Scene 1: The Corridor (Thresholds)
It’s been a while since he’s been gone. Yet this house still moves with him. The corridor lengthens when I walk it, doors opening and closing like mouths, swallowing sound.
Fernando died on a trip we should never have taken. A deer leapt across the road, his hands turned the wheel too sharply, and the SUV tumbled through the guardrail. He drowned in the black lake while I clawed my way free.
Weeks later, in the sterile light of a hospital, I learned I was carrying him inside me. A child born of death’s aftermath. Andrew was the only piece of Fernando I had left — flesh rising from a grave I could not see.
The walls seemed to know. They absorbed our grief, then our joy, then our silence. Even as Andrew grew, the house pressed us together as though afraid I might lose him too.
Scene 2: Childhood (The Enmeshment)
I should have let him go, let him grow. But I couldn’t.
Every scraped knee, every nightmare — I was there. He slept in my bed until he was far too old, his small body curled against me like a second heartbeat. At school plays, I felt abandoned when he stepped onto the stage. At birthdays, I clung to him when others came to sing.
The house reinforced it. It closed ranks around us. When he was away at camp, the pipes groaned louder, the ceilings sagged, the lights dimmed. When he came home, everything righted itself.
I told myself it was love. But it was possession.
Scene 3: Shaz Arrives (The Warning)
When Andrew turned nineteen, his girlfriend Shaz began spending more nights here —naturally on the condition that they slept in separate rooms. He was polite enough — a boy with restless hands and nervous laughter.
That evening, I teased Andrew as I set two extra blankets on the couch. “No mischief in the middle of the night, Andy,” I said, wagging a playful finger. He rolled his eyes, but I caught the faintest blush.
The house didn’t like it. The walls grew tight, the air brittle. My own warning felt like betrayal.
Scene 4: Shaz’s Room (The Voyeur)
Later, the house summoned me. I drifted down the corridor, its floorboards guiding me toward the half-closed door.
Shaz’s room glowed with a thin strip of light. I pushed it slightly ajar and froze. Two bodies knotted together, limbs urgent, breath harsh.
But the plaster twisted their forms — Andrew’s face blurred into Fernando’s, Shaz into myself. The wallpaper writhed, its flowers rearranging into his silhouette.
I could not breathe.
Scene 5: The Master Bedroom (The Collapse)
I stumbled back. The hallway stretched unnaturally long, the house corralling me into my room.
I fell onto the bed, silk pooling to the floor. My hand moved between my thighs, not from desire but from compulsion, grief gnawing at my flesh. Above me, the ceiling rippled like the lake where Fernando had drowned.
When it ended, I thought I heard the house sigh — a long exhale, like it too had been waiting for release.
Shame burned, but so did comfort. I wasn’t alone. Fernando still lived here. Between these walls. Inside me.
Scene 6: The Therapist’s Office (Displacement)
“So you’re saying the house… makes you feel Fernando?” Joana brushed her hair back, skeptical.
“It bends around us. The doors, the shadows, the air itself. Fernando is here. He never left.”
“Or your grief has filled the walls,” she said gently. “But you must learn to leave space for someone else. Try dating again. Step outside these walls.”
Her words felt like betrayal. The house would not forgive me for seeking another.
Scene 7: The Mirror (Preparation)
I obey anyway. I pull the red satin gown from the back of the closet. I had bought it for an anniversary with Fernando, but never wore it. The fabric clings as if it remembers the man who never touched it.
In the mirror, I look unfamiliar: painted lips, flushed skin, a woman half-alive again. Behind my reflection, the wallpaper twitches, shaping Fernando’s outline, as though the house disapproves.
Still, I fasten my heels. The dress sways, whispering down the hallway like blood down stone.
Scene 8: The Driveway (The Encounter)
Headlights sweep the driveway. Andrew and his friend stumble from the car, still laughing. Their laughter dies when they see me.
Andrew stares too long. His friend mutters something crude, and Andrew swats him, embarrassed. But the silence between us stretches.
“What’s the occasion, Mom?” he asks, voice stiff.
I shrug. “I left food in the fridge. Don’t wait up.”
Then he says it: “By the way, I broke up with Shaz.”
The relief hits me so hard I nearly stagger. I mask it with a frown, but inside, the house exhales — its beams loosening, its windows sighing. One rival gone. The walls draw closer, as if sealing Andrew and me together.
Scene 9: The Return (The Couch)
Dinner is a blur. A stranger’s voice. A stranger’s face. I can’t stop hearing the faint tapping in the walls, summoning me home.
I race back, red dress clinging to my skin, heels striking like hammers.
The house welcomes me. Lights flare, shadows curl, geometry folding into a familiar shape. And there he is — Andrew, sprawled on the couch, champagne in hand. The room frames him perfectly, sculpting Fernando’s ghost over his features.
“Oh, Fernando,” I whisper, stepping inside. “I missed you.”
The walls close around us.
Lives Between Walls 
What do you think about this?