Last night, the shadows whispered secrets to me again. It’s been happening more frequently, like a sick joke the universe can’t stop playing. I tried to ignore them, tried to drown them out with the white noise of life, but they slithered into my thoughts, wrapping around my brain like cold, clammy fingers.

They told me about a place where the clocks run backward, where time isn’t a straight line but a tangled mess of regrets and lost hopes. They said that if I listened closely enough, I could hear the screams of those who’ve been trapped there, their voices echoing through the fabric of reality, forever caught in the moments they wish they could escape.

But I didn’t want to hear them. I never do. Because deep down, I know those screams are mine. Mine from a past I’ve tried to bury, from a life I no longer recognize. It’s funny, isn’t it? How the things we run from have a way of catching up to us, of curling around our feet and tripping us up just when we think we’ve finally outrun them.

The shadows laughed at me, their voices a mix of static and whispers, as they told me that it doesn’t matter how far I run, how fast I go. The past isn’t a place you can escape from. It’s a place that lives inside you, festering, growing, until it consumes everything you are.

I tried to sleep after that, but the darkness was alive, pulsing with memories I thought I’d forgotten. Faces of people I’ve wronged, of mistakes I’ve made, stared at me from the void, their eyes hollow and accusing. They didn’t need to speak; their silence said it all.

And now, here I am, typing this out while the halogen street light filters through my window, trying to make sense of it all. But sense is a luxury I can’t afford, not when the shadows are always lurking, waiting for the next opportunity to drag me back into that place where the screams never stop.

Maybe I’m crazy. Maybe we all are. Or maybe, just maybe, the shadows are right, and we’re all just echoes of the past, forever doomed to relive the moments that broke us.

Stay vigilant, my fellow wanderers of the void. The past never forgets, and it’s always hungry.