serhabil

[serhabil]

“Wings Folded Like Paper”

They’ve been shouting my name for hours.

Not my real one, of course. That one is gone—filed, cross-indexed, bled dry in the Cathedral of Surveillance. What they shout now is a name meant to humiliate. “Hey pretty thing!” “Featherboy!” “Heaven’s whore!”—each word a hook, each breath a rope.

So I stay in the alley, crouched between a cracked drain and a forgotten mural of someone who looks like they once believed in peace.

The city moves on the other side of the wall—fast, luminous, rabid. Here in the alley, everything slows. Garbage slicks the ground. A rat drags a cigarette. A neon ad flickers “RISE // RISE // RISE” until it dies in its own voltage.

And I?

I’m still breathing.

My wings ache. Not metaphorically—they burn. Real heat, real muscle, real bone threaded with nerves I never asked for. One wing is folded beneath me like a dead arm. The other twitches sometimes, like it remembers flight.

Forget it, my dear, old friend.

They’ll come soon. They always do. Nets, tranquilizers, prayers laced with neurotoxins. Not to kill, no. Just to pin me. Brand me. Parade me as proof that even divinity can be crushed by demand.

The worst part isn’t the capture.

It’s the quiet before.

Before the angel’s death.

When the shouts die off, and I’m left alone with myself. The alley breathes. A breeze touches my cheek like it’s sorry. And for one final second, I remember the sky.

My name was once sung across oceans. Now it echoes between dumpsters. Sorrowful. Tired.

I pull my coat tighter, wrap shadow around my face.

Let them come.

Let them take what’s left.

But I swear this to the stars I once knew by name:

they will not take my silence.

[serhabil]

“The Night with No Doors”

I remember a tavern in the woods that did not exist.

It had no doors, only candlelight and breath.

Everyone there had lost something,

but no one dared speak it aloud.

They drank songs, not wine.

And I—

I laughed.

For the first time in seven-hundred years.

The barkeep touched my hand

and said,

“It is good to remember you are not stone.”

I wept so silently I cracked the chair.

[serhabil]

“You’ve Always Been My Favorite”

The mirror had cracked years ago, but she never replaced it. She liked the way her reflection broke apart: one eye softer, the other sharper, one side laughing while the other grieved.

Tonight, she traced the ink on her shoulder. The black star. The letter S. Symbols she didn’t remember choosing. Her shadow whispered, as it always did.

“You’ve always been my favorite.”

She smiled without teeth.

There were nights when she believed it. Believed she was something special. The kind of woman other women dreamed of being: distant, dark-eyed, too heavy for ordinary life. But it wasn’t quite that. It was the weight of things she had done.

“It wasn’t me,” she said aloud once. In a cafe, mid-conversation, staring into the coffee’s black surface.

Her friend had looked confused. “What wasn’t you?”

The shadow inside her had laughed. It was always there. Not on the wall or the floor, but folded between her thoughts, hiding in the folds of old conversations.

The first time she noticed was as a child. Her mother had asked if she’d broken the porcelain cat. And she had said yes. Even though she hadn’t. A simple thing. A small cruelty. But it felt good, watching her mother’s face break.

Later, there were larger things.

Things she had done and couldn’t undo because they were too perfectly done to be accidents.

The shadow whispered, through all of it. “Do it.”

Tonight, she sat on the edge of her bed, cigarette between two fingers, smoke curling like thought. The window showed her silhouette against a pale sky. A storm gathering.

“Why me?” she asked.

No answer at first. Then, just as she crushed the cigarette:

“Because you listen.”

Her skin prickled. It was true. Some people carried shadows like ornaments. Quiet, unused. But not her. She’d always been so hungry for the voice.

She closed her eyes. Tried to remember who she was before the voice. A little girl with black bangs and a toy cat. That was all.

“What happens if I stop?” she whispered.

The shadow stretched along the floor. Longer. Darker. Its shape now more than human—horns, claws, nothing specific but everything true.

“Then you won’t be my favorite anymore.”

And that, somehow, was worse than death.

She stood. Moved toward the mirror. Watched her broken face come together. There she was: both halves finally aligned. For once, she didn’t speak. The shadow spoke for her.

“You’ve always been my favorite,” it said.

And she smiled. Because favorites aren’t the best. Favorites are just the ones that break best.

[serhabil]

“The Ones That Follow”

There are things that walk beside me. Not people. Not quite shadows. They are shapes made from old hours, from words I’ve said once and forgotten, from faces I remember only as colours now—grey, pale, ash-rose. I carry them like threads tangled around my ribs. And when the world grows quiet enough, when the streets empty or the sky bends low with evening, I can hear them rustle.

They do not speak often. But when they do, it is not in voices like ours. It is in the flicker of a neon sign I’ve seen before. In the scrape of a lighter in the dark, the scent of something burning slow. They are not haunting me; they are simply waiting.

Waiting for what? I couldn’t tell you. Perhaps for me to remember them fully, to acknowledge them as real. Or perhaps for me to admit something I’m not ready to say.

Sometimes, in the middle of things—buying bread, or walking home under sodium lights—I’ll catch a glimpse of them in a window’s reflection. A suggestion of someone standing just over my shoulder. I don’t turn. I already know they’re there.

We all carry these echoes. Some of us louder than others. Some drown them in noise, in lights, in movement. I don’t. I let them walk with me. I let them say what they need to say.

And sometimes, in a breath between moments, one of them leans close and asks me—not out loud, but inside the hollow space behind my heart:

"Do you still carry it with you?"

And the answer is always yes.

[serhabil]

"Obsidian Veil"

The theatre of sleep.

Gravity is guesswork, and time coils like a blind eel.

She walks corridor after corridor, fragile and unmoored—every wall mirrored, but none returning her face.

The mirrors writhe. They shimmer with apparitional fidelity, reflecting her hands, her neck, the swing of her shadow—yet her face is always a wound of static, a hiss of un-being. She leans closer: the void leans back, breathing.

They told her, once, that to see yourself in a dream is to awaken. But she has not woken in years.

She is the Woman Without a Face, archivist of a sleep-world carved from forgotten thoughts and spines of unread books. The glass knows her but stays silent as she approaches. Behind every pane, something stirs—an afterimage of her that remembers being real.

Sometimes, the reflection bleeds through: a glimpse of cheekbone, the arc of an eye orbiting sorrow. She reaches to touch, to merge—but the mirror slashes light like a knife. Her fingers pass through smoke. The image fractures. The dream deepens.

And deepens even more.

There are rumors in this dream plane—spoken in languages built from the sound of clocks melting—that those who fail to see themselves are not dreamers at all, but memories of the waking, lost in recursion. Ghosts spun from others’ sleep.

She no longer seeks escape. She walks not to wake, but to find the moment her face will cohere, become her own, and stare back with lucidity. But each step only folds the dream tighter, like silk over bone.

And still the mirrors multiply.

[serhabil]

“Heaven”

I was light once.

Weightless.

Suspended in a honeyed gloaming where time had no teeth. Every breath was an exhale of gold, and every thought bloomed without burden. Heaven, if that’s what it was, had no edges, no hunger, no clocks—just a vast and tender unfolding.

I did not walk; I drifted.

I did not speak; I harmonized.

My name—whatever it had been—fell away like a dried husk, irrelevant among the soft and resonant infinities.

[serhabil]

"Valentine"

A silver light bathes the corners of my apartment. But the moonlight only reaches so far. It doesn’t touch the deep dark—the one that lingers beneath my ribs.

My phone sat still, face down.

Oh, the stillness, as if the air itself were listening—strained and breathless—beneath the weight of something old and barely remembered. A low, reedy whistle threaded through the silence, not borne on wind, but rising from stone: the cracked mouths of forgotten statues exhaling some primeval lullaby. Moss stirred on the lintels of half-buried ruins, not from motion, but from memory. The stillness was attentive, as though the land braced itself for the return of a language once spoken by stars.

And the radiator ticks.

And the fridge answers by letting out a tired sigh.

The silence is settled into the walls, into the furniture, into me. I move through it like I belong to it. Like it belongs to me.

And I float, and I do so like an angel.

The kettle breathes steam, curling up toward the ceiling in ribbons.

The toaster clicks. The scent of burnt rye rises. Sharp. Familiar. I should’ve pulled it out sooner.

I don’t mind.

The butter is soft under my knife, folding into the rough grooves of the bread. I take a bite. Its warmth spread through me.

There is no rush.

No one waiting.

No one asking anything of me.

I watch the city as it stretches out in quiet shapes through my window. A neon sign flickers in the distance, half a letter burned out so that it says something unintentional, something absurd.

But it’s been like this for months now.

The moon casts its fragile glow, like a woman in silks turned to frost, standing at the edge of an empty hall—her beauty untouched, her expectation long since abandoned to ice.

Other windows glow in their own private constellations. Behind them, people move—talking, cooking, pressing hands against each other where the shadows wore perfume and the hours wept velvet.

I wonder if any of them see me.

I wonder if I am just another shadow.

If I am framed by the glass.

If I am Another life half-glimpsed.

Half-forgotten.

[serhabil]

"Angels"

“Café’s glass wall, café’s glass wall, mock me with a tone so sepulchral.”

“I’m a sanguisuge. An annelid.”

“Hmm. Only the special mocks herself.”

“Two sharp canine teeth and I will be a damned vampire.”

A moment of joy.

Serenity. Empty café. It all feels like a masquerade. A dream. An escape.

The timid sun casts wonders—a yellow Beetle parks at its usual spot. The cats begin their cautious free roaming.

She glimpses the two whispering waiters:

“That’s her.”

“Her, who?”

The serenity is gone. She sinks her steel-colored nails in her dark hair, moving it like waves in the dusking sky. Looking at the reflection of the glass wall, she plans a quick route out of the café.

Worn out in an alley, as though she’s just devoured a banquet.

Footsteps behind her.

“Hello, sweetheart.”

“Hello, Dad.”

“This worldly scene was your birthday present, sweetheart.”

“Where have I just been, Dad? Who were those people?

“You were in an alley, feeding on someone’s soul, sweetheart. Those persons were watching you, waiting to feed, too.”

“And the cats?”

“No cats, sweetheart. It is them.” He gestures toward a lofty facade where colossal creatures ascend and descend in a flurry of impulsive actions.

“Tell me about cats, Dad. About the sun. Butterflies. Pomegranates. Lilac.”

However, the moment has arrived for his habitual farewell. His image evaporates by her side and among the shadows that come to escort him. Like a candle’s flame. It flickers. It goes out.

She no longer cares.

[serhabil]

"A Clown's Tale"

A chilly wind. Dusty air.

His stare met his fractured mirror.

In his desolate dressing room, each gust of wind carried the weight of years past.

They roused shards of anguish and grief.

And they danced; they danced like shadowy phantasms.

Hauntingly, his mother’s voice called out to him. Her words laced with cruelty and scorn as she uttered the dreaded nickname that had haunted him for years:

"Grim Grin."

Quivering hand.

It ascended.

It caressed the painted rictus adorning his face.

A tarnished veil of neglect obscured the mirror’s once-pristine clarity. Within its cracked and filth-encrusted depths, his reflection was a nightmarish apparition, a grotesque fusion of shadow and light that danced with sinister delight. Layers of dust, like the shroud of forgotten souls, clung to the glass, distorting his features into twisted caricatures of humanity. His very essence consumed by the monstrous face that leered back at him from the depths of the mirror's abyss.

A solitary teardrop welled up.

Crystalline surface.

Shimmering.

With agonizing slowness, the tear began its descent down the clown's painted cheek, a trail of liquid sorrow tracing the path of its descent. It traversed the vibrant hues of his façade—as if it were an agent of dissolution.

Truth or mirage?

With each delicate touch, the once-bold colors of his mask bled and ran, revealing the pallid flesh that lay beneath. The tear became a catalyst for transformation, stripping away the layers of pretense to expose the raw vulnerability that lay dormant within. And as it clung precariously to the clown's chin, a fleeting moment of suspended agony, it caught the faintest glimmer of light, refracting it into a spectral prism of fractured emotion. With a final, graceful descent, the tear plummeted to the ground below, leaving behind only the ghostly echo of the sorrow that lingered within the recesses of the clown's fractured soul.

He shuffled across the room.

His clown shoes dragged—deep imprints marred the dust that coated the wooden boards.

Each step echoed.

Empty cans clattered.

Wrappers crunched.

He reached the window. He pinched the blinds. Slowly, he pulled them apart. A sliver of daylight broke through, pierced the blinds. Shadows danced on the floor. Smoke spiraled from his cigarette—twisted in the sunlight.

He peered outside, down to the streets.

Just to realize that the world below unfolded like a twisted carnival.

That each figure was a grotesque caricature of humanity.

That each figure was framed by cascading curls of rainbow-colored hair, accentuated by exaggerated eyebrows and oversized, colorful eyes that peered into the city’s soul.

That each figure was a clown.

[serhabil]

"Pixie’s Quest"

“Do not stop feeding until you reach my bones.”

I swallowed my tongue as they crawled towards me. Time lapsed as they approached, their pace deliberated. It's their preferred part of the body—a contest of who reaches it first.

Japonicas in my brain.

Now I gaze upon life with longing, and I can attest that death is far from pleasant. Sleep paralysis has transformed into the ever-present horror within my nightmares. Night hags congregate in numbers in an unvarying rhythm when I close my eyes. They taunt me. Then I relive it all, over and over.

If only I had listened to Lora that night. But she never cared for coasters in my house. She never asked for permission. Not for taking the last cigarette from my pack, not for flicking the ashes into my tea.

“You’re uptight, girl,” she said, leaning against my window. Her cigarette dangled between two fingers, a thin stream of smoke curling toward the ceiling. The city lights flickered in her pupils.

“I’m off for four days. Heading to Catalunya,” she added, her head tilting in a way that wasn’t quite casual, like she was already making space for me beside her.

I wasn’t interested.

The wind shifted. The cigarette burning low. Then—flick. A sharp snap of her fingers, like a magician vanishing a coin. The ember tumbled, twisting, a dying star swallowed by the dark.

I should've joined her. Instead, I aimlessly scrolled through the social media app, debating whether to post a photo. Fluttering nerves. Eventually, I did it. The likes and comments poured in—too many, too fast.

Beauty.

Love.

Dark Queen.

We miss you, Aunty.

Shorty.

Mother of my future children.

A chorus of strangers. The Internet: a bizarre tool of globalization.

Yet, one comment struck with unsettling force: "We miss you, aunty."

"Aunty?"

Lora fought her jeans first. Twisting, yanking, cursing under her breath. The usual battle. The Jeans War, I used to call it. It had been cute once.

Not tonight.

Tonight, it grated. The tugging, the hopping, the little frustrated snorts.

Then the boots—stiff black leather, creaking as she stomped in. She zipped them up, nails clicking against metal.

I looked away.

"Maybe I really am uptight.”

“Who calls me Aunty?” I muttered, clicking on the commenter’s profile. A photo loaded: a young man standing beside a well. Pointing at it. His face, pixelated. His eyes, watching.

Lora glanced at me. “You good?”

“Yeah.”

She hesitated. Just a flicker of something on her face, a pause in her usual rhythm. Then she grinned, kicked my chair lightly with her boot, and left.

I didn’t stop her.

"That’s the well on my sister's farm. My forgotten sister."

The following day:

Chatterers. Orators. Words usually get caught in my throat. Perhaps because I stammered once. A stammering girl. A small stammering girl. A petite, short-haired, stammering girl. Imagine how terrible that was.

“Are you sure this is the place?” I asked the peculiar driver.

The road stretched empty ahead of us, cracked and weary. He adjusted the rearview mirror. Once. Twice. A third time.

Seven times.

There was nothing to adjust. No cars behind us. No sudden glare of headlights. The mirror was fine.

He was just watching me.

“You haven’t been here in thirteen years you said, right? This place has changed,” he murmured.

“Odd fellow.”

I stood on an unpaved road, off the beaten path, gazing at the farm’s slightly ajar gate. It was smothered in clinging vines, exuding an untamed aroma. A butterfly summoned cherished memories of iridescence, of luminescence. No 5G signal. Isolation struck as the enigmatic driver departed. I pushed the gate open, reminiscing how Leila brushed my hair in front of the mirror when I was seven. One night, she whispered to me, "Let me tell you a secret, my little angel: I carry a tiny baby within me. The stars will surely bless me with a child as pure-hearted as you. And here's another secret: I shall have six children."

I loved her then. I thought she was magic.

When she disappeared, no one spoke of her.

One comment beckoned me here. "We miss you, Aunty."

"Perhaps the young man in the photo with pixelated eyes is my sister's son."

The well had transformed. Now it resembled an idyllic pool tainted by bacteria. Brimming with bones. Torn garments. Traces of blood.

A unique sunset descended, unlike any before. Shadows greeted me in the farmhouse, creeping, murmuring, as the main door creaked open. The stench was unbearable. What was once a haven now stood as an eyesore: a dark, fly-infested, repugnant sight.

I climbed the stairs differently now. Longer legs, larger feet. The house had shrunk, or maybe I had grown too large for it. My old room was at the end of the hall. It used to be quite a trek as a child. The window overlooked the horses’ field. The view thrilled me as a child. Closing my eyes, I could hear my sister recounting bedtime stories from my youth. I neither saw nor felt the passage of time. Leila's voice lulled me into slumber.

The night descended, cloaking the world in ebony ink.

I woke up at midnight. Navigating the hallway was a challenge as I stumbled towards the bathroom. An insufferable odor engulfed me. After splashing my face with water, I confronted my reflection in the mirror, only to find the young man from the photo positioned behind me. A tempest of emotions raged within me at the sight. My breath hitched. I spun around. The room tilted–walls breathing, floor shifting.

And then—

Leila.

She took my hand, her fingers warm, solid.

“Is this a dream, Leila?”

"No, my angel. I deeply regret that you ended up here."

"Have I fallen into a trap, Leila?"

"It's not your fault, Pixie. I bore demons."

They began descending the walls.

“I bore monsters,” she repeated. Her voice trembled now, thick with something unspoken.

Pain. Sharp, immediate. Teeth in my foot.

“They’re eating me, Leila.”

“Don’t look, my love. Stay with me.”

But I wanted to look. I wanted to see the moment my soul left my body. The dark road it would take towards the unknown.

I exhaled one last time.

Then I woke again.

My arm was gone—chewed away. Leila had vanished.

She was replaced by monstrous roars.

And they were still hungry.

“Do not stop feeding until you reach my bones.”

Japonicas in my brain.

[serhabil]

“Old friend”

Welcome back, old friend—do you remember me?

It’s Silence, the voice you once tried to escape.

I’ve kept your seat where the shadows breathe,

where the air tastes of endings, soft and shapeless.

Did the world not hold you the way you wished?

Did laughter slip through your trembling hands?

Come, rest—I have no questions to ask,

only the hush that already knows your name

[serhabil]

“Get off at the next stop”

The subway hums beneath her, a mechanical sigh echoing through the tunnels.

A restless vibration.

A metallic murmur.

Like a caged thunderstorm.

It rises and falls, layered with the screech of wheels against tracks, the low electric buzz of the overhead lights, and the distant echoes of the city's heartbeat above.

A sound that’s both monotonous and alive.

A lullaby for the sleepless and the wandering.

She leans against the window, bundled in a scarf that still smells like yesterday’s rain. Outside, the city flickers past in streaks of light, but in the black glass, there is only her reflection—her face, slightly blurred, slightly wrong.

"Am I the ghost in the glass, or is she the one watching me fade?"

She exhales, watching her breath cloud over her own features. The train lurches, and for a moment, the world shifts. The reflection does not.

A flicker.

A shape just beyond her shoulder.

She doesn’t turn.

Not yet.

The void in the window stretches, deep and endless. It reminds her of nights walking home alone, of alleys too quiet, of cigarette smoke dissolving into the sky. She wonders how many people have looked into this same abyss, how many ghosts it has collected.

The train slows.

It’s the next station.

Doors sliding open with a sigh. People shuffle in, damp coats and tired eyes, but she doesn’t move. She watches the darkness in the glass, waiting for it to blink first.

The train pulls forward. Lights streak across the tunnel walls. The black window swallows them whole.

A whisper curls in her ear, soft as static:

“Get off at the next stop. Don’t look back.”

Her pulse hammers.

The voice is familiar—too familiar.

Like a memory she shouldn’t have.

She closes her eyes. Maybe when she opens them, the reflection will be normal again. Maybe the voice will fade. Maybe the void in the window won’t still be staring.

The train hurtles forward, deeper into the city’s veins.

[serhabil]

"Frozen Night Hotel"

The hotel room hums with silence.

A streetlamp outside wavers, uncertain.

Should I exist or vanish?

The blinds are half-closed, slatted shadows cutting across her face, her bare shoulders. Car lights slice through the window, dragging slow, white ghosts along the walls. Her reflection moves in the mirror but doesn’t quite match her.

She looks expensive, in the way something already paid for can’t be returned. Lips smudged with wine, cheekbone catching the city’s sick glow. Her black slip pools around her like an oil spill.

Thick air.

Ghosts of perfume.

Old wood.

Something metallic and faintly bitter.

The hotel carpet smells of forgotten stories, of damp wool and shoes that have walked too far.

A cigarette smolders in the bedside ashtray, a ghost of breath still rising from its dimming ember. She smokes—not often, not for need, but for the ritual of it. The controlled burn, the slow surrender to nothing. She likes the thought of something choosing to vanish in fire rather than fading without a fight.

A door clicks shut somewhere down the hall.

Slow, uncertain footsteps drag past her room, hesitate, then move on. The walls here are thin, but silence still swallows everything whole.

She wonders if she ever really wanted anything.

Desire feels like a performance—longing without an audience. She used to think she lived for love, for art, for beauty. Now she lives for the quiet between moments, for the feeling of a hotel room at 2 AM.

Where time forgets itself.

Where nothing matters.

“Freedom.”

The ice in her glass has melted. Watered-down regret.

The blinds rattle when another car rolls by. Its headlights flash across the ceiling like some heavenly glitch.

She closes her eyes.

Tries to feel real.

Fails.

Somewhere, a faint knock. A tray being wheeled away. A voice murmuring behind a closed door. Fragments of lives that don’t belong to her, dissolving before they reach her.

The city breathes.

The blinds whisper.

The moment passes, already lost.

She finishes her drink. Lets the ice slide against her lips.

Tomorrow, she will leave.

Or maybe she won’t.

It doesn’t really matter.

Nothing does, and that, somehow, is beautiful.