The Empty Threshold
October 27th: First of the Endings
There are thirty-two houses on her street. Thirty-one are dark.
This one is lit. Too lit. The porch bulb flickers like it’s stuck between scenes.
The jack-o-lantern has collapsed. The candy bowl overflows. There are exactly thirty-one pieces; she counts them. She doesn’t mean to. The thirty-second is in her pocket, already half-melted. She doesn’t remember taking it.
Her footsteps are the only ones visible in the dust.
But she sees thirty-one sets leading in. None lead out.
She doesn’t recognize her shoes.
The door is open. The house breathes.
Not metaphor.
It inhales slow. The kind of breath that bends the shape of things. It smells like ash and syrup and cut hair.
She steps onto the porch. The wood doesn’t creak; it shivers.
She tries to speak. Her name won’t come. Instead: thirty-one voices, layered, not hers, not not hers. They echo from the doorway like a cough held too long.
She looks down. A red scratch across her palm. Not fresh. Familiar.
It says: 5 / 32.
She hears something behind the door say it too.
Then again. Five times. Then silence.
The light inside is all wrong. She can see the paper crown from yesterday, folded, burned. The cracked floor from the school. The feathers. The masks. A track looping on a tape recorder. A hallway. A scar. A ribbon. A door. A throat.
She knows she’s never been here. But her body disagrees.
She leans in. She breathes out.
The breath comes back. Thirty-one exhales. One enters. Hers?
She steps back. The door does not close. The candy in her pocket is gone.
The thirty-second piece was her. Always was.
Tomorrow, the breath will call again.
And she’s already closer to saying yes.