Have you ever forgotten something… but felt it clawing at the back of your mind? Like a name you can’t quite place, or a face that slips away the moment you try to picture it? That’s how it started for me. Just a flicker. A shadow in my thoughts. I’d be washing dishes or driving to work, and suddenly—*static crackle*—I’d feel it. A weight. Like someone was standing right behind me, breathing on my neck. But when I turned… nothing. Always nothing. Until it wasn’t.
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My name was Clara. At least, I think it was. That’s what they told me after the accident. The doctors said my memory would come back in pieces, like a puzzle I’d lost the box for. But the pieces didn’t fit. They were… wrong. Faces I didn’t recognise. Places I’d never been. And that voice. Whispered: 'Clara, you’re not done yet.' It followed me everywhere. In the shower. In my dreams. In the silence of 3 a.m. when the world felt too still. I thought I was losing my mind. But what if… what if the truth was worse?
Clara Hammond was 32 when the accident happened. A car crash on a rain-slicked highway, the kind of thing you hear about on the news and forget by morning. She survived, but her memory didn’t. Retrograde amnesia, the doctors called it. Her life before the crash was a blank slate, save for a few fragments: the smell of lavender, the sound of a piano, and a woman’s laugh she couldn’t place. Her husband, David, filled in the gaps. He was patient and kind, with warm brown eyes that crinkled when he smiled. He showed her photos of their life together—vacations in Paris, their wedding on a cliffside, and their cosy apartment in Portland. But every photo felt like a stranger’s story.
Clara tried to rebuild. She went to therapy, took her meds, and ignored the headaches that came like clockwork. But the voice—that voice—wouldn’t leave her alone. “Clara, you’re not done yet.” It was soft, feminine, and almost familiar, like a childhood friend whispering in her ear. At first, she thought it was a hallucination, a side effect of the trauma. But it grew louder, more insistent. It came with images: a locked door, a knife glinting in moonlight, and blood pooling on a hardwood floor.
She didn’t tell David. He’d worry, and he was already doing so much—cooking her favourite meals, leaving her notes to cheer her up. But the notes started to feel… off. They were too specific, like he was trying to script her memories. “Remember how we danced to Sinatra at the lake house?” one read. She didn’t. She couldn’t. And the voice whispered, “He’s lying.”
One night, Clara found a box in the attic while David was at work. It was tucked behind a broken mirror, covered in dust so thick it hadn’t been touched in years. Inside were newspaper clippings, yellowed and brittle. “Local Woman Missing, Presumed Dead,” one headline screamed. The photo showed a woman who looked eerily like Clara, but her name was Elise Carver. The article said Elise vanished three years ago after a fight with her husband. Nobody was found. Clara’s hands shook as she read. The voice hummed, “You’re getting closer.”
She confronted David that night. He laughed it off and said the clippings were research for a novel he’d abandoned. But his eyes didn’t crinkle. They were cold, like a stranger’s. The voice screamed, “Run.” But where could she go? This was her home. Wasn’t it?
The next day, Clara started digging. She went to the library and used a public computer to avoid David’s prying eyes. She searched for Elise Carver. The articles painted a grim picture: Elise was unhappy, trapped in a controlling marriage. Her husband, Daniel Carver, was questioned but never charged. Clara’s heart stopped. Daniel Carver. David. The same man? She found a photo online. It was him. Same jawline, same brown eyes. But the name was different.
That night, Clara pretended everything was normal. She cooked dinner, smiled, and kissed David goodnight. But when he fell asleep, she crept to the basement. The voice guided her, urgent now: “Find it. Find it now.” She tore through boxes and old furniture until she found a locked trunk. The key was hidden in David’s office, taped under his desk. Inside the trunk was a journal. Elise’s journal.
The entries were frantic, written in a hurried scrawl. Elise wrote about Daniel’s temper and his obsession with control. The last entry read, “He knows I’m leaving. If I don’t make it, someone find this. Please.” Tucked inside the journal was a photo of Elise and another woman—Clara’s face, but younger and happier. A sister? A twin? The voice whispered, “You’re not Clara.”
Clara’s world unravelled. She remembered now—not everything, but enough. She wasn’t Clara. She was Elise. There was no accident. No amnesia. David—Daniel—had drugged her, kept her locked away, and convinced her she was someone else. The “memories” he fed her were lies, a script to keep her docile. The voice wasn’t a hallucination. It was her own, buried deep, fighting to break free.
She heard footsteps on the stairs. David’s voice, soft and dangerous: “Clara, what are you doing down here?”
She hid the journal and grabbed a screwdriver from a nearby toolbox. When David appeared, his face was a mask of calm, but his eyes were wild. “You’re confused, sweetheart,” he said. “Let’s get you back to bed.”
“No,” she whispered. “I know who I am.”
His mask cracked. He lunged. Clara swung the screwdriver, catching his arm. He roared, but she was already running, up the stairs, out the door, into the rain-soaked night. The voice screamed, “Don’t stop.”
Clara—Elise—made it to a neighbour's house, banging on the door, sobbing. The neighbour, an older woman, let her in and called the police. David was arrested. The journal was enough to charge him, and the truth came out: Daniel had killed Elise’s twin sister, Clara, three years ago, then drugged Elise to believe she was Clara, rewriting her life to trap her. The “accident” was a lie to explain her disorientation. The voice was Elise’s own mind, fighting to remember her true self.
But the real horror came later. At the police station, Elise was fingerprinted. The officer’s face went pale. “Ma’am,” he said, “these prints… they match Clara Hammond’s. Not Elise Carver’s.”
Elise froze. The voice returned, louder than ever, laughing now: “I told you, you’re not done yet.”
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