The sheet collapsed. There was no one under it. The note fluttered to the floor, and the house was finally, truly, empty.
He saw himself—living, breathing, stubborn—moving into the house with M. He saw the moment he had tucked a small scrap of paper into a crack in the doorframe, a secret note she would never find.
He stood in the corner of the living room, watching M eat a chocolate pie. She ate it with a focused, brutal grief, scraping the tin until the sound set his non-existent teeth on edge. He wanted to reach out, to tell her that the house wasn't empty, but his hands were only folds of fabric. When he moved, the world didn't ripple; he was the ripple. The sheet collapsed
Time began to lose its edges. It didn't flow; it sedimented.
He watched M leave. He watched a new family move in, their laughter like glass shards in his quiet space. He lashed out, shattering plates to reclaim the silence, but they only replaced the porcelain and kept laughing. She ate it with a focused, brutal grief,
He waited. He endured the loop until the house was empty once more. With a spectral fingernail, he picked at the paint, chipping away decades of grime until he reached the slip of paper. He pulled it out and read the words he had written to her when he was whole.
Centuries collapsed. The house was torn down. He stood in the footprint of his bedroom while a skyscraper rose around him, cold and steel-eyed. He climbed to the roof and looked at a city that had forgotten the dirt it was built on. Then, he jumped. he fell back into the beginning.
He didn't die; ghosts don't have that luxury. Instead, he fell back into the beginning.