_top_ | Ninitre

The town was a graveyard of half-open doors and bicycles lying on their sides. She passed the Miller house, where the front window was shattered outward—not inward, which meant something had broken out, not in. She didn’t look too closely at the dark smear on the porch. The Silence had brought something with it, something that lived in the corners of eyes and the moments between breaths. People hadn’t just disappeared. They had unbecome . Left behind their clothes, their keys, sometimes their shadows printed on the walls like photographs of ash.

Now Lena wondered.

Then the dust settled. The clock stopped. The compass lay on the floor in two pieces. And Lena stood alone in the train station, the tape still stuck to her hand, the word still warm on her tongue. ninitre

Lena gathered them in the kitchen. She pointed to the underside of the table, where the tape had been. The town was a graveyard of half-open doors