The Hollowing

You don’t notice what’s missing until you’re gone.

I wrote this for

Milk & Honey

’s Augtober week 1 challenge prompt. The goal was to focus on creating and building a sense of dread. Hopefully I managed it!

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I was halfway through my morning shaving routine when something in the mirror moved.
Not me — not a trick of the light — something just behind my left ear.

I leaned in, angling my head to see, and caught a glimpse of pale, wet sliver writhing against my skin before it slipped into my ear canal.
Instinct took over. I dropped the razor, my fingers clawing for a grip, but my nails only scraped skin. The thing was gone inside me, deeper than I could reach.
For a long moment, I just stood there, breathing hard, listening for it — and I swear I could feel it twitch. I swallowed, shuddered, and headed for the car, wisps of shaving cream still on my cheeks.

By the time I got to urgent care, the skin around my ear felt hot and tight.
The nurse practitioner peered in with a tiny flashlight, frowned, and then smiled the way you do at a kid who’s imagining things or telling stories for attention.
“Nothing there,” she said. “Probably just a muscle spasm or a little water trapped in the canal. Happens more than you’d think.”
I told her it wasn’t water. I told her I’d seen it.
She just smiled and offered me an antibiotic drop “just in case” then sent me home.

I told myself it was nothing. That it was gone, probably crawled out while I was driving to the clinic. I went about my day.

That night, lying in bed, I could feel it again — a slow, deliberate shifting deep in my head, like something turning over in its sleep.
By morning, I’d convinced myself it was all psychosomatic. Stress, maybe. Too much caffeine combined with the power of suggestion.

And then, halfway through brushing my teeth, I realized I couldn’t remember what I’d eaten for dinner the night before.
Not just forgotten — the memory was gone, like it had been scooped out.

I shrugged it off. People forget what they had for dinner all the time. But it was strange that I couldn’t remember eating anything, let alone what I’d had.

Two days later, I was in the grocery store when my phone buzzed — a reminder to pay for parking.
I walked outside and stood there, staring at a row of cars I didn’t recognize. My key fob was in my hand. I pressed the button. Nothing. Pressed it again. What kind of car did I drive?
For a moment, I couldn’t remember.

I pressed the key fob once more. A minivan blinked twice from across the lot.

I don’t own a minivan. I’m sure of it.

A woman came toward me, holding the same key fob. “Are you — ” she started, then saw my face and stopped short. “Oh. Sorry. Thought you were someone else.” She headed for the minivan.

When I finally found my own car — three rows over — my hands were shaking so badly I dropped the keys twice before getting the door open.
The whole drive home, the phantom shape of that worm pressed against the inside of my skull like a flower between the pages of a book.

By the end of the week, I couldn’t deny it. I wasn’t just forgetting dinner or parking spots anymore.

I was halfway through telling my coworker, Marissa, about a client meeting when she gave me this weird look and said, “You already told me this. Yesterday.”
I laughed it off, but later I found a half-written report on my laptop — except I didn’t remember starting it. Or the client it was for.

That night, Erik called.
“Hey, we still on for Saturday?” he asked.
I had no idea what he was talking about.
“Our movie thing,” he said slowly. “You bought the tickets.”

I didn’t remember that either.

People kept brushing it off — “You’re tired,” “You’ve been stressed,” “Everybody forgets stuff sometimes” — but their smiles didn’t reach their eyes.
It was the same look the nurse had given me.
The same look you give someone you’ve already decided is wrong.

Something was very definitely wrong, and now they all knew it.

I went back to the doctor — my PCP this time — and he examined me and found nothing. But he believed me enough to schedule an MRI.

They slid me into the narrow tube, the ceiling inches from my face. The machine began its hammering — deep, metallic thunks in an unsteady rhythm, loud enough to rattle in my teeth. I stayed perfectly still, clutching the squeeze bulb they’d given me “in case of panic,” all the while feeling that slow, deliberate shifting inside my head. The doctors assured me the scans showed nothing unusual.

But I knew.

It happened on a Tuesday morning.

I woke up, shuffled into the kitchen, and found a mug sitting on the counter — one I didn’t recognize. Pale blue, chipped at the rim, with Marianne written across it in looping black script and a heart dotting the i.

I stood there, trying to place it.
Trying to place her.

My phone buzzed with a text from an unfamiliar caller:

Running late, but I’ll be there in twenty. Don’t drink all the coffee, you thief. ❤️

The little heart sat there like a taunt.

I scrolled up. There were months of messages. Photos. Jokes. Late-night confessions. In every one, I was myself — smiling, teasing, familiar — and yet staring at them was like staring at someone else’s life.

Who the hell was Marianne?

When the knock came twenty minutes later, I didn’t open the door.
Whoever she was, I didn’t want her to see the look on my face. The blank look that would tell her I didn’t know her.

The holes widened. I faded.

It wasn’t just my memories anymore — it was the muscle functions of living. I’d reach for my toothbrush and realize I couldn’t remember how to use it or why I needed to. I’d open the fridge and stare at the food, unable to recall which things needed cooking and which didn’t.

One morning, I caught my reflection in the hallway mirror and had to stop, hands gripping the doorframe. I recognized the lines of my face — but not the clothes or the apartment behind me.

My phone contacts blurred together. I’d scroll past names I didn’t know, faces I didn’t recognize, and wonder how many of them knew me — knew the real me — better than I did.

The doctors still shook their heads. “Stress.” “Lack of sleep.” “Have you tried journaling?”

I wanted to scream at them. There’s something inside my head. But I couldn’t remember how the sentence started by the time I opened my mouth.

It was only a few weeks before I couldn’t remember how to drive. How to use the microwave. How to read.

Sleep became a blur I couldn’t measure, but it was my only escape. At least when I was sleeping I didn’t remember that I couldn’t remember.

I’d wake up in clothes I didn’t remember putting on, with dishes in the sink I didn’t remember using.
One afternoon, I found a photograph on my nightstand — me, standing beside a woman in a yellow dress, both of us smiling. The frame felt heavy in my hands. I turned it over. Nothing written on the back.

The next morning, the photo was gone. I didn’t remember throwing it away.

Soon, even my own name felt strange in my mouth. A borrowed word. Too big for me. I practiced it in the mirror, but the person staring back didn’t look convinced.

I wasn’t me anymore.

And always — under the fog and static — I could feel it.
The slow, deliberate shifting in the dark.
The patient feeding on my memories. My self.

This morning, I woke to sunlight slanting through the blinds, warm across my face.
For a few perfect seconds, I didn’t think about anything at all.

Then I tried to remember where I was. Who I was.

The room was unfamiliar — bare walls painted the color of dishwater, a single bolted-down chair in the corner, and a closed door with no handle on my side.

A faint antiseptic tang lingered in the air. Somewhere far away, a buzzer sounded, followed by the soft, rhythmic squeak of shoes on tile.
On the nightstand sat a mobile phone, facedown. Mine?

I don’t know why I picked it up. Habit, maybe. Reflex.
I stared at the empty screen where a reflection stared at me blankly.

The face that looked back at me wasn’t mine. I knew that much.
It smiled — slow, deliberate — and I felt something twitch deep inside my skull.

I don’t remember dropping the phone.
I don’t remember the sound it made when it hit the floor.
I don’t remember my name.

I don’t exist.

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