Static Hours

Hidden Track - Glass Loop

The first version of herself she remembers isn't real.

It's a looping dream. Always the same. She doesn't remember falling into it — just landing mid-loop, always mid-loop, like her memory's been chopped and stitched by a lazy editor. She's standing in a mirrored hallway, barefoot and humming something she doesn't know yet. The air is cold enough to freeze breath into smoke. The lights flicker in time with her heartbeat — or maybe a drum loop far off, just out of sync. Every wall is glass. Every reflection stares back with just a half-second delay.

Sometimes she thinks they're waiting for her to mess up. Like they know something she doesn't — like they've seen the ending, and they're trying not to spoil it.

One of them blinks twice when she only blinks once.

She doesn't flinch. She's used to seeing herself wrong. Used to the weight of not knowing which "her" is the original. That's the trick — none of them are. Not really. They're all polished versions of some girl trying to stay stitched together with sound.

In the distance, music filters in — warped, warbled like it's underwater. Her voice, but not her lyrics. Not yet.

The chords sound warped, as if recorded on tape and left in the sun too long — as if some future version of her is playing them back wrong on purpose.

A melody she'll write three months from now — the one with the broken bridge and the whispered refrain.

She walks.

Each reflection mimics her steps a little too smoothly. One smiles when she doesn't. One hums louder. One is crying.
One — she's pretty sure — is dead.

She doesn't stop walking. She never does in this dream.

The corridor narrows.

Her feet start leaving sound behind — distorted versions of her own footsteps echo from angles that don't exist. Backwards. Slower. Out of sync. Like someone's editing the memory while she walks through it.

She wonders — not for the first time — if she's even the main version anymore. Maybe she's the echo. The rerun. The test track before the real thing.

Somewhere behind her, she hears herself laugh — the real kind, the one that used to happen without guilt. It echoes once, then gets swallowed by static.

The reflections are glitching now.

One wears her Ghostlight hoodie, smeared in something dark and red. Another has no face at all — just static where her eyes should be, like a VHS frame frozen on a scream. That one always shows up late. One holds a guitar she doesn't own — yet. One has Leo's eyes, but won't stop mouthing the word "run."

Another one — older, tired, same hair but streaked silver — doesn't look at her at all. Just at the coin in her hand.

That version flips it.

Heads.

Flips it again.

Tails.

Flips it again.

She recognizes it now — Leo's old coin, the one from the summer they weren't supposed to survive. Except she never told anyone about that.

The coin vanishes.

She presses her hand to the glass.

And for the first time, the reflection doesn't move.

It stares. Unblinking. Not mimicking. Like it's waiting.

There's a heaviness to the silence, like the moment before a mic drop or a bomb. Like the space between two notes that shouldn't be there.

She leans closer. Music hums under her skin — the melody from a song that hasn't existed yet. The reflection opens its mouth, just slightly, as if it wants to sing.

It doesn't. But the pause feels personal — like a skipped record waiting for permission.
Then, almost like breath between chords, it mutters something too low to hear, except she knows the meaning anyway:
"Wrong version again."

Instead, it says:
"This version of you dies."

Then shatters.

Not the mirror — the girl.

Like tape unravelling. Like vinyl warped in heat. Gone in a blink, and all that's left is her own face, staring back again.

Except now the hallway is gone.

Except now she's alone.

Except now the song is playing from somewhere outside her head.

Her heart doesn't slow down. It just changes key — a new tempo, unfamiliar time signature. It feels like coming down from a high she never took.

She wakes up — in a room she doesn't recognize, at a time that doesn't exist, with a name that doesn't feel like hers anymore.

She blinks at the ceiling. Something hums beneath the floor. The walls breathe like speakers between pulses.

Some songs don't start at track one.
Some songs start in the static.