The Familiar Room

Last June, I moved into my studio apartment. The rent was cheap, the town where it was situated was small, and the people who lived there were quiet. A good place to start again.

I could not sleep that first night. The wallpaper in the bedroom was... off. Not ugly, just... familiar. The peeling near the window. The burn by the socket. Twice, I glimpsed those walls. I didn't know why.

A week later, the dreams started.

Sounded behind a closed door, a woman screaming in misery. The pot is boiling over on the stove. A child is crying. Then fire.

Always forego.

It would end up with me walking through town evenings, hoping the cool air would still my home nerves. One night, I took a path that looked unfamiliar--and found myself standing in front of the very house I lived in, only half-charred. Deserted. A ruin.

“ '92,” an old man told me from across the row of houses. “Mother Child. No survivors.”

He walked away before I could say anything else.

Back home, I tore down the wallpaper. Underneath that, carved onto the plaster, was one name and one name only. Isaac.

That’s my name.

Not the one I go by now, this one’s on my birth certificate. The one my mother told me never to use.

I don’t sleep anymore.

Not because of the dreams—but because I finally remembered what I did.

And I know the fire’s not done with me yet.