as the news channel popped up.

An unprecedented solar event had just struck Earth. The radiation and electromagnetic effects had killed almost everyone who had been outside. Two-thirds of the country's population was dead.

I sat on the floor shaking and cried with relief. The government had been warning us after all. Perhaps the first time had been a mistake, but thank God I had listened the second time.

That evening, the President addressed the nation.

“How can the country possibly recover?” He was asked. “We've lost almost two-thirds of our population. Hospitals, transport, food production, energy… everything has been affected.”

“It will be difficult,” he said. “But essential services, infrastructure and the economy will be restored much sooner than people might expect. We're well prepared.”

He paused.

“The number of survivors is very consistent with last year's projections.”

I had been working in prisons, most of which housed killers and other violent offenders, for twenty-eight years when I took on my last job.

Some of them were impulsive, others were clever. But I'd seen it all.

Prisoners had tried everything on me over the years - death threats, fake medical emergencies and contraband passed through food were just the tip of the iceberg. Men who'd spent weeks acting half-dead before suddenly putting their head through a cell door weren't unusual. So by the time I was called for the job, I had a reputation for being steady.

The pay was better, but that wasn't what sold it for me. It was the prisoner.

For the purposes of this story, I'll call him John. I'd heard his real name long before I was assigned to him. Everyone in corrections had. He was one of those serial killers you only hear about in true-crime documentaries decades later.

Dangerous.

The kind of mastermind who stayed ahead of the police for years, leaving investigators chasing dead. Eventually, an entire task force threw everything they had at him, and some detective finally got lucky enough to find one tiny mistake in his plan.

He'd been incarcerated under different names in institutions across the country. He had killed prison staff in multiple incidents, manipulated officers into giving him access to restricted areas and made tools from things that should never have been capable of becoming tools. His file used the words "exceptionally intelligent", "highly skilled" and one psychologist had described him as "possessing an unusual ability to recognize patterns in institutional behavior".

Basically, another way of saying 'this bastard keeps catching us off guard'.

A challenge perhaps, but if anything, I was intrigued. I'd spent nearly three decades learning the tricks of the worst people society had to offer, and I wanted to see what he could throw at me that was different.

"He's been stable," remarked the deputy warden, as I closed the file. "Caused no problems for several months."

"And before that?" I asked.

He picked up the file and flipped back through the photographs, medical reports, security assessments and other evidence of the damage John had left behind.

"Before that, he caused many." He grimaced slightly.

"So what's changed?"

"I'd guess he reconsidered. You'd be surprised, many find God after a few hard years in a cell."

I highly doubted that - I'd seen lots of men 'find God' when they realized it might help their case. I said nothing and let him continue.

Then, the deputy warden opened a drawer and took out a small black device attached to a short lanyard with my staff ID card. There was a single recessed button on it.

"If anything happens," he said, placing it on the desk between us, "push the button. The response time is very fast."

I put the lanyard around my neck and followed him inside.

The prison itself was impressive - there was concrete reinforced by steel, cameras everywhere, controlled doors and layered access points. It didn't seem like they were short on budget when it came to security. By the time I reached the him, I'd expected something almost industrial, like a steel box with a solid door and restraints fixed to the wall.

Instead, John was at the end of a block behind ordinary-looking bars, alongside a few other prisoners in identical cells.

Each had a bed, a built-in toilet and sink, a desk with a Bible on it. One security camera in the corner overlooking the entire block. That was it - no chains, restraints or reinforced doors. It seemed insultingly inadequate for both his reputation and my safety.

John himself was young-looking. Early thirties, perhaps. Clean-shaven and neatly dressed, with short, dark hair. He had the build of a track runner, and there was nothing physically intimidating about him. If I'd seen him on the street, I would've assumed he worked an office job.

He stood when I approached, his voice quiet.

"Morning."

"Morning," I replied, watching him carefully. "You'll be seeing a lot of me, I'm taking over your supervision. Keep things straightforward, and we'll have no problems."

His eyes moved down briefly to the ID card and button hanging from the lanyard around my neck, and back to my face.

Then he just gave a nod and sat down. I remained standing for a moment before taking the chair outside the bars. John was quiet for a while as he sat on the bed and flicked through the Bible. Eventually, he looked up at me and spoke.

"How you finding the new place?"

He sounded nonchalant, like he was making an effort at small talk, but wasn't particularly interested in the answer. I watched him cautiously.

"Can't complain."

"That's good. Assume you've been in enough places to compare."

Another pause as I watched him, looking for the trick. But there was no defensiveness or aggression in his voice.

"You've been here a while now, John," I finally said. "No problems?"

He shook his head.

"Got everything you need?"

"Yeah. Bible and a bit of exercise when I feel like it."

I started asking the usual questions about how he was settling in, and if there were problems with meals, showers and so on. He answered everything politely with no attitude or attempts to provoke me. He didn't react when I mentioned I'd read his file. If anything, he seemed bored, but never disrespectful. I spent the rest of that shift waiting for the trick that never came. He's just trying to make me let my guard down, I thought. But I can't deny I'd gone in expecting more of a challenge.

Eventually, I told him I was leaving at the end of my shift. He just nodded, not looking up from his Bible.

I started making my way out and was halfway down the block when I heard a quiet, high-pitched noise coming from a cell nearest the door at the opposite end. It wasn't quite a voice. I frowned and walked to the end, peering into the cell.

I nearly took a step back.

An emaciated, almost skeletal prisoner was staring back at me, folded up in a dark corner of the cell. At first glance, I couldn't even tell if it was a man or a woman. Only the high pitched voice gave it away.

Her arms looked little more than bone beneath the skin, and her shoulders jutted forward at an awkward angle. What little hair she had left came in sparse wisps, hanging from her scalp in thin, uneven strands. Most of her head was visible beneath them. There were patches where it looked as though she'd pulled the hair out herself, and blisters where she'd picked at her skin. There was a tiny silver cross necklace around her neck.

Then she made the noise again. That same high-pitched whine, that sounded like something her body produced without her permission. After several seconds, she tilted her head slightly to one side and began whispering. Her lips moved rapidly, but the sound was so faint and indistinct that it might as well have been another language.

I had worked around mentally ill prisoners before - whatever was wrong with this woman, I assumed it was along those lines. I'd gone into the block to meet one of the most dangerous men in the world, expecting if anything was going to unsettle me, it would surely be that. But as I stood there watching her, I'd forgotten about John entirely. I took a breath, broke eye contact, and left.

For the next few weeks, nothing happened with John.

He got up when he was supposed to, ate when food was brought around, took his exercise periods without complaint and returned to his cell when instructed. He never raised his voice or argued. Mostly, he seemed bored.

According to his file, calculation was practically his defining characteristic. I'd gone into the assignment assuming that every interaction would have some purpose behind it, that every question he asked would be part of some larger plan, but nothing happened.

And when nothing happens for long enough, you start to relax.

One morning, I caught myself standing closer to the bars than I should have been, my keys hanging loosely from two fingers as I checked something on my clipboard. I noticed where I was standing and immediately stepped back, making a mental note of it. I'd spent nearly two decades telling younger officers not to do exactly that.

The next week, I did the exact same thing.

This time, John was sitting on the edge of his bed, watching me. He looked at the keys, then back at me like I was an idiot. Then he just laid down on the bed.

A few days later, I made another stupid mistake - I dropped a flashlight within reach of the bars and only noticed when I was halfway down the block. When I went back to retrieve it, John hadn't made any attempt to touch it, let alone use it as a weapon or escape tool. He just glanced back at me with the same bored expression, now almost with a hint of added disappointment, as if he couldn't believe I'd been that careless.

After a while, I started to wonder whether the man in the file and the man sitting in front of me were actually the same person. I still wasn't naïve enough to believe he'd suddenly become harmless, perhaps he was simply tired.

The woman was harder to ignore.

Sometimes she'd stand at the front of her cell and watch everyone that passed through the door. Sometimes she sat on the floor with her knees pulled against her chest, rocking slightly. And sometimes she cried, a strange, broken sort of crying, with long pauses between each sound. I eventually got used to it in the way you get used to unpleasant things in prison.

One afternoon, long after speaking to John felt completely normal, I nodded toward her cell.

"She been here a while?"

John glanced over and exhaled with a hint of frustration.

"Yeah, don't mind her, she does that all day. Sometimes at night too, while everyone's trying to sleep."

He sounded mildly inconvenienced.

"Does she ever talk?" I glanced toward the cell.

"Not that I've heard."

I took his word for it, figuring that whatever she'd done to end up in a place like this, she probably deserved it.

A few mornings later, I was running late. I'd underestimated how long it would take me to get through some paperwork before my shift, and there was a form I needed to complete that needed the long ID number on my staff badge.

I took the lanyard off along with the button and copied the number down. Then I stuffed both into my trouser pocket and hurried into the block.

By the time I entered John's section, I'd completely forgotten about it. John was sitting on the edge of his bed, his Bible beside him.

"Morning."

"Morning."

I closed the door behind me and started checking the block. We exchanged the usual few words, and he said he slept well enough. Then I turned away from him to check something on my clipboard.

I heard a metallic click. I looked back and the cell was empty - the door was open and John was gone.

Then I felt his arm lock around my neck from behind.

I was surprised in the moment, but I didn't panic. If anything, I'd been expecting something like this from the beginning.

Finally, I thought. There he is. The real John.

I reacted automatically, tucking my chin hard against my chest and grabbing his choking arm with both hands, trying to relieve the pressure while turning toward him. It was something I'd practiced countless times over the years. I managed to get two fingers between his forearm and my neck, creating just enough space to breathe. For a moment, I thought I might get out of it without even having to use the button, and teach him a lesson after.

But then he adjusted effortlessly, shifting his grip and driving his forearm back against my neck. The pressure was precise, and he knew exactly what he was doing. I tried to drop my weight and drive backward into him, but he anticipated that too and stood firm.

My legs were already beginning to weaken, and whatever advantage I thought I'd had disappeared. This was not someone I could afford to underestimate.

My vision began to narrow as I reached instinctively for the button at my chest. Nothing.

For one confused second, I couldn't understand why it wasn't there, but then I remembered I put it in my pocket after using my ID card for the paperwork. I fumbled for it, but my fingers weren't working properly anymore. I could feel the edge of the device against my leg, just out of reach. I clawed at the pocket. Then my fingers closed around it, and I pushed the button.

For a second, nothing happened. No shrieking alarms or anything of the sort.

Then I heard boots pounding down the corridor. Ten guards burst through the door almost at once.

As soon as they entered, the pressure around my neck vanished. I collapsed forward, coughing and dragging air into my lungs.

I stumbled away from the cell, more frustrated at having to use the button than relieved to be alive, replaying the attack in my head. I was already running through the counters I could have used if I'd had another few seconds. I glanced at them, expecting them to seize John.

But they didn't even go past me. They turned straight into the woman's cell.

Two officers grabbed her, and she began screaming. Not like the strange whining sound before - this was a scream of pure terror, so loud and prolonged that it seemed to fill the entire block. One of the officers forced her arm behind her back, and another officer produced a syringe containing a yellow liquid. The screaming intensified as the color emptied into her neck.

Confused, I looked toward John at the other end of the block.

He was on his knees. His eyes were wide and glassy.

"Please."

His voice was barely audible beneath her screaming. He met my gaze.

"Tell them to stop. Please."

I just stared at him.

"I don't know what's happening," I finally managed. I didn't even hear myself speak.

One of the guards turned toward him.

"Back in the cell, John." The guard raised another syringe. "Or you know what happens."

John's swallowed, eyes still wide. He stood and walked back into his cell voluntarily.

The woman was still screaming, but her voice was breaking now. They dragged her back into the cell and closed the door. Another officer closed the bars behind John. Then they simply left, and didn't even bother checking John's cell to see how he'd escaped.

I stepped closer to John's cell cautiously and noticed something small on the ground.

He'd made a key of sorts. I picked it up. It was crude, but unmistakable - a thin, rigid piece of material shaped to fit the lock, made of paper. The key had been made from pages of his bible, layered and compressed until they formed something stiff enough to manipulate the mechanism. Then I looked at the Bible, still on his desk. They hadn't even bothered to take it away.

I looked at John, sitting on the edge of his bed again. Then his eyes dropped to the button in my hand. For the first time since I'd started working that block, I hadn't been wearing the button around my neck. I'd put it in my pocket. But it seemed John thought I'd forgotten it altogether.

He looked back at me with something like betrayal.

I came back the following morning. I wasn't particularly looking forward to it, but I hadn't slept well and decided it was better to get the first shift out of the way. John was exactly where I'd left him, sitting on the edge of his bed with the Bible beside him.

"Morning."

"Morning."

I stood outside the bars for a moment, studying him.

There was no hostility or lingering resentment in his expression. Nothing that suggested he'd nearly killed me the day before… or the chaos that came after.

"John, can I see the Bible?"

"Yeah."

He picked it up and handed it through the bars without protest. I took it from him and turned it over in my hands, then opened it. Sure enough, two pages had been torn out. I flicked through the section around the missing pages, then looked back at him.

"These shouldn't be missing. I'll have to confiscate it."

He shrugged.

"I suppose not. Have it."

He said it with complete indifference.

I turned the Bible over again and ran my thumb along the inside of the back cover and felt something give slightly beneath it. There was a flap. Not part of the original binding. Something had been carefully worked into the inside of the cover, creating a small concealed pocket.

I slipped my finger underneath it and pulled out a photograph.

It was old. The colors had faded slightly, and the edges were worn from being handled. I looked at it and saw a man and a woman.

I immediately recognized that the man in the photograph was John, younger by at least ten years.

He was smiling as he looked at the woman. I'd never seen him smile like that. The young woman beside him looked healthy and beautiful. There was warmth in her face, and she was smiling too, her head rested against his shoulder, his arm around her waist. I didn't recognize her at first, until I noticed that she was wearing a tiny silver cross necklace. The same one as the emaciated woman on the other side of the block. The realization dawned on me.

"You talked like you didn't know her," I said, still looking down at the photo.

I looked up at him, then almost jumped.

He was looking at me with pure, unfiltered hatred.

"I wonder why."

Neither of us spoke for a long time.

It was then that I understood he wouldn't be doing anything else with the bible. I slotted the photo back inside and slid it carefully down through the bars. He seemed to relax a little, and looked away. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and flat.

"She didn't used to look like that."

I watched him.

"What did they do to her?"

He didn't answer. A minute passed.

Then he lay back on the bed and turned his face toward the wall.

"I'm tired. Gonna sleep for a bit."

And that was all I got.

For the first time since I'd met him, I didn't see a dangerous man sitting in that cell. I finally understood what the button actually did. It wasn't there to protect me from John. It was there to control him.

John was back to his regular self after that. But I wasn't. Once I'd seen the photograph, I couldn't stop thinking about the woman at the end of the block.

I looked through the records as my last shift of the week finished. Every inmate had a paper trail - things like arrest and court records, sentencing information, medical records. Even people who had been incarcerated for decades left a mountain of paperwork behind them. I couldn't find hers.

There was a prisoner number, but no corresponding sentencing record. No court order or conviction. I thought perhaps I'd missed something and dug deeper. Her name was there, and the entries went back a few months. I frowned when I realized what file I was looking at.

Visitor Log.

She had visited John at his previous facility more than once. Then I reached the final entry.

Her status had changed from visitor to inmate.

I stared at it for a long time, then flipped to the admission form for the offence.

Something had been written there, but the handwriting was almost completely illegible. It looked as though whoever had filled it out had been writing in a hurry, or simply didn't care whether anyone could read it. I took the paperwork to the warden.

"What's this?"

I pointed to the handwriting. He looked at the page and squinted at it, then shrugged.

"No idea. How'd you expect me to read that?"

"She was John's visitor."

"Oh, was she? Well, birds of a feather."

He headed to the office. It was then I understood she had done nothing at all. And I wasn't going to be a part of that.

The next morning, I walked into the warden's office and put my badge on his desk. Then I put the button beside it. He looked at them.

"You're quitting already?"

"Yes."

He didn't ask why, didn't argue, just nodded.

"Alright. Guess we'll have to find someone to take your place then. Left us with a hard job, eh?"

I handed everything over before the end of my shift and walked through the prison one final time. I reached the last security door and stepped outside.

I had almost reached the outer gate when I heard her scream. It was faint but unmistakable, carrying through the reinforced walls despite the distance.

Then came another voice.

"Please. Please stop."

GOVERNMENT EMERGENCY ALERT

PLEASE REMAIN INDOORS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

My phone lit up and started shrieking at 7AM, along with every other connected device in my apartment block. I stared at the screen, waiting for an explanation. Terrorist attack? Weather warning? Chemical leak?

Nothing.

People panicked, and pretty much everyone obeyed at first. Those who were out at the time scrambled to get inside, awaiting a disaster. But by lunchtime, nothing had happened. By dinner, thousands had left their homes, and by the next day, there were protests.

The same message repeated every day at 7AM for the next week.

Shops closed and roads became clogged. Some remained indoors the entire time, but most left eventually. People demanded answers that never came.

I stayed inside on the first day. On the second, I went out in the evening… and there was absolutely nothing to see. Nothing was falling from the sky, and apart from the chaos in public, everything was fine. Within another few days, most people had stopped listening.

Exactly one week after the original alert, another message arrived at 7AM.

THE PREVIOUS EMERGENCY ALERT HAS ENDED. NORMAL ACTIVITY MAY RESUME.

That was it - no explanation or apology. People were furious, and within weeks the whole thing became a joke. They made memes and mocked politicians, and of course, conspiracies circulated online. But otherwise life returned to normal fairly quickly.

Exactly one year later, every phone in the country screamed again at 7AM.

GOVERNMENT EMERGENCY ALERT

PLEASE REMAIN INDOORS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

I rolled my eyes - not this again. I finished breakfast and walked to my front door to leave, my hand resting on the handle.

Something stopped me.

Perhaps it was fear or instinct, but I decided against leaving at all this time. Hours passed, then days. People online were already mocking the government again. News reports showed crowds outside, and politicians demanded that the alert be cancelled.

On the seventh day, I woke to the second message.

THE PREVIOUS EMERGENCY ALERT HAS ENDED. NORMAL ACTIVITY MAY RESUME.

Finally, I thought, as I turned on the television.

I froze as the news channel popped up.

An unprecedented solar event had just struck Earth. The radiation and electromagnetic effects had killed almost everyone who had been outside. Two-thirds of the country's population was dead.

I sat on the floor shaking and cried with relief. The government had been warning us after all. Perhaps the first time had been a mistake, but thank God I had listened the second time.

That evening, the President addressed the nation.

“How can the country possibly recover?” He was asked. “We've lost almost two-thirds of our population. Hospitals, transport, food production, energy… everything has been affected.”

“It will be difficult,” he said. “But essential services, infrastructure and the economy will be restored much sooner than people might expect. We're well prepared.”

He paused.

“The number of survivors is very consistent with last year's projections.”

GOVERNMENT EMERGENCY ALERT

PLEASE REMAIN INDOORS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

My phone lit up and started shrieking at 7AM, along with every other connected device in my apartment block. I stared at the screen, waiting for an explanation. Terrorist attack? Weather warning? Chemical leak?

Nothing.

People panicked, and pretty much everyone obeyed at first. Those who were out at the time scrambled to get inside, awaiting a disaster. But by lunchtime, nothing had happened. By dinner, thousands had left their homes, and by the next day, there were protests.

The same message repeated every day at 7AM for the next week.

Shops closed and roads became clogged. Some remained indoors the entire time, but most left eventually. People demanded answers that never came.

I stayed inside on the first day. On the second, I went out in the evening… and there was absolutely nothing to see. Nothing was falling from the sky, and apart from the chaos in public, everything was fine. Within another few days, most people had stopped listening.

Exactly one week after the original alert, another message arrived at 7AM.

THE PREVIOUS EMERGENCY ALERT HAS ENDED. NORMAL ACTIVITY MAY RESUME.

That was it - no explanation or apology. People were furious, and within weeks the whole thing became a joke. They made memes and mocked politicians, and of course, conspiracies circulated online. But otherwise life returned to normal fairly quickly.

Exactly one year later, every phone in the country screamed again at 7AM.

GOVERNMENT EMERGENCY ALERT

PLEASE REMAIN INDOORS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

I rolled my eyes - not this again. I finished breakfast and walked to my front door to leave, my hand resting on the handle.

Something stopped me.

Perhaps it was fear or instinct, but I decided against leaving at all this time. Hours passed, then days. People online were already mocking the government again. News reports showed crowds outside, and politicians demanded that the alert be cancelled.

On the seventh day, I woke to the second message.

THE PREVIOUS EMERGENCY ALERT HAS ENDED. NORMAL ACTIVITY MAY RESUME.

Finally, I thought, as I turned on the television.

I froze as the news channel popped up.

An unprecedented solar event had just struck Earth. The radiation and electromagnetic effects had killed almost everyone who had been outside. Two-thirds of the country's population was dead.

I sat on the floor shaking and cried with relief. The government had been warning us after all. Perhaps the first time had been a mistake, but thank God I had listened the second time.

That evening, the President addressed the nation.

“How can the country possibly recover?” He was asked. “We've lost almost two-thirds of our population. Hospitals, transport, food production, energy… everything has been affected.”

“It will be difficult,” he said. “But essential services, infrastructure and the economy will be restored much sooner than people might expect. We're well prepared.”

He paused.

“The number of survivors is very consistent with last year's projections.”

GOVERNMENT EMERGENCY ALERT

PLEASE REMAIN INDOORS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

My phone lit up and started shrieking at 7AM, along with every other connected device in my apartment block. I stared at the screen, waiting for an explanation. Terrorist attack? Weather warning? Chemical leak?

Nothing.

People panicked, and pretty much everyone obeyed at first. Those who were out at the time scrambled to get inside, awaiting a disaster. But by lunchtime, nothing had happened. By dinner, thousands had left their homes, and by the next day, there were protests.

The same message repeated every day at 7AM for the next week.

Shops closed and roads became clogged. Some remained indoors the entire time, but most left eventually. People demanded answers that never came.

I stayed inside on the first day. On the second, I went out in the evening… and there was absolutely nothing to see. Nothing was falling from the sky, and apart from the chaos in public, everything was fine. Within another few days, most people had stopped listening.

Exactly one week after the original alert, another message arrived at 7AM.

THE PREVIOUS EMERGENCY ALERT HAS ENDED. NORMAL ACTIVITY MAY RESUME.

That was it - no explanation or apology. People were furious, and within weeks the whole thing became a joke. They made memes and mocked politicians, and of course, conspiracies circulated online. But otherwise life returned to normal fairly quickly.

Exactly one year later, every phone in the country screamed again at 7AM.

GOVERNMENT EMERGENCY ALERT

PLEASE REMAIN INDOORS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

I rolled my eyes - not this again. I finished breakfast and walked to my front door to leave, my hand resting on the handle.

Something stopped me.

Perhaps it was fear or instinct, but I decided against leaving at all this time. Hours passed, then days. People online were already mocking the government again. News reports showed crowds outside, and politicians demanded that the alert be cancelled.

On the seventh day, I woke to the second message.

THE PREVIOUS EMERGENCY ALERT HAS ENDED. NORMAL ACTIVITY MAY RESUME.

Finally, I thought, as I turned on the television.

I froze as the news channel popped up.

An unprecedented solar event had just struck Earth. The radiation and electromagnetic effects had killed almost everyone who had been outside. Two-thirds of the country's population was dead.

I sat on the floor shaking and cried with relief. The government had been warning us after all. Perhaps the first time had been a mistake, but thank God I had listened the second time.

That evening, the President addressed the nation.

“How can the country possibly recover?” He was asked. “We've lost almost two-thirds of our population. Hospitals, transport, food production, energy… everything has been affected.”

“It will be difficult,” he said. “But essential services, infrastructure and the economy will be restored much sooner than people might expect. We're well prepared.”

He paused.

“The number of survivors is very consistent with last year's projections.”

GOVERNMENT EMERGENCY ALERT

PLEASE REMAIN INDOORS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

My phone lit up and started shrieking at 7AM, along with every other connected device in my apartment block. I stared at the screen, waiting for an explanation. Terrorist attack? Weather warning? Chemical leak?

Nothing.

People panicked, and pretty much everyone obeyed at first. Those who were out at the time scrambled to get inside, awaiting a disaster. But by lunchtime, nothing had happened. By dinner, thousands had left their homes, and by the next day, there were protests.

The same message repeated every day at 7AM for the next week.

Shops closed and roads became clogged. Some remained indoors the entire time, but most left eventually. People demanded answers that never came.

I stayed inside on the first day. On the second, I went out in the evening… and there was absolutely nothing to see. Nothing was falling from the sky, and apart from the chaos in public, everything was fine. Within another few days, most people had stopped listening.

Exactly one week after the original alert, another message arrived at 7AM.

THE PREVIOUS EMERGENCY ALERT HAS ENDED. NORMAL ACTIVITY MAY RESUME.

That was it - no explanation or apology. People were furious, and within weeks the whole thing became a joke. They made memes and mocked politicians, and of course, conspiracies circulated online. But otherwise life returned to normal fairly quickly.

Exactly one year later, every phone in the country screamed again at 7AM.

GOVERNMENT EMERGENCY ALERT

PLEASE REMAIN INDOORS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

I rolled my eyes - not this again. I finished breakfast and walked to my front door to leave, my hand resting on the handle.

Something stopped me.

Perhaps it was fear or instinct, but I decided against leaving at all this time. Hours passed, then days. People online were already mocking the government again. News reports showed crowds outside, and politicians demanded that the alert be cancelled.

On the seventh day, I woke to the second message.

THE PREVIOUS EMERGENCY ALERT HAS ENDED. NORMAL ACTIVITY MAY RESUME.

Finally, I thought, as I turned on the television.

I froze as the news channel popped up.

An unprecedented solar event had just struck Earth. The radiation and electromagnetic effects had killed almost everyone who had been outside. Two-thirds of the country's population was dead.

I sat on the floor shaking and cried with relief. The government had been warning us after all. Perhaps the first time had been a mistake, but thank God I had listened the second time.

That evening, the President addressed the nation.

“How can the country possibly recover?” He was asked. “We've lost almost two-thirds of our population. Hospitals, transport, food production, energy… everything has been affected.”

“It will be difficult,” he said. “But essential services, infrastructure and the economy will be restored much sooner than people might expect. We're well prepared.”

He paused.

“The number of survivors is very consistent with last year's projections.”

I had been working in prisons, most of which housed killers and other violent offenders, for twenty-eight years when I took on my last job.

Some of them were impulsive, others were clever. But I'd seen it all.

Prisoners had tried everything on me over the years - death threats, fake medical emergencies and contraband passed through food were just the tip of the iceberg. Men who'd spent weeks acting half-dead before suddenly putting their head through a cell door weren't unusual. So by the time I was called for the job, I had a reputation for being steady.

The pay was better, but that wasn't what sold it for me. It was the prisoner.

For the purposes of this story, I'll call him John. I'd heard his real name long before I was assigned to him. Everyone in corrections had. He was one of those serial killers you only hear about in true-crime documentaries decades later.

Dangerous.

The kind of mastermind who stayed ahead of the police for years, leaving investigators chasing dead. Eventually, an entire task force threw everything they had at him, and some detective finally got lucky enough to find one tiny mistake in his plan.

He'd been incarcerated under different names in institutions across the country. He had killed prison staff in multiple incidents, manipulated officers into giving him access to restricted areas and made tools from things that should never have been capable of becoming tools. His file used the words "exceptionally intelligent", "highly skilled" and one psychologist had described him as "possessing an unusual ability to recognize patterns in institutional behavior".

Basically, another way of saying 'this bastard keeps catching us off guard'.

A challenge perhaps, but if anything, I was intrigued. I'd spent nearly three decades learning the tricks of the worst people society had to offer, and I wanted to see what he could throw at me that was different.

"He's been stable," remarked the deputy warden, as I closed the file. "Caused no problems for several months."

"And before that?" I asked.

He picked up the file and flipped back through the photographs, medical reports, security assessments and other evidence of the damage John had left behind.

"Before that, he caused many." He grimaced slightly.

"So what's changed?"

"I'd guess he reconsidered. You'd be surprised, many find God after a few hard years in a cell."

I highly doubted that - I'd seen lots of men 'find God' when they realized it might help their case. I said nothing and let him continue.

Then, the deputy warden opened a drawer and took out a small black device attached to a short lanyard with my staff ID card. There was a single recessed button on it.

"If anything happens," he said, placing it on the desk between us, "push the button. The response time is very fast."

I put the lanyard around my neck and followed him inside.

The prison itself was impressive - there was concrete reinforced by steel, cameras everywhere, controlled doors and layered access points. It didn't seem like they were short on budget when it came to security. By the time I reached the him, I'd expected something almost industrial, like a steel box with a solid door and restraints fixed to the wall.

Instead, John was at the end of a block behind ordinary-looking bars, alongside a few other prisoners in identical cells.

Each had a bed, a built-in toilet and sink, a desk with a Bible on it. One security camera in the corner overlooking the entire block. That was it - no chains, restraints or reinforced doors. It seemed insultingly inadequate for both his reputation and my safety.

John himself was young-looking. Early thirties, perhaps. Clean-shaven and neatly dressed, with short, dark hair. He had the build of a track runner, and there was nothing physically intimidating about him. If I'd seen him on the street, I would've assumed he worked an office job.

He stood when I approached, his voice quiet.

"Morning."

"Morning," I replied, watching him carefully. "You'll be seeing a lot of me, I'm taking over your supervision. Keep things straightforward, and we'll have no problems."

His eyes moved down briefly to the ID card and button hanging from the lanyard around my neck, and back to my face.

Then he just gave a nod and sat down. I remained standing for a moment before taking the chair outside the bars. John was quiet for a while as he sat on the bed and flicked through the Bible. Eventually, he looked up at me and spoke.

"How you finding the new place?"

He sounded nonchalant, like he was making an effort at small talk, but wasn't particularly interested in the answer. I watched him cautiously.

"Can't complain."

"That's good. Assume you've been in enough places to compare."

Another pause as I watched him, looking for the trick. But there was no defensiveness or aggression in his voice.

"You've been here a while now, John," I finally said. "No problems?"

He shook his head.

"Got everything you need?"

"Yeah. Bible and a bit of exercise when I feel like it."

I started asking the usual questions about how he was settling in, and if there were problems with meals, showers and so on. He answered everything politely with no attitude or attempts to provoke me. He didn't react when I mentioned I'd read his file. If anything, he seemed bored, but never disrespectful. I spent the rest of that shift waiting for the trick that never came. He's just trying to make me let my guard down, I thought. But I can't deny I'd gone in expecting more of a challenge.

Eventually, I told him I was leaving at the end of my shift. He just nodded, not looking up from his Bible.

I started making my way out and was halfway down the block when I heard a quiet, high-pitched noise coming from a cell nearest the door at the opposite end. It wasn't quite a voice. I frowned and walked to the end, peering into the cell.

I nearly took a step back.

An emaciated, almost skeletal prisoner was staring back at me, folded up in a dark corner of the cell. At first glance, I couldn't even tell if it was a man or a woman. Only the high pitched voice gave it away.

Her arms looked little more than bone beneath the skin, and her shoulders jutted forward at an awkward angle. What little hair she had left came in sparse wisps, hanging from her scalp in thin, uneven strands. Most of her head was visible beneath them. There were patches where it looked as though she'd pulled the hair out herself, and blisters where she'd picked at her skin. There was a tiny silver cross necklace around her neck.

Then she made the noise again. That same high-pitched whine, that sounded like something her body produced without her permission. After several seconds, she tilted her head slightly to one side and began whispering. Her lips moved rapidly, but the sound was so faint and indistinct that it might as well have been another language.

I had worked around mentally ill prisoners before - whatever was wrong with this woman, I assumed it was along those lines. I'd gone into the block to meet one of the most dangerous men in the world, expecting if anything was going to unsettle me, it would surely be that. But as I stood there watching her, I'd forgotten about John entirely. I took a breath, broke eye contact, and left.

For the next few weeks, nothing happened with John.

He got up when he was supposed to, ate when food was brought around, took his exercise periods without complaint and returned to his cell when instructed. He never raised his voice or argued. Mostly, he seemed bored.

According to his file, calculation was practically his defining characteristic. I'd gone into the assignment assuming that every interaction would have some purpose behind it, that every question he asked would be part of some larger plan, but nothing happened.

And when nothing happens for long enough, you start to relax.

One morning, I caught myself standing closer to the bars than I should have been, my keys hanging loosely from two fingers as I checked something on my clipboard. I noticed where I was standing and immediately stepped back, making a mental note of it. I'd spent nearly two decades telling younger officers not to do exactly that.

The next week, I did the exact same thing.

This time, John was sitting on the edge of his bed, watching me. He looked at the keys, then back at me like I was an idiot. Then he just laid down on the bed.

A few days later, I made another stupid mistake - I dropped a flashlight within reach of the bars and only noticed when I was halfway down the block. When I went back to retrieve it, John hadn't made any attempt to touch it, let alone use it as a weapon or escape tool. He just glanced back at me with the same bored expression, now almost with a hint of added disappointment, as if he couldn't believe I'd been that careless.

After a while, I started to wonder whether the man in the file and the man sitting in front of me were actually the same person. I still wasn't naïve enough to believe he'd suddenly become harmless, perhaps he was simply tired.

The woman was harder to ignore.

Sometimes she'd stand at the front of her cell and watch everyone that passed through the door. Sometimes she sat on the floor with her knees pulled against her chest, rocking slightly. And sometimes she cried, a strange, broken sort of crying, with long pauses between each sound. I eventually got used to it in the way you get used to unpleasant things in prison.

One afternoon, long after speaking to John felt completely normal, I nodded toward her cell.

"She been here a while?"

John glanced over and exhaled with a hint of frustration.

"Yeah, don't mind her, she does that all day. Sometimes at night too, while everyone's trying to sleep."

He sounded mildly inconvenienced.

"Does she ever talk?" I glanced toward the cell.

"Not that I've heard."

I took his word for it, figuring that whatever she'd done to end up in a place like this, she probably deserved it.

A few mornings later, I was running late. I'd underestimated how long it would take me to get through some paperwork before my shift, and there was a form I needed to complete that needed the long ID number on my staff badge.

I took the lanyard off along with the button and copied the number down. Then I stuffed both into my trouser pocket and hurried into the block.

By the time I entered John's section, I'd completely forgotten about it. John was sitting on the edge of his bed, his Bible beside him.

"Morning."

"Morning."

I closed the door behind me and started checking the block. We exchanged the usual few words, and he said he slept well enough. Then I turned away from him to check something on my clipboard.

I heard a metallic click. I looked back and the cell was empty - the door was open and John was gone.

Then I felt his arm lock around my neck from behind.

I was surprised in the moment, but I didn't panic. If anything, I'd been expecting something like this from the beginning.

Finally, I thought. There he is. The real John.

I reacted automatically, tucking my chin hard against my chest and grabbing his choking arm with both hands, trying to relieve the pressure while turning toward him. It was something I'd practiced countless times over the years. I managed to get two fingers between his forearm and my neck, creating just enough space to breathe. For a moment, I thought I might get out of it without even having to use the button, and teach him a lesson after.

But then he adjusted effortlessly, shifting his grip and driving his forearm back against my neck. The pressure was precise, and he knew exactly what he was doing. I tried to drop my weight and drive backward into him, but he anticipated that too and stood firm.

My legs were already beginning to weaken, and whatever advantage I thought I'd had disappeared. This was not someone I could afford to underestimate.

My vision began to narrow as I reached instinctively for the button at my chest. Nothing.

For one confused second, I couldn't understand why it wasn't there, but then I remembered I put it in my pocket after using my ID card for the paperwork. I fumbled for it, but my fingers weren't working properly anymore. I could feel the edge of the device against my leg, just out of reach. I clawed at the pocket. Then my fingers closed around it, and I pushed the button.

For a second, nothing happened. No shrieking alarms or anything of the sort.

Then I heard boots pounding down the corridor. Ten guards burst through the door almost at once.

As soon as they entered, the pressure around my neck vanished. I collapsed forward, coughing and dragging air into my lungs.

I stumbled away from the cell, more frustrated at having to use the button than relieved to be alive, replaying the attack in my head. I was already running through the counters I could have used if I'd had another few seconds. I glanced at them, expecting them to seize John.

But they didn't even go past me. They turned straight into the woman's cell.

Two officers grabbed her, and she began screaming. Not like the strange whining sound before - this was a scream of pure terror, so loud and prolonged that it seemed to fill the entire block. One of the officers forced her arm behind her back, and another officer produced a syringe containing a yellow liquid. The screaming intensified as the color emptied into her neck.

Confused, I looked toward John at the other end of the block.

He was on his knees. His eyes were wide and glassy.

"Please."

His voice was barely audible beneath her screaming. He met my gaze.

"Tell them to stop. Please."

I just stared at him.

"I don't know what's happening," I finally managed. I didn't even hear myself speak.

One of the guards turned toward him.

"Back in the cell, John." The guard raised another syringe. "Or you know what happens."

John's swallowed, eyes still wide. He stood and walked back into his cell voluntarily.

The woman was still screaming, but her voice was breaking now. They dragged her back into the cell and closed the door. Another officer closed the bars behind John. Then they simply left, and didn't even bother checking John's cell to see how he'd escaped.

I stepped closer to John's cell cautiously and noticed something small on the ground.

He'd made a key of sorts. I picked it up. It was crude, but unmistakable - a thin, rigid piece of material shaped to fit the lock, made of paper. The key had been made from pages of his bible, layered and compressed until they formed something stiff enough to manipulate the mechanism. Then I looked at the Bible, still on his desk. They hadn't even bothered to take it away.

I looked at John, sitting on the edge of his bed again. Then his eyes dropped to the button in my hand. For the first time since I'd started working that block, I hadn't been wearing the button around my neck. I'd put it in my pocket. But it seemed John thought I'd forgotten it altogether.

He looked back at me with something like betrayal.

I came back the following morning. I wasn't particularly looking forward to it, but I hadn't slept well and decided it was better to get the first shift out of the way. John was exactly where I'd left him, sitting on the edge of his bed with the Bible beside him.

"Morning."

"Morning."

I stood outside the bars for a moment, studying him.

There was no hostility or lingering resentment in his expression. Nothing that suggested he'd nearly killed me the day before… or the chaos that came after.

"John, can I see the Bible?"

"Yeah."

He picked it up and handed it through the bars without protest. I took it from him and turned it over in my hands, then opened it. Sure enough, two pages had been torn out. I flicked through the section around the missing pages, then looked back at him.

"These shouldn't be missing. I'll have to confiscate it."

He shrugged.

"I suppose not. Have it."

He said it with complete indifference.

I turned the Bible over again and ran my thumb along the inside of the back cover and felt something give slightly beneath it. There was a flap. Not part of the original binding. Something had been carefully worked into the inside of the cover, creating a small concealed pocket.

I slipped my finger underneath it and pulled out a photograph.

It was old. The colors had faded slightly, and the edges were worn from being handled. I looked at it and saw a man and a woman.

I immediately recognized that the man in the photograph was John, younger by at least ten years.

He was smiling as he looked at the woman. I'd never seen him smile like that. The young woman beside him looked healthy and beautiful. There was warmth in her face, and she was smiling too, her head rested against his shoulder, his arm around her waist. I didn't recognize her at first, until I noticed that she was wearing a tiny silver cross necklace. The same one as the emaciated woman on the other side of the block. The realization dawned on me.

"You talked like you didn't know her," I said, still looking down at the photo.

I looked up at him, then almost jumped.

He was looking at me with pure, unfiltered hatred.

"I wonder why."

Neither of us spoke for a long time.

It was then that I understood he wouldn't be doing anything else with the bible. I slotted the photo back inside and slid it carefully down through the bars. He seemed to relax a little, and looked away. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and flat.

"She didn't used to look like that."

I watched him.

"What did they do to her?"

He didn't answer. A minute passed.

Then he lay back on the bed and turned his face toward the wall.

"I'm tired. Gonna sleep for a bit."

And that was all I got.

For the first time since I'd met him, I didn't see a dangerous man sitting in that cell. I finally understood what the button actually did. It wasn't there to protect me from John. It was there to control him.

John was back to his regular self after that. But I wasn't. Once I'd seen the photograph, I couldn't stop thinking about the woman at the end of the block.

I looked through the records as my last shift of the week finished. Every inmate had a paper trail - things like arrest and court records, sentencing information, medical records. Even people who had been incarcerated for decades left a mountain of paperwork behind them. I couldn't find hers.

There was a prisoner number, but no corresponding sentencing record. No court order or conviction. I thought perhaps I'd missed something and dug deeper. Her name was there, and the entries went back a few months. I frowned when I realized what file I was looking at.

Visitor Log.

She had visited John at his previous facility more than once. Then I reached the final entry.

Her status had changed from visitor to inmate.

I stared at it for a long time, then flipped to the admission form for the offence.

Something had been written there, but the handwriting was almost completely illegible. It looked as though whoever had filled it out had been writing in a hurry, or simply didn't care whether anyone could read it. I took the paperwork to the warden.

"What's this?"

I pointed to the handwriting. He looked at the page and squinted at it, then shrugged.

"No idea. How'd you expect me to read that?"

"She was John's visitor."

"Oh, was she? Well, birds of a feather."

He headed to the office. It was then I understood she had done nothing at all. And I wasn't going to be a part of that.

The next morning, I walked into the warden's office and put my badge on his desk. Then I put the button beside it. He looked at them.

"You're quitting already?"

"Yes."

He didn't ask why, didn't argue, just nodded.

"Alright. Guess we'll have to find someone to take your place then. Left us with a hard job, eh?"

I handed everything over before the end of my shift and walked through the prison one final time. I reached the last security door and stepped outside.

I had almost reached the outer gate when I heard her scream. It was faint but unmistakable, carrying through the reinforced walls despite the distance.

Then came another voice.

"Please. Please stop."

I had been working in prisons, most of which housed killers and other violent offenders, for twenty-eight years when I took on my last job.

Some of them were impulsive, others were clever. But I'd seen it all.

Prisoners had tried everything on me over the years - death threats, fake medical emergencies and contraband passed through food were just the tip of the iceberg. Men who'd spent weeks acting half-dead before suddenly putting their head through a cell door weren't unusual. So by the time I was called for the job, I had a reputation for being steady.

The pay was better, but that wasn't what sold it for me. It was the prisoner.

For the purposes of this story, I'll call him John. I'd heard his real name long before I was assigned to him. Everyone in corrections had. He was one of those serial killers you only hear about in true-crime documentaries decades later.

Dangerous.

The kind of mastermind who stayed ahead of the police for years, leaving investigators chasing dead. Eventually, an entire task force threw everything they had at him, and some detective finally got lucky enough to find one tiny mistake in his plan.

He'd been incarcerated under different names in institutions across the country. He had killed prison staff in multiple incidents, manipulated officers into giving him access to restricted areas and made tools from things that should never have been capable of becoming tools. His file used the words "exceptionally intelligent", "highly skilled" and one psychologist had described him as "possessing an unusual ability to recognize patterns in institutional behavior".

Basically, another way of saying 'this bastard keeps catching us off guard'.

A challenge perhaps, but if anything, I was intrigued. I'd spent nearly three decades learning the tricks of the worst people society had to offer, and I wanted to see what he could throw at me that was different.

"He's been stable," remarked the deputy warden, as I closed the file. "Caused no problems for several months."

"And before that?" I asked.

He picked up the file and flipped back through the photographs, medical reports, security assessments and other evidence of the damage John had left behind.

"Before that, he caused many." He grimaced slightly.

"So what's changed?"

"I'd guess he reconsidered. You'd be surprised, many find God after a few hard years in a cell."

I highly doubted that - I'd seen lots of men 'find God' when they realized it might help their case. I said nothing and let him continue.

Then, the deputy warden opened a drawer and took out a small black device attached to a short lanyard with my staff ID card. There was a single recessed button on it.

"If anything happens," he said, placing it on the desk between us, "push the button. The response time is very fast."

I put the lanyard around my neck and followed him inside.

The prison itself was impressive - there was concrete reinforced by steel, cameras everywhere, controlled doors and layered access points. It didn't seem like they were short on budget when it came to security. By the time I reached the him, I'd expected something almost industrial, like a steel box with a solid door and restraints fixed to the wall.

Instead, John was at the end of a block behind ordinary-looking bars, alongside a few other prisoners in identical cells.

Each had a bed, a built-in toilet and sink, a desk with a Bible on it. One security camera in the corner overlooking the entire block. That was it - no chains, restraints or reinforced doors. It seemed insultingly inadequate for both his reputation and my safety.

John himself was young-looking. Early thirties, perhaps. Clean-shaven and neatly dressed, with short, dark hair. He had the build of a track runner, and there was nothing physically intimidating about him. If I'd seen him on the street, I would've assumed he worked an office job.

He stood when I approached, his voice quiet.

"Morning."

"Morning," I replied, watching him carefully. "You'll be seeing a lot of me, I'm taking over your supervision. Keep things straightforward, and we'll have no problems."

His eyes moved down briefly to the ID card and button hanging from the lanyard around my neck, and back to my face.

Then he just gave a nod and sat down. I remained standing for a moment before taking the chair outside the bars. John was quiet for a while as he sat on the bed and flicked through the Bible. Eventually, he looked up at me and spoke.

"How you finding the new place?"

He sounded nonchalant, like he was making an effort at small talk, but wasn't particularly interested in the answer. I watched him cautiously.

"Can't complain."

"That's good. Assume you've been in enough places to compare."

Another pause as I watched him, looking for the trick. But there was no defensiveness or aggression in his voice.

"You've been here a while now, John," I finally said. "No problems?"

He shook his head.

"Got everything you need?"

"Yeah. Bible and a bit of exercise when I feel like it."

I started asking the usual questions about how he was settling in, and if there were problems with meals, showers and so on. He answered everything politely with no attitude or attempts to provoke me. He didn't react when I mentioned I'd read his file. If anything, he seemed bored, but never disrespectful. I spent the rest of that shift waiting for the trick that never came. He's just trying to make me let my guard down, I thought. But I can't deny I'd gone in expecting more of a challenge.

Eventually, I told him I was leaving at the end of my shift. He just nodded, not looking up from his Bible.

I started making my way out and was halfway down the block when I heard a quiet, high-pitched noise coming from a cell nearest the door at the opposite end. It wasn't quite a voice. I frowned and walked to the end, peering into the cell.

I nearly took a step back.

An emaciated, almost skeletal prisoner was staring back at me, folded up in a dark corner of the cell. At first glance, I couldn't even tell if it was a man or a woman. Only the high pitched voice gave it away.

Her arms looked little more than bone beneath the skin, and her shoulders jutted forward at an awkward angle. What little hair she had left came in sparse wisps, hanging from her scalp in thin, uneven strands. Most of her head was visible beneath them. There were patches where it looked as though she'd pulled the hair out herself, and blisters where she'd picked at her skin. There was a tiny silver cross necklace around her neck.

Then she made the noise again. That same high-pitched whine, that sounded like something her body produced without her permission. After several seconds, she tilted her head slightly to one side and began whispering. Her lips moved rapidly, but the sound was so faint and indistinct that it might as well have been another language.

I had worked around mentally ill prisoners before - whatever was wrong with this woman, I assumed it was along those lines. I'd gone into the block to meet one of the most dangerous men in the world, expecting if anything was going to unsettle me, it would surely be that. But as I stood there watching her, I'd forgotten about John entirely. I took a breath, broke eye contact, and left.

For the next few weeks, nothing happened with John.

He got up when he was supposed to, ate when food was brought around, took his exercise periods without complaint and returned to his cell when instructed. He never raised his voice or argued. Mostly, he seemed bored.

According to his file, calculation was practically his defining characteristic. I'd gone into the assignment assuming that every interaction would have some purpose behind it, that every question he asked would be part of some larger plan, but nothing happened.

And when nothing happens for long enough, you start to relax.

One morning, I caught myself standing closer to the bars than I should have been, my keys hanging loosely from two fingers as I checked something on my clipboard. I noticed where I was standing and immediately stepped back, making a mental note of it. I'd spent nearly two decades telling younger officers not to do exactly that.

The next week, I did the exact same thing.

This time, John was sitting on the edge of his bed, watching me. He looked at the keys, then back at me like I was an idiot. Then he just laid down on the bed.

A few days later, I made another stupid mistake - I dropped a flashlight within reach of the bars and only noticed when I was halfway down the block. When I went back to retrieve it, John hadn't made any attempt to touch it, let alone use it as a weapon or escape tool. He just glanced back at me with the same bored expression, now almost with a hint of added disappointment, as if he couldn't believe I'd been that careless.

After a while, I started to wonder whether the man in the file and the man sitting in front of me were actually the same person. I still wasn't naïve enough to believe he'd suddenly become harmless, perhaps he was simply tired.

The woman was harder to ignore.

Sometimes she'd stand at the front of her cell and watch everyone that passed through the door. Sometimes she sat on the floor with her knees pulled against her chest, rocking slightly. And sometimes she cried, a strange, broken sort of crying, with long pauses between each sound. I eventually got used to it in the way you get used to unpleasant things in prison.

One afternoon, long after speaking to John felt completely normal, I nodded toward her cell.

"She been here a while?"

John glanced over and exhaled with a hint of frustration.

"Yeah, don't mind her, she does that all day. Sometimes at night too, while everyone's trying to sleep."

He sounded mildly inconvenienced.

"Does she ever talk?" I glanced toward the cell.

"Not that I've heard."

I took his word for it, figuring that whatever she'd done to end up in a place like this, she probably deserved it.

A few mornings later, I was running late. I'd underestimated how long it would take me to get through some paperwork before my shift, and there was a form I needed to complete that needed the long ID number on my staff badge.

I took the lanyard off along with the button and copied the number down. Then I stuffed both into my trouser pocket and hurried into the block.

By the time I entered John's section, I'd completely forgotten about it. John was sitting on the edge of his bed, his Bible beside him.

"Morning."

"Morning."

I closed the door behind me and started checking the block. We exchanged the usual few words, and he said he slept well enough. Then I turned away from him to check something on my clipboard.

I heard a metallic click. I looked back and the cell was empty - the door was open and John was gone.

Then I felt his arm lock around my neck from behind.

I was surprised in the moment, but I didn't panic. If anything, I'd been expecting something like this from the beginning.

Finally, I thought. There he is. The real John.

I reacted automatically, tucking my chin hard against my chest and grabbing his choking arm with both hands, trying to relieve the pressure while turning toward him. It was something I'd practiced countless times over the years. I managed to get two fingers between his forearm and my neck, creating just enough space to breathe. For a moment, I thought I might get out of it without even having to use the button, and teach him a lesson after.

But then he adjusted effortlessly, shifting his grip and driving his forearm back against my neck. The pressure was precise, and he knew exactly what he was doing. I tried to drop my weight and drive backward into him, but he anticipated that too and stood firm.

My legs were already beginning to weaken, and whatever advantage I thought I'd had disappeared. This was not someone I could afford to underestimate.

My vision began to narrow as I reached instinctively for the button at my chest. Nothing.

For one confused second, I couldn't understand why it wasn't there, but then I remembered I put it in my pocket after using my ID card for the paperwork. I fumbled for it, but my fingers weren't working properly anymore. I could feel the edge of the device against my leg, just out of reach. I clawed at the pocket. Then my fingers closed around it, and I pushed the button.

For a second, nothing happened. No shrieking alarms or anything of the sort.

Then I heard boots pounding down the corridor. Ten guards burst through the door almost at once.

As soon as they entered, the pressure around my neck vanished. I collapsed forward, coughing and dragging air into my lungs.

I stumbled away from the cell, more frustrated at having to use the button than relieved to be alive, replaying the attack in my head. I was already running through the counters I could have used if I'd had another few seconds. I glanced at them, expecting them to seize John.

But they didn't even go past me. They turned straight into the woman's cell.

Two officers grabbed her, and she began screaming. Not like the strange whining sound before - this was a scream of pure terror, so loud and prolonged that it seemed to fill the entire block. One of the officers forced her arm behind her back, and another officer produced a syringe containing a yellow liquid. The screaming intensified as the color emptied into her neck.

Confused, I looked toward John at the other end of the block.

He was on his knees. His eyes were wide and glassy.

"Please."

His voice was barely audible beneath her screaming. He met my gaze.

"Tell them to stop. Please."

I just stared at him.

"I don't know what's happening," I finally managed. I didn't even hear myself speak.

One of the guards turned toward him.

"Back in the cell, John." The guard raised another syringe. "Or you know what happens."

John's swallowed, eyes still wide. He stood and walked back into his cell voluntarily.

The woman was still screaming, but her voice was breaking now. They dragged her back into the cell and closed the door. Another officer closed the bars behind John. Then they simply left, and didn't even bother checking John's cell to see how he'd escaped.

I stepped closer to John's cell cautiously and noticed something small on the ground.

He'd made a key of sorts. I picked it up. It was crude, but unmistakable - a thin, rigid piece of material shaped to fit the lock, made of paper. The key had been made from pages of his bible, layered and compressed until they formed something stiff enough to manipulate the mechanism. Then I looked at the Bible, still on his desk. They hadn't even bothered to take it away.

I looked at John, sitting on the edge of his bed again. Then his eyes dropped to the button in my hand. For the first time since I'd started working that block, I hadn't been wearing the button around my neck. I'd put it in my pocket. But it seemed John thought I'd forgotten it altogether.

He looked back at me with something like betrayal.

I came back the following morning. I wasn't particularly looking forward to it, but I hadn't slept well and decided it was better to get the first shift out of the way. John was exactly where I'd left him, sitting on the edge of his bed with the Bible beside him.

"Morning."

"Morning."

I stood outside the bars for a moment, studying him.

There was no hostility or lingering resentment in his expression. Nothing that suggested he'd nearly killed me the day before… or the chaos that came after.

"John, can I see the Bible?"

"Yeah."

He picked it up and handed it through the bars without protest. I took it from him and turned it over in my hands, then opened it. Sure enough, two pages had been torn out. I flicked through the section around the missing pages, then looked back at him.

"These shouldn't be missing. I'll have to confiscate it."

He shrugged.

"I suppose not. Have it."

He said it with complete indifference.

I turned the Bible over again and ran my thumb along the inside of the back cover and felt something give slightly beneath it. There was a flap. Not part of the original binding. Something had been carefully worked into the inside of the cover, creating a small concealed pocket.

I slipped my finger underneath it and pulled out a photograph.

It was old. The colors had faded slightly, and the edges were worn from being handled. I looked at it and saw a man and a woman.

I immediately recognized that the man in the photograph was John, younger by at least ten years.

He was smiling as he looked at the woman. I'd never seen him smile like that. The young woman beside him looked healthy and beautiful. There was warmth in her face, and she was smiling too, her head rested against his shoulder, his arm around her waist. I didn't recognize her at first, until I noticed that she was wearing a tiny silver cross necklace. The same one as the emaciated woman on the other side of the block. The realization dawned on me.

"You talked like you didn't know her," I said, still looking down at the photo.

I looked up at him, then almost jumped.

He was looking at me with pure, unfiltered hatred.

"I wonder why."

Neither of us spoke for a long time.

It was then that I understood he wouldn't be doing anything else with the bible. I slotted the photo back inside and slid it carefully down through the bars. He seemed to relax a little, and looked away. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and flat.

"She didn't used to look like that."

I watched him.

"What did they do to her?"

He didn't answer. A minute passed.

Then he lay back on the bed and turned his face toward the wall.

"I'm tired. Gonna sleep for a bit."

And that was all I got.

For the first time since I'd met him, I didn't see a dangerous man sitting in that cell. I finally understood what the button actually did. It wasn't there to protect me from John. It was there to control him.

John was back to his regular self after that. But I wasn't. Once I'd seen the photograph, I couldn't stop thinking about the woman at the end of the block.

I looked through the records as my last shift of the week finished. Every inmate had a paper trail - things like arrest and court records, sentencing information, medical records. Even people who had been incarcerated for decades left a mountain of paperwork behind them. I couldn't find hers.

There was a prisoner number, but no corresponding sentencing record. No court order or conviction. I thought perhaps I'd missed something and dug deeper. Her name was there, and the entries went back a few months. I frowned when I realized what file I was looking at.

Visitor Log.

She had visited John at his previous facility more than once. Then I reached the final entry.

Her status had changed from visitor to inmate.

I stared at it for a long time, then flipped to the admission form for the offence.

Something had been written there, but the handwriting was almost completely illegible. It looked as though whoever had filled it out had been writing in a hurry, or simply didn't care whether anyone could read it. I took the paperwork to the warden.

"What's this?"

I pointed to the handwriting. He looked at the page and squinted at it, then shrugged.

"No idea. How'd you expect me to read that?"

"She was John's visitor."

"Oh, was she? Well, birds of a feather."

He headed to the office. It was then I understood she had done nothing at all. And I wasn't going to be a part of that.

The next morning, I walked into the warden's office and put my badge on his desk. Then I put the button beside it. He looked at them.

"You're quitting already?"

"Yes."

He didn't ask why, didn't argue, just nodded.

"Alright. Guess we'll have to find someone to take your place then. Left us with a hard job, eh?"

I handed everything over before the end of my shift and walked through the prison one final time. I reached the last security door and stepped outside.

I had almost reached the outer gate when I heard her scream. It was faint but unmistakable, carrying through the reinforced walls despite the distance.

Then came another voice.

"Please. Please stop."

I had been working in prisons, most of which housed killers and other violent offenders, for twenty-eight years when I took on my last job.

Some of them were impulsive, others were clever. But I'd seen it all.

Prisoners had tried everything on me over the years - death threats, fake medical emergencies and contraband passed through food were just the tip of the iceberg. Men who'd spent weeks acting half-dead before suddenly putting their head through a cell door weren't unusual. So by the time I was called for the job, I had a reputation for being steady.

The pay was better, but that wasn't what sold it for me. It was the prisoner.

For the purposes of this story, I'll call him John. I'd heard his real name long before I was assigned to him. Everyone in corrections had. He was one of those serial killers you only hear about in true-crime documentaries decades later.

Dangerous.

The kind of mastermind who stayed ahead of the police for years, leaving investigators chasing dead. Eventually, an entire task force threw everything they had at him, and some detective finally got lucky enough to find one tiny mistake in his plan.

He'd been incarcerated under different names in institutions across the country. He had killed prison staff in multiple incidents, manipulated officers into giving him access to restricted areas and made tools from things that should never have been capable of becoming tools. His file used the words "exceptionally intelligent", "highly skilled" and one psychologist had described him as "possessing an unusual ability to recognize patterns in institutional behavior".

Basically, another way of saying 'this bastard keeps catching us off guard'.

A challenge perhaps, but if anything, I was intrigued. I'd spent nearly three decades learning the tricks of the worst people society had to offer, and I wanted to see what he could throw at me that was different.

"He's been stable," remarked the deputy warden, as I closed the file. "Caused no problems for several months."

"And before that?" I asked.

He picked up the file and flipped back through the photographs, medical reports, security assessments and other evidence of the damage John had left behind.

"Before that, he caused many." He grimaced slightly.

"So what's changed?"

"I'd guess he reconsidered. You'd be surprised, many find God after a few hard years in a cell."

I highly doubted that - I'd seen lots of men 'find God' when they realized it might help their case. I said nothing and let him continue.

Then, the deputy warden opened a drawer and took out a small black device attached to a short lanyard with my staff ID card. There was a single recessed button on it.

"If anything happens," he said, placing it on the desk between us, "push the button. The response time is very fast."

I put the lanyard around my neck and followed him inside.

The prison itself was impressive - there was concrete reinforced by steel, cameras everywhere, controlled doors and layered access points. It didn't seem like they were short on budget when it came to security. By the time I reached the him, I'd expected something almost industrial, like a steel box with a solid door and restraints fixed to the wall.

Instead, John was at the end of a block behind ordinary-looking bars, alongside a few other prisoners in identical cells.

Each had a bed, a built-in toilet and sink, a desk with a Bible on it. One security camera in the corner overlooking the entire block. That was it - no chains, restraints or reinforced doors. It seemed insultingly inadequate for both his reputation and my safety.

John himself was young-looking. Early thirties, perhaps. Clean-shaven and neatly dressed, with short, dark hair. He had the build of a track runner, and there was nothing physically intimidating about him. If I'd seen him on the street, I would've assumed he worked an office job.

He stood when I approached, his voice quiet.

"Morning."

"Morning," I replied, watching him carefully. "You'll be seeing a lot of me, I'm taking over your supervision. Keep things straightforward, and we'll have no problems."

His eyes moved down briefly to the ID card and button hanging from the lanyard around my neck, and back to my face.

Then he just gave a nod and sat down. I remained standing for a moment before taking the chair outside the bars. John was quiet for a while as he sat on the bed and flicked through the Bible. Eventually, he looked up at me and spoke.

"How you finding the new place?"

He sounded nonchalant, like he was making an effort at small talk, but wasn't particularly interested in the answer. I watched him cautiously.

"Can't complain."

"That's good. Assume you've been in enough places to compare."

Another pause as I watched him, looking for the trick. But there was no defensiveness or aggression in his voice.

"You've been here a while now, John," I finally said. "No problems?"

He shook his head.

"Got everything you need?"

"Yeah. Bible and a bit of exercise when I feel like it."

I started asking the usual questions about how he was settling in, and if there were problems with meals, showers and so on. He answered everything politely with no attitude or attempts to provoke me. He didn't react when I mentioned I'd read his file. If anything, he seemed bored, but never disrespectful. I spent the rest of that shift waiting for the trick that never came. He's just trying to make me let my guard down, I thought. But I can't deny I'd gone in expecting more of a challenge.

Eventually, I told him I was leaving at the end of my shift. He just nodded, not looking up from his Bible.

I started making my way out and was halfway down the block when I heard a quiet, high-pitched noise coming from a cell nearest the door at the opposite end. It wasn't quite a voice. I frowned and walked to the end, peering into the cell.

I nearly took a step back.

An emaciated, almost skeletal prisoner was staring back at me, folded up in a dark corner of the cell. At first glance, I couldn't even tell if it was a man or a woman. Only the high pitched voice gave it away.

Her arms looked little more than bone beneath the skin, and her shoulders jutted forward at an awkward angle. What little hair she had left came in sparse wisps, hanging from her scalp in thin, uneven strands. Most of her head was visible beneath them. There were patches where it looked as though she'd pulled the hair out herself, and blisters where she'd picked at her skin. There was a tiny silver cross necklace around her neck.

Then she made the noise again. That same high-pitched whine, that sounded like something her body produced without her permission. After several seconds, she tilted her head slightly to one side and began whispering. Her lips moved rapidly, but the sound was so faint and indistinct that it might as well have been another language.

I had worked around mentally ill prisoners before - whatever was wrong with this woman, I assumed it was along those lines. I'd gone into the block to meet one of the most dangerous men in the world, expecting if anything was going to unsettle me, it would surely be that. But as I stood there watching her, I'd forgotten about John entirely. I took a breath, broke eye contact, and left.

For the next few weeks, nothing happened with John.

He got up when he was supposed to, ate when food was brought around, took his exercise periods without complaint and returned to his cell when instructed. He never raised his voice or argued. Mostly, he seemed bored.

According to his file, calculation was practically his defining characteristic. I'd gone into the assignment assuming that every interaction would have some purpose behind it, that every question he asked would be part of some larger plan, but nothing happened.

And when nothing happens for long enough, you start to relax.

One morning, I caught myself standing closer to the bars than I should have been, my keys hanging loosely from two fingers as I checked something on my clipboard. I noticed where I was standing and immediately stepped back, making a mental note of it. I'd spent nearly two decades telling younger officers not to do exactly that.

The next week, I did the exact same thing.

This time, John was sitting on the edge of his bed, watching me. He looked at the keys, then back at me like I was an idiot. Then he just laid down on the bed.

A few days later, I made another stupid mistake - I dropped a flashlight within reach of the bars and only noticed when I was halfway down the block. When I went back to retrieve it, John hadn't made any attempt to touch it, let alone use it as a weapon or escape tool. He just glanced back at me with the same bored expression, now almost with a hint of added disappointment, as if he couldn't believe I'd been that careless.

After a while, I started to wonder whether the man in the file and the man sitting in front of me were actually the same person. I still wasn't naïve enough to believe he'd suddenly become harmless, perhaps he was simply tired.

The woman was harder to ignore.

Sometimes she'd stand at the front of her cell and watch everyone that passed through the door. Sometimes she sat on the floor with her knees pulled against her chest, rocking slightly. And sometimes she cried, a strange, broken sort of crying, with long pauses between each sound. I eventually got used to it in the way you get used to unpleasant things in prison.

One afternoon, long after speaking to John felt completely normal, I nodded toward her cell.

"She been here a while?"

John glanced over and exhaled with a hint of frustration.

"Yeah, don't mind her, she does that all day. Sometimes at night too, while everyone's trying to sleep."

He sounded mildly inconvenienced.

"Does she ever talk?" I glanced toward the cell.

"Not that I've heard."

I took his word for it, figuring that whatever she'd done to end up in a place like this, she probably deserved it.

A few mornings later, I was running late. I'd underestimated how long it would take me to get through some paperwork before my shift, and there was a form I needed to complete that needed the long ID number on my staff badge.

I took the lanyard off along with the button and copied the number down. Then I stuffed both into my trouser pocket and hurried into the block.

By the time I entered John's section, I'd completely forgotten about it. John was sitting on the edge of his bed, his Bible beside him.

"Morning."

"Morning."

I closed the door behind me and started checking the block. We exchanged the usual few words, and he said he slept well enough. Then I turned away from him to check something on my clipboard.

I heard a metallic click. I looked back and the cell was empty - the door was open and John was gone.

Then I felt his arm lock around my neck from behind.

I was surprised in the moment, but I didn't panic. If anything, I'd been expecting something like this from the beginning.

Finally, I thought. There he is. The real John.

I reacted automatically, tucking my chin hard against my chest and grabbing his choking arm with both hands, trying to relieve the pressure while turning toward him. It was something I'd practiced countless times over the years. I managed to get two fingers between his forearm and my neck, creating just enough space to breathe. For a moment, I thought I might get out of it without even having to use the button, and teach him a lesson after.

But then he adjusted effortlessly, shifting his grip and driving his forearm back against my neck. The pressure was precise, and he knew exactly what he was doing. I tried to drop my weight and drive backward into him, but he anticipated that too and stood firm.

My legs were already beginning to weaken, and whatever advantage I thought I'd had disappeared. This was not someone I could afford to underestimate.

My vision began to narrow as I reached instinctively for the button at my chest. Nothing.

For one confused second, I couldn't understand why it wasn't there, but then I remembered I put it in my pocket after using my ID card for the paperwork. I fumbled for it, but my fingers weren't working properly anymore. I could feel the edge of the device against my leg, just out of reach. I clawed at the pocket. Then my fingers closed around it, and I pushed the button.

For a second, nothing happened. No shrieking alarms or anything of the sort.

Then I heard boots pounding down the corridor. Ten guards burst through the door almost at once.

As soon as they entered, the pressure around my neck vanished. I collapsed forward, coughing and dragging air into my lungs.

I stumbled away from the cell, more frustrated at having to use the button than relieved to be alive, replaying the attack in my head. I was already running through the counters I could have used if I'd had another few seconds. I glanced at them, expecting them to seize John.

But they didn't even go past me. They turned straight into the woman's cell.

Two officers grabbed her, and she began screaming. Not like the strange whining sound before - this was a scream of pure terror, so loud and prolonged that it seemed to fill the entire block. One of the officers forced her arm behind her back, and another officer produced a syringe containing a yellow liquid. The screaming intensified as the color emptied into her neck.

Confused, I looked toward John at the other end of the block.

He was on his knees. His eyes were wide and glassy.

"Please."

His voice was barely audible beneath her screaming. He met my gaze.

"Tell them to stop. Please."

I just stared at him.

"I don't know what's happening," I finally managed. I didn't even hear myself speak.

One of the guards turned toward him.

"Back in the cell, John." The guard raised another syringe. "Or you know what happens."

John's swallowed, eyes still wide. He stood and walked back into his cell voluntarily.

The woman was still screaming, but her voice was breaking now. They dragged her back into the cell and closed the door. Another officer closed the bars behind John. Then they simply left, and didn't even bother checking John's cell to see how he'd escaped.

I stepped closer to John's cell cautiously and noticed something small on the ground.

He'd made a key of sorts. I picked it up. It was crude, but unmistakable - a thin, rigid piece of material shaped to fit the lock, made of paper. The key had been made from pages of his bible, layered and compressed until they formed something stiff enough to manipulate the mechanism. Then I looked at the Bible, still on his desk. They hadn't even bothered to take it away.

I looked at John, sitting on the edge of his bed again. Then his eyes dropped to the button in my hand. For the first time since I'd started working that block, I hadn't been wearing the button around my neck. I'd put it in my pocket. But it seemed John thought I'd forgotten it altogether.

He looked back at me with something like betrayal.

I came back the following morning. I wasn't particularly looking forward to it, but I hadn't slept well and decided it was better to get the first shift out of the way. John was exactly where I'd left him, sitting on the edge of his bed with the Bible beside him.

"Morning."

"Morning."

I stood outside the bars for a moment, studying him.

There was no hostility or lingering resentment in his expression. Nothing that suggested he'd nearly killed me the day before… or the chaos that came after.

"John, can I see the Bible?"

"Yeah."

He picked it up and handed it through the bars without protest. I took it from him and turned it over in my hands, then opened it. Sure enough, two pages had been torn out. I flicked through the section around the missing pages, then looked back at him.

"These shouldn't be missing. I'll have to confiscate it."

He shrugged.

"I suppose not. Have it."

He said it with complete indifference.

I turned the Bible over again and ran my thumb along the inside of the back cover and felt something give slightly beneath it. There was a flap. Not part of the original binding. Something had been carefully worked into the inside of the cover, creating a small concealed pocket.

I slipped my finger underneath it and pulled out a photograph.

It was old. The colors had faded slightly, and the edges were worn from being handled. I looked at it and saw a man and a woman.

I immediately recognized that the man in the photograph was John, younger by at least ten years.

He was smiling as he looked at the woman. I'd never seen him smile like that. The young woman beside him looked healthy and beautiful. There was warmth in her face, and she was smiling too, her head rested against his shoulder, his arm around her waist. I didn't recognize her at first, until I noticed that she was wearing a tiny silver cross necklace. The same one as the emaciated woman on the other side of the block. The realization dawned on me.

"You talked like you didn't know her," I said, still looking down at the photo.

I looked up at him, then almost jumped.

He was looking at me with pure, unfiltered hatred.

"I wonder why."

Neither of us spoke for a long time.

It was then that I understood he wouldn't be doing anything else with the bible. I slotted the photo back inside and slid it carefully down through the bars. He seemed to relax a little, and looked away. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and flat.

"She didn't used to look like that."

I watched him.

"What did they do to her?"

He didn't answer. A minute passed.

Then he lay back on the bed and turned his face toward the wall.

"I'm tired. Gonna sleep for a bit."

And that was all I got.

For the first time since I'd met him, I didn't see a dangerous man sitting in that cell. I finally understood what the button actually did. It wasn't there to protect me from John. It was there to control him.

John was back to his regular self after that. But I wasn't. Once I'd seen the photograph, I couldn't stop thinking about the woman at the end of the block.

I looked through the records as my last shift of the week finished. Every inmate had a paper trail - things like arrest and court records, sentencing information, medical records. Even people who had been incarcerated for decades left a mountain of paperwork behind them. I couldn't find hers.

There was a prisoner number, but no corresponding sentencing record. No court order or conviction. I thought perhaps I'd missed something and dug deeper. Her name was there, and the entries went back a few months. I frowned when I realized what file I was looking at.

Visitor Log.

She had visited John at his previous facility more than once. Then I reached the final entry.

Her status had changed from visitor to inmate.

I stared at it for a long time, then flipped to the admission form for the offence.

Something had been written there, but the handwriting was almost completely illegible. It looked as though whoever had filled it out had been writing in a hurry, or simply didn't care whether anyone could read it. I took the paperwork to the warden.

"What's this?"

I pointed to the handwriting. He looked at the page and squinted at it, then shrugged.

"No idea. How'd you expect me to read that?"

"She was John's visitor."

"Oh, was she? Well, birds of a feather."

He headed to the office. It was then I understood she had done nothing at all. And I wasn't going to be a part of that.

The next morning, I walked into the warden's office and put my badge on his desk. Then I put the button beside it. He looked at them.

"You're quitting already?"

"Yes."

He didn't ask why, didn't argue, just nodded.

"Alright. Guess we'll have to find someone to take your place then. Left us with a hard job, eh?"

I handed everything over before the end of my shift and walked through the prison one final time. I reached the last security door and stepped outside.

I had almost reached the outer gate when I heard her scream. It was faint but unmistakable, carrying through the reinforced walls despite the distance.

Then came another voice.

"Please. Please stop."

I've been going to my parents' most weekends for twelve years now. Every time I take the same line, at the same station. On Saturdays, the last train is the 1:07. I usually go during the day, but sometimes work runs over and I take a later train.

One night on the first year I started making the trips, I ran down the stairs two at a time, went over on my ankle halfway, and got to the platform just in time to watch the doors shut in front of me. The clock above the platform said 1:08. Well, guess I'd see my parents next week.

I sat on the bench to take a breather, then ate the rest of the tuna baguette I'd saved from dinner. The station was completely empty now, and so silent you could hear the vending machine humming two platforms over.

Then I heard a train coming.

I looked up at the clock. It said 1:13. Didn't the last one leave at 1:07? At least, that's what the timetable said. I glanced at the train again as it came closer - it had the right destination on the front, so I decided not to overthink it and got on.

The carriage looked normal with the usual scratched floor and an advert for a solicitor's firm that does injury claims. Seats were arranged in pairs either side of the aisle. There were only four or five other passengers, all on their own and sitting spread out. I sat in an empty seat in the middle and we pulled away.

A few stops later, the door at the end of the carriage slid open and a teenager came through. Looked sixteen or seventeen and was wearing big over-ear headphones, black hoodie with the hood up. He came halfway along the aisle and sat down next to a man in one of the double seats - a man in his thirties, scrolling his phone.

Then the man looked up from his phone at the teenager in absolute horror.

I've only ever seen a face make that expression in horror movies. He made a noise like he'd been winded, and he got up so fast he cracked his shoulder off the pole and half went down into the aisle. When he got to the doors, he stood with both hands flat against the glass, waiting desperately for them to open. When they opened at the next stop he went out so hard he landed on his hands and knees on the platform.

He got some odd looks from the few other passengers in the carriage, but nobody said anything. The teenager hadn't seemed to have noticed. I just assumed he must've been on something and got off four stops later.

That was twelve years ago, and other than telling my parents about it at breakfast, I didn't think about it again.

Last Saturday I was down the road from the station at 1:10, which meant I'd already missed it again, for the first time in 12 years. I nearly turned round and went home. Right then, I remembered the other train. I went down, mostly to prove to myself I'd made it up, and sat on the same bench to wait. 1:11 on the clock. Then 1:13. Then the train. The doors slid open.

This time, there was an announcement as I stepped on. A woman's flat, recorded voice.

"For your safety, passengers are reminded to sit alone. Please do not sit beside another passenger."

I figured it was some leftover post-pandemic rule, but the wording was so absurdly blunt that I actually laughed. It was basically the train announcing what everyone who’s ever taken public transport has always wanted - please, for the love of God, don’t sit next to me.

I looked around. As instructed, everyone was sitting alone, and there were more than enough empty seats. I sat by myself and the train started moving.

Then the doors at the far end of the carriage opened, and a teenager stepped through. For a moment, I only thought he looked familiar. Then I looked closer.

It was him. The same dark hair, narrow face, black hoodie with the hood up, even the same headphones sitting over his ears.

And he was still a teenager.

Not in the way someone can look surprisingly young after twelve years - he looked exactly the same. I felt the hairs rise along my arms.

The teenager walked down the aisle without looking at anyone, moving with the same absent-minded rhythm I remembered from twelve years ago. He stopped in the middle of the carriage and sat down beside a man…

Who was scrolling through his phone.

Then, like something following a script, the man's expression changed. His eyes widened and the colour drained from his face as he stared at the teenager like he'd seen something that shouldn't exist. I watched him scramble to his feet and press himself against the doors in exactly the same way he did the last time I saw him, then he threw himself through them and stumbled onto the platform when they opened.

I couldn't believe what I'd just seen. This exact thing, twelve years later.

As the doors began to close, my curiosity snapped me into action. I jumped to my feet and ran for the doors, making it onto the platform just before they closed.

“Hey!”

The man didn't hear me as I ran after him. He was already running towards the stairs. He reached the bottom of the stairs, stopped, bent over with his hands on his knees, and struggled to catch his breath. Then he pulled out his phone with shaking hands and dialled.

“911, what's your emergency?”

The man's voice came out breathless.

“I need you to listen to me. I just discovered something.”

He glanced back towards the tracks.

“A kid sat next to me on the last carriage of the train. The one that comes after 1:13.”

He started pacing along the platform, moving farther away from me. I could no longer hear the voice on the other end of the call. He swallowed as he listened to the response.

“I don't know how to explain it. I don't know if I'm going crazy, but you need to warn people. I'm serious. Please. You have to tell people they can't sit next to another passenger in that carriage.”

The man stopped and listened again for several seconds.

“Okay. But please investigate it. If you find out it's true, put an announcement on the trains. Anything. Just warn people. Thank you.”

Then he hung up, and started walking towards the exit. I started walking towards him.

“Wait.”

He didn't stop - he just turned and walked around the corner. When I reached the corner and looked around it, there was nobody there. Just an empty corridor stretching towards the station exit, like he had vanished into thin air. I stood there, completely still.

And that's when I understood. The announcement hadn't been on the train twelve years ago. It was only there now, because he had discovered what happened when two people sat together in that carriage - somehow, they trap each other. Forever, it seems.

I sure won't be taking that train again after 1:07. But yesterday, I went back to the station, needing to prove to myself that I hadn't imagined any of it. At exactly 1:13, the train arrived. I watched from the platform through the windows as the doors opened. There were only a few passengers inside.

And there he was. The man scrolling through his phone.

I've been going to my parents' most weekends for twelve years now. Every time I take the same line, at the same station. On Saturdays, the last train is the 1:07. I usually go during the day, but sometimes work runs over and I take a later train.

One night on the first year I started making the trips, I ran down the stairs two at a time, went over on my ankle halfway, and got to the platform just in time to watch the doors shut in front of me. The clock above the platform said 1:08. Well, guess I'd see my parents next week.

I sat on the bench to take a breather, then ate the rest of the tuna baguette I'd saved from dinner. The station was completely empty now, and so silent you could hear the vending machine humming two platforms over.

Then I heard a train coming.

I looked up at the clock. It said 1:13. Didn't the last one leave at 1:07? At least, that's what the timetable said. I glanced at the train again as it came closer - it had the right destination on the front, so I decided not to overthink it and got on.

The carriage looked normal with the usual scratched floor and an advert for a solicitor's firm that does injury claims. Seats were arranged in pairs either side of the aisle. There were only four or five other passengers, all on their own and sitting spread out. I sat in an empty seat in the middle and we pulled away.

A few stops later, the door at the end of the carriage slid open and a teenager came through. Looked sixteen or seventeen and was wearing big over-ear headphones, black hoodie with the hood up. He came halfway along the aisle and sat down next to a man in one of the double seats - a man in his thirties, scrolling his phone.

Then the man looked up from his phone at the teenager in absolute horror.

I've only ever seen a face make that expression in horror movies. He made a noise like he'd been winded, and he got up so fast he cracked his shoulder off the pole and half went down into the aisle. When he got to the doors, he stood with both hands flat against the glass, waiting desperately for them to open. When they opened at the next stop he went out so hard he landed on his hands and knees on the platform.

He got some odd looks from the few other passengers in the carriage, but nobody said anything. The teenager hadn't seemed to have noticed. I just assumed he must've been on something and got off four stops later.

That was twelve years ago, and other than telling my parents about it at breakfast, I didn't think about it again.

Last Saturday I was down the road from the station at 1:10, which meant I'd already missed it again, for the first time in 12 years. I nearly turned round and went home. Right then, I remembered the other train. I went down, mostly to prove to myself I'd made it up, and sat on the same bench to wait. 1:11 on the clock. Then 1:13. Then the train. The doors slid open.

This time, there was an announcement as I stepped on. A woman's flat, recorded voice.

"For your safety, passengers are reminded to sit alone. Please do not sit beside another passenger."

I figured it was some leftover post-pandemic rule, but the wording was so absurdly blunt that I actually laughed. It was basically the train announcing what everyone who’s ever taken public transport has always wanted - please, for the love of God, don’t sit next to me.

I looked around. As instructed, everyone was sitting alone, and there were more than enough empty seats. I sat by myself and the train started moving.

Then the doors at the far end of the carriage opened, and a teenager stepped through. For a moment, I only thought he looked familiar. Then I looked closer.

It was him. The same dark hair, narrow face, black hoodie with the hood up, even the same headphones sitting over his ears.

And he was still a teenager.

Not in the way someone can look surprisingly young after twelve years - he looked exactly the same. I felt the hairs rise along my arms.

The teenager walked down the aisle without looking at anyone, moving with the same absent-minded rhythm I remembered from twelve years ago. He stopped in the middle of the carriage and sat down beside a man…

Who was scrolling through his phone.

Then, like something following a script, the man's expression changed. His eyes widened and the colour drained from his face as he stared at the teenager like he'd seen something that shouldn't exist. I watched him scramble to his feet and press himself against the doors in exactly the same way he did the last time I saw him, then he threw himself through them and stumbled onto the platform when they opened.

I couldn't believe what I'd just seen. This exact thing, twelve years later.

As the doors began to close, my curiosity snapped me into action. I jumped to my feet and ran for the doors, making it onto the platform just before they closed.

“Hey!”

The man didn't hear me as I ran after him. He was already running towards the stairs. He reached the bottom of the stairs, stopped, bent over with his hands on his knees, and struggled to catch his breath. Then he pulled out his phone with shaking hands and dialled.

“911, what's your emergency?”

The man's voice came out breathless.

“I need you to listen to me. I just discovered something.”

He glanced back towards the tracks.

“A kid sat next to me on the last carriage of the train. The one that comes after 1:13.”

He started pacing along the platform, moving farther away from me. I could no longer hear the voice on the other end of the call. He swallowed as he listened to the response.

“I don't know how to explain it. I don't know if I'm going crazy, but you need to warn people. I'm serious. Please. You have to tell people they can't sit next to another passenger in that carriage.”

The man stopped and listened again for several seconds.

“Okay. But please investigate it. If you find out it's true, put an announcement on the trains. Anything. Just warn people. Thank you.”

Then he hung up, and started walking towards the exit. I started walking towards him.

“Wait.”

He didn't stop - he just turned and walked around the corner. When I reached the corner and looked around it, there was nobody there. Just an empty corridor stretching towards the station exit, like he had vanished into thin air. I stood there, completely still.

And that's when I understood. The announcement hadn't been on the train twelve years ago. It was only there now, because he had discovered what happened when two people sat together in that carriage - somehow, they trap each other. Forever, it seems.

I sure won't be taking that train again after 1:07. But yesterday, I went back to the station, needing to prove to myself that I hadn't imagined any of it. At exactly 1:13, the train arrived. I watched from the platform through the windows as the doors opened. There were only a few passengers inside.

And there he was. The man scrolling through his phone.