Chapter Ten: Writers Don't Dream
The clock read 4 a.m.
But it wasn't that clock.
The one on the wall had died a week ago.
And the one on my phone—I no longer trust.
Maybe time itself is now too ashamed to enter this room.
I know I didn't sleep.
In fact, I no longer understand what sleep even means.
Is it the void between two sentences?
Or the whiteness that separates one page from the next?
Ever since this novel began, sleep has come to resemble loss.
You lose control.
You lose logic.
You lose your body.
And so I stopped sleeping.
Because, simply…
I fear losing myself inside a sentence I never wrote.
**
I sat in front of the page. It was blank.
But not completely.
There was a small line at the bottom, written in faint, hesitant handwriting—
As if the writer regretted writing it:
> "Do not finish this chapter."
I ignored it.
Or convinced myself that I could.
But the line kept burning at the edge of my vision—
As if it were watching me pretend to be the writer.
Then I realized:
The novel isn't stopping me from writing.
It's testing me.
**
The day Ryan died, we were writing the ending.
The ending of a story that hadn't even begun.
He used to tell me:
— "Stories don't end. They just stop at the point where the reader can't take it anymore."
I didn't understand him.
But now I do.
The novel we're writing now...
Is not ours.
We belong to it.
Every moment, every memory, every lie I told myself just to keep going—
Is now being written back at me.
Even that night...
When I told my mother I was okay,
While secretly writing my suicide note.
**
The phone rang.
A tone I'd never heard before.
It wasn't even a tone, more like pages turning rapidly…
Then stopping.
I answered.
No one spoke.
Just breathing.
As if the page was breathing.
As if someone on the other end… was reading me.
I whispered:
"Who are you?"
The voice replied—
In my own voice:
> "I'm you, back when you still dreamed."
I froze.
Was I dreaming?
Am I now inside someone else's dream—
Someone who forgot himself and began writing me instead?
Is this novel… just a long nightmare for someone who woke up and never managed to close their eyes again?
**
I'll be honest.
I don't know who I am.
I'm not sure if I'm the writer, or the character,
Or the shadow of someone who's already died.
The mirror in the basement is calling me again.
The whispers are getting clearer.
And each new page that comes out of the notebook forces me to face a past I never lived—
But still somehow remember.
The last line that appeared on the paper:
> "On page 99, your real name will be written."
But we're only on page 61.
Thirty-eight pages left…
Thirty-eight trials.
Thirty-eight chances for death, or survival, or madness.
**
I went to the mirror.
There was a small piece of paper stuck to its surface—
Unlike any other page.
It looked like it came from another time.
Written in a child's handwriting:
> "Why did you write me?"
I tried to tear the paper.
It wouldn't tear.
I burned it.
It disappeared for a moment—
Then reappeared on the mirror, same words.
Why did I write you, Ryan?
Were you a lifeline?
A crime I pinned on my shadow so I could stay clean?
Or were you real all along—
And I'm the one who ran away into fiction?
**
The next night, I wrote the following sentence—
With my own hand this time:
> "If you don't write the ending,
You will remain in this novel forever."
And so… I'm writing it.
Not because I want to finish it.
But because I'm afraid it won't finish me.
**
This novel isn't a story to be read.
It's a test.
A question scribbled by a madman to an old version of himself.
And I...
I've become just another sentence inside it.
But before I close this chapter,
I want to say one thing—
To you who are reading now...
You're inside this novel too.
Don't deny it.
You
're not reading me.
I'm writing you.
And if you turn to the next page…
You won't be the same.
So—don't continue.
Or do.
But remember:
Writers don't dream.
Because dreams… write them.