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You never planned on going. That’s the part that haunts you.
You were just there.
An invite passed along, handed from hand to hand like a business card. no urgency, no warning. One of those nights that starts off as nothing and finds its way into something irreversible. It starts like a dream you never asked for. Not surreal in a whimsical way, no, this one feels like it was stitched together by regret and déjà vu. One of those scenes where you wake up with your chest tight, lips dry, already missing a version of yourself that didn’t survive it.
You’re in a house.
Not a house, the house. The kind that feels older than you. High ceilings, too many rooms, hallways that stretch longer than they should. Everything echoes. Footsteps, laughter, whispers. Even your thoughts bounce back at you from the walls like they’re trying to find a way out. It’s familiar in the way childhood homes are: you don’t remember all the details, but you know the shape of it in your bones. But there’s something wrong with the air. It buzzes with a kind of tension you only recognize once you’ve lived through something unforgivable.
It’s a party. If you can call it that. People are swaying, drinking, passing smoke between cracked lips and cracked fingers. The music’s loud, but not loud enough to drown out the silence between beats. That silence says more than the bass ever could.
You’re upstairs.
Third floor.
Watching.
There was a room upstairs.
Not big. Not small. Bare walls. A small closet. A dusty dresser in the corner no one ever used. Some light came from the hallway, slipping through a door left cracked. Not open, not closed, just enough to see the sliver of space outside, the possibility of leaving if you really needed to. Most of it came from above like a spotlight, the one the kids call a “boob light”.
Inside the room you & two other people stood. Not talking much. You hovered by the wall. You didn’t sit down. You watched them without care, like these were your friends. You knew them but you didn’t. Maybe they didn’t know you, after all, they didn’t say your name. Didn’t say much at all.
You were all hovering around a black duffle bag. The main one was digging around, like he was preparing something. He looked up & handed you a blue shirt first. Thin. Faded. Familiar in a strange way. The color reminded you of Vice City.
“Tommy Vercetti,” you said under your breath laughing to yourself, barely even meaning to say it out loud.
The one who handed it to you looked over at the other guy. The one he’d already handed a red shirt. They locked eyes. Just for a moment.
“What?”, he asked. You shook your head, knowing they wouldn’t understand & in hindsight, maybe you would’ve blown your cover. After all, you weren’t supposed to know you were here.
Then the red shirt came next. Red & yellow like the one from the beginning of Scarface. You spared them the reference this time.
No words. No instructions.
Just the color.
You held them both. Blue in one hand. Red in the other. One soft. One heavy. One quiet. One loud. Both wrong.
The others shifted around you. One of them laughed under their breath like they were telling an inside joke you weren’t invited into. You didn’t laugh. There was no excitement in their tone, no actions or subtle movements to help determine their next moves. The air in that room got thicker by the second, but in the moment you didn’t notice. They said something before leaving. Something vague. Something like “You ready?”
At least you think that’s what they said. You’re not sure anymore.
You’ve tried to remember it a thousand times and it never comes back clear.
Then they left.
The one in red went first. The one who gave you the shirts last. You didn’t move right away. You stared at the door. Watched the hallway through the crack. Didn’t blink. And then, you did what you thought was safest.
You slipped the red shirt over your chest.
Then the blue one on top.
Like you could choose both options even though they clearly clashed. You didn’t sit. You didn’t lie down. You just stood there, in the middle of that room, holding silence like it was going to shatter if you breathed too loud.
The music downstairs was still playing. Tennessee Love by Yelawolf.
Then came the first scream. And your blood turned to glass.
You froze. A sound like that doesn’t belong at a party. It cuts through the walls and right into your ribs. There was no confusion, no mishearing it. That scream meant one thing: something had started. And it wasn’t stopping. You stood in that room for what felt like forever, the blood curdling screams wrapping around you like a warm hug. You were calm, never anxious as you reached for the blunt they’d left behind. A half-smoked thing sitting on the edge of a plate. Still warm. You lit it. Inhaled deep. It didn’t help. It just slowed the panic down enough for you to feel all of it. Then came another shot. You didn’t count them. You couldn’t. You didn’t flinch. Didn’t drop the blunt. Just closed your eyes for a second and held it in.
Gunshots are louder when you’re not expecting them. They don’t sound like in the movies. They crack. Sharp. They rip through air like it owes them something. Screams followed. You stayed standing. Smoke leaked from your lips in curls that floated toward the ceiling like ghosts trying to leave before things got worse. And then, you turned the light off.
Just in case.
You didn’t move. Didn’t peek out. Just stood there, alone, in a room that now felt like the inside of a decision you didn’t know you were making. You weren’t scared. The screams never got closer. No footsteps coming up. No doors slamming. Just chaos, contained. You knew no one would be back for you. Not for you.
Not for anyone.
It didn’t last long.
Violence rarely does.
After the noise died, the house exhaled. You didn’t.
You waited.
You waited until it was all quiet again. Long enough to know nobody was coming back. Long enough for the silence to rot. The kind of quiet that doesn’t mean peace. The kind that means there’s no one left to make noise. Then you stepped out. Your footsteps sounded like betrayal. Each one heavier than the last, and as soon as you stepped out of that room, he was already there. Older. Hard eyes. Jaw clenched so tight it looked like it hurt to speak. He didn’t ask where you were. He already knew.
“Why didn’t you do anything?” he asked.
Just that. The room cracked open with that sentence.
He’s furious. He yells, “Where the hell were you?” You’re stunned. His words came out like bruises look the morning after, slow, purple, inevitable. He didn’t need to say more. You heard everything in those five words. Judgment. Disgust. Disappointment. Like he’d already buried you in his mind and was just looking at the body now, wondering how it all went so wrong.
You wanted to scream back, to explain, but the truth was:
you hadn’t done anything.
Not when they left.
Not when the screams started.
Not when the shots cracked through the floorboards and hollowed out the music.
Not even now.
You did nothing but exist.
And in this place, that was the most dangerous thing to do.
You say you didn’t know what was happening. You say you were just trying to stay out of it. That you were upstairs. Safe.
“That’s bullshit.” He doesn’t buy it. “You knew,” he accuses. “You didn’t help. You just sat there.”
He’s not just yelling at you. He’s yelling through you. He’s yelling at every moment you froze, every second you turned inward when the world needed you outward. He’s the voice of guilt, of shame, of judgment. And maybe he’s right. Maybe survival isn’t enough.
“I stayed in the room. I didn’t know what they were planning. I didn’t sign up for that.”
“You didn’t leave either,” he said.
You didn’t answer.
“You could’ve stopped something. Anything.”
“I didn’t even know what the fuck was happening.”
You looked away. Swallowed hard. Your mouth tasted like ash and weed.
“I didn’t wear the red shirt,” you said, low.
“But you didn’t take it off either,” he snapped.
It hit like a slap.
He wasn’t trying to guilt you. That’s what made it worse. He was just mad. At the world. At you. At everything that couldn’t be undone.
“I didn’t know what to do,” you whispered.
He opened his mouth again, ready to spit something cruel, something final.
Then the door behind him creaked open.
She stepped out.
Not fully. Just into the frame. Still. Barefoot. Eyes glassy but clear. She looked at him, not you.
She’d been in the room next door the whole time. Maybe she did the same thing you did. Stood. Quiet. Watching. She’s seen everything. She looks at you with an understanding that cuts deeper than blame. “You couldn’t have stopped it,” she says. Her voice is calm. “It was already written.”
You don’t know if that’s comfort or a curse.
He turned toward her. And for a second, all that rage in him just cracked, like it couldn’t stand under its own weight.
Then she looked back at you.
Not angry. Not thankful either.
Just knowing.
And you believed her.
Not because it made you feel better.
But because it didn’t.
He turned away. Just like that. No more questions. No more words. And that—that—was when the silence really began. Not the silence in the air. The silence in you. Something closed. Somewhere deep. A door you hadn’t noticed until it slammed shut.
You walked down the hall like you were made of echo. Each step dragging something invisible behind it. The party was over, if it had ever really been one. The hallway seemed longer now, pulled like taffy in a bad dream. Every room you passed was empty. Not just of people. Of presence. Like the souls had been vacuumed out, and all that was left were the shells.
Downstairs, the record had stopped spinning but the needle still scratched. A low, repetitive hiss like a whisper you couldn’t quite make out. Blood was on the floor in places it shouldn’t have been. On the walls. On the ceiling. One shoe left by the bottom step. A purse overturned. A phone blinking in the dark, unanswered.
You stepped around it all, careful not to touch anything. You weren’t cleaning up, you were passing through. A ghost that hadn’t earned their haunting yet.
You made it to the front door.
Your hand hesitated on the knob.
One deep breath.
You opened it. You walk outside. The sky is grey, like something’s been drained from it. The party is over. The house is no longer a house, it’s a ruin. You’re leaving now. Getting ready. Moving forward. But something lingers.
And the outside world was still there.
Still quiet.
Still breathing like nothing had happened inside.
The night was cool. Streetlights buzzed like they knew something. You walked out without looking back. Not once. Not even when the door creaked shut behind you. Not even when the wind picked up and carried the scent of everything you left behind down the block, like a warning.
You never told anyone what happened in that house.
Not really.
You can’t say you were never there.
And maybe that's the part that haunts you most.
Because part of you still is, but part of you never was…