Eliot sat at his kitchen table, staring at his blank journal.

The paper was crisp and white, mocking him with its emptiness. His pen hovered, twitching in his fingers, as he struggled to put words down—any words—about Ida. He could feel the memories slipping through his mind like water through a sieve. The more he reached for them, the more they scattered into the fog.

He tried to focus. Just write it down. It’s simple. Start with something small. Start with her face.

But as soon as he closed his eyes to picture her, Ida’s features blurred. Her eyes, once a bright shade of green, were suddenly hazel. Her hair, long and dark, became short and lighter in his mind. What was she wearing the last time they met? A coat? Which one was the red one with the brass buttons or the blue peacoat? He couldn’t be sure. 

The frustration burned in his chest as he scratched a few shaky lines into the journal: Ida: My best friend. College. The café on 4th Street. Always wore—

He stopped. Wore what? He gritted his teeth, angry at himself for not remembering something so basic. How can you forget something like that? She was real. You know she was real.

But the doubts had started creeping in, twisting around his thoughts like a slow-growing vine. Each day, the memories grew fuzzier, less concrete. His friends didn’t remember her. Her own mother didn’t remember her.

He had no photos, no messages, no physical proof. And every time he tried to conjure up the sound of her voice or the exact shape of her smile, it slipped further away as if his mind were erasing her, too.

Was she real? Or was this some elaborate trick his brain was playing on him? He’d heard of people fabricating entire relationships in their minds—hallucinations brought on by stress, isolation, or mental illness. Could that be what was happening to him? Could he have invented Ida out of loneliness, and now the illusion was falling apart?

“No,” he muttered to himself, gripping the pen tighter. “She was real. She is real.”

—

Days bled together, winter’s cold grip tightening on the city. Snow fell in soft, endless drifts, blanketing the streets and muffling the sounds of the city. Eliot spent more and more time indoors, pouring over his journals, scribbling every detail he could still remember about Ida, no matter how small.

She liked peppermint tea. She hated when people interrupted her while she was reading. She had a scar on her left hand—from what? I don’t remember.

He visited the café on 4th Street, where they used to meet for coffee. He sat in their usual spot by the window, watching the snow fall outside, trying to picture her sitting across from him, laughing at something he’d said. He asked the barista if they’d seen a woman like her—dark hair, green eyes—but all he got was a blank stare and a shrug.

Obsessively, he retraced their steps through the city. The library where she spent hours sketching, the art gallery where they’d admired paintings in silence, the little bookstore tucked away in the side streets where she would lose herself in old novels. He wandered from place to place, hoping anything would trigger a memory or leave behind a sign that she had existed.

But nothing did.

The dreams started not long after. In them, Eliot was always chasing her—through the streets, down endless hallways, across the frozen surface of the Schuylkill River. He could see her in the distance, her figure blurred by falling snow, her voice a whisper carried on the wind. She would call out his name, and he would run, feet sinking into the snow, but he could never catch up. She was always just out of reach.

Each morning, he woke drenched in sweat, the sheets twisted around him, her name lingering on his lips like a prayer. And each morning, reality felt more fragile, more unsteady, as if the dream world were beginning to seep into his waking life.

He began seeing her in reflections—in shop windows, the mirrors of passing cars, the water’s surface in Rittenhouse Square’s frozen fountain. His heart would leap every time, and he whirl around, only to find no one there. It was as if she was haunting him, teasing him with glimpses of herself, a shadow slipping just beyond his grasp.

The whispers came next.

He would be walking down the street, and he’d hear it—her soft and familiar voice murmuring his name. He’d stop, scanning the crowds, searching for her face among the strangers, but she was never there. The whispers followed him everywhere: at the grocery store, at the post office, even in his apartment late at night when the wind howled against the windows.

—

One evening, as Eliot wandered through the streets, he was drawn to a small thrift shop on the edge of town. The kind of place filled with forgotten trinkets, old books, and discarded relics from lives that no longer mattered. The bell above the door jingled as he stepped inside, a gust of warm air washing over him.

The shop was dimly lit, and Eliot’s breath fogged the air as he wandered past dusty shelves and tarnished mirrors. Something tugged at his mind, an odd sense of familiarity as if he had been here before. He drifted toward the back of the store, where a box of old photographs sat on the floor, half-hidden beneath a pile of newspapers.

He crouched down, sifting through the pictures. Most were black-and-white, faded snapshots of strangers. But then, his hand froze. His heart skipped a beat as he pulled out a photograph that made his blood run cold.

It was him. Standing in the snow, arm slung around someone’s shoulders. 

Ida’s shoulders.

She was laughing, head tilted back, dark hair spilling beneath a woolen cap. He stared at the photograph, his hands trembling. It was proof. Proof that she had existed, that he wasn’t crazy, that everything he had been going through wasn’t some delusion.

But before he could take a closer look, something strange happened. The photograph shimmered, the image warping before his eyes. His breath caught in his throat as he watched, helpless, as Ida’s figure faded. Her features blurred, dissolving into the background until all that was left was a photo of him standing alone in the snow.

Eliot’s heart raced as he stumbled, clutching the photograph. He rushed to the front of the store, where an elderly clerk sat behind the counter, leafing through an old magazine.

“Where did you get this?” Eliot asked, his voice sharp with desperation. “This photo—where did it come from?”

The clerk looked up slowly, adjusting his glasses. “That old thing? We’ve had it for years. People donate all sorts of junk.”

“But it wasn’t like this!” Eliot insisted, his hand trembling as he held out the photo. “She was in it. There was someone else. I—”

The clerk squinted at the photo, then looked back at Eliot, unimpressed. “Looks like it’s just you, son. Maybe you’re remembering wrong.”

“No.” Eliot’s voice cracked. “No, I’m not remembering wrong. She was there. Her name is Ida. We—” He stopped, his throat tightening. “We were friends. She’s real. She was real.”

The clerk gave him a long, pitying look, the kind that made Eliot’s skin crawl. “Maybe you should sit down. You don’t look well.”

Eliot staggered back, clutching the photograph to his chest. The store walls seemed to close around him, the dim light casting long shadows dancing at the edges of his vision. His heart pounded, and his mind whirled with confusion, anger, and fear.

The photograph. It had changed. Or maybe it hadn’t. Perhaps he was losing his grip on reality. He didn’t know anymore. He didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t. 

—

The snow fell heavier as Eliot stumbled out of the shop, the cold biting through his coat, the wind howling in his ears. He stood on the sidewalk, looking at the photo in his hands. The face that had once been Ida’s was now nothing more than a smear, a faint blur in the background.

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to hold on to the memory of her, trying to recall every detail—her smile, her laugh, the way she used to tease him—but it was slipping away.

Opening his eyes, he stared at the sky, the snowflakes swirling like ash in the wind. He had come so close to finding proof, holding onto some small piece of her. But now, even the evidence he had clung to had been erased.

And in that moment, as the city around him blurred into a wintry haze, Eliot realized with a crushing sense of dread that the line between reality and memory had been shattered beyond repair.

To Be Continued …

Read Part I here.

Read Part II here.