He doesn’t have a name.

He gave it up — sold it, perhaps — for a question no one else was willing to ask.

He lives in a house with no doors, only mirrors. And each mirror shows something slightly wrong.

One shows him blinking twice when he only blinks once.

One shows someone else wearing his skin.

One — and only one — shows . . . nothing at all. That is his favorite.

He used to be a linguist. Brilliant. Curious. Obsessed with root words. Thought that if you dug far enough into language, you’d find the first truth.

He was right. And he was never the same again.

The story goes: One night, he traced a certain word — never written, only whispered — across thirty-two languages and five extinct tongues. It appeared in lullabies, in deathbed mutterings, in what schizophrenics murmur into their sleeves.

The word doesn’t translate. The closest anyone’s come is:

“I am awake inside the dream of yourself.”

When he spoke it aloud, something heard. Not a demon. Not a god. Just . . . a presence. A listener. The kind of thing that leans in when you think no one’s watching. That lives in the parentheses of reality.

It didn’t speak to him. It showed him.

Now he sees patterns that aren’t there . . . until they are.

Cracks in the sidewalk forming ancient sigils. Clock hands twitching in Morse code. Flies spelling out questions on windowpanes.

He eats only food that casts no shadow. He writes in spirals. He hums a melody that rearranges itself every seventh note.

And here’s the thing: He’s not insane. He’s adjusting.

To what?

To a new truth. One where the mind is a prison designed to protect us from something vast, beautiful, and predatory.

He writes letters sometimes. Never mailed. Folded into paper cranes and released into public libraries.

They all begin the same way:

“If you are reading this, your dreams have already been compromised.”

And they end:

“Do not try to understand. Just listen when it knocks.”

_______________

© Secret Agent Man
info@secretagentman.net