Horror Nights
I hiked for miles before returning, confident that the logistics of the return would be impossible.
She was on the sofa.
By the fifth time, the grief had evaporated, replaced by a cold, numbing resignation. I stopped caring about why. I stopped looking for logical explanations—for ghosts, for doppelgängers, for some elaborate gaslighting scheme. The "why" didn't matter. The only reality that existed was the cycle: the living room, the shovel, the woods, and the return.
Now, standing here, looking at the seventh iteration of her, the horror is no longer about her return. It is about the realization that has been gnawing at the back of my mind since the fourth burial.
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