Echoes of the Script

12: Script Without a Name

The One Who Watches

The Director

The Voice Beneath the Stage

No actors listed. No lines.

Only cues like:

Scene One: The cottage opens like a memory.

Scene Two: The mirror answers when knocked.

Scene Three: A name is stolen and replaced.

Michelle backed away from the door, her fingers curling around the edge of the table.

A sharp knock hit the back window.

She whirled around.

A single theater mask had been placed outside on the sill. White, blank-eyed. Mouth in a slight frown.

She stared.

Then she heard it. From the old clock above the mantle.

A soft     click.

The hour hand had moved ahead.

By two hours.

Even though she had been inside for less than twenty minutes.

Her pulse spiked. Time, again. Shifting without permission.

She rushed outside and snatched the mask from the window. It was light, but cold, like it had been left in snow.

Etched inside were the initials: MS

Michelle Shiori?

Or...

Masked Stage?

She didn't know.

But she held it tighter.

Inside the cottage, her phone had begun playing music.

She hadn't touched it.

A slow, haunting violin filled the air.

She walked slowly to her bedroom.

The phone screen lit up again.

It was now showing a countdown.
2 days. 4 hours. 13 minutes.

No explanation. Just a blinking colon.

The song continued playing. She couldn't stop it.

She opened the journal again and flipped to the last page.

This time, it wasn't blank.

There was an entry. In her own handwriting.

But she hadn't written it.

Entry 57 — July 8th

"I forgot my lines. The curtain opened, and I said nothing. But the mask said it for me. I think that's how it ends. You don't vanish. You just become part of the play."

Michelle slammed the journal shut.

There were only two days left.

And she still didn't know what role she was meant to play.

The tide had gone out further than Michelle had ever seen it.

It was past midnight, and the moon cast an eerie silver sheen over the beach. A full moon. Her footsteps crunched along damp shells and seaweed as she approached the place she had only glimpsed from the bluff road, the stage.

It wasn't her imagination. A platform, warped and sea-worn, stood half-buried in the sand. Wooden beams. Ropes. A broken curtain rod. All of it rising like the spine of something long dead.