I don't know how long I was gone.
Time didn't pass the same way anymore. It folded, looped, replayed. Sometimes I'd blink and lose a day. Sometimes I'd sleep for an hour and wake up in a different city.
But no matter where I went…
Room 616 was always near.
A flicker in the elevator panel.
A door I didn't remember walking past.
A hallway that should've ended — but didn't.
---
The nightmares stopped feeling like dreams.
They became… instructions.
One by one, the people I saw inside them started to appear in real life.
A man on the bus who looked exactly like the one from my dream, holding a scorched suitcase.
A child at the crosswalk, barefoot in pajamas, humming the tune my sister used to hum the night she died.
Even the receptionist at a hotel I never meant to enter, who looked up and said:
> "Room 616 is ready for you, Miss Carter."
I never gave him my name.
---
That night, I found it on my pillow again.
The brass key.
Only now… it wasn't labeled 616.
It was blank.
And cold.
When I picked it up, I felt everyone.
Every version of me that had ever walked into that room.
Every voice that had screamed inside it.
Every pair of eyes that had blinked a second too late.
I saw them all, inside me.
Waiting.
Wanting out.
---
My phone buzzed. Just once.
No number. No app. Just a message burned across the lock screen:
> "It's your room now."
> "Make a new dreamer."
---
I didn't sleep.
Instead, I walked.
Hotel to hotel. City to city.
Each time I passed a hallway mirror, I'd see her — the girl I once was — reaching for help.
But now…
Now I smiled back.
Because now, I understood.
Room 616 wasn't a curse.
It was a cycle.
Someone wakes up.
Someone stays behind.
And now it's me standing at the end of the hallway, handing out keys.
---
I am Room 616.
I am every locked door you pretend not to see.
I am the smile behind the peephole.
The hand that writes in your dream journal when you're not looking.
The voice in your own mouth that doesn't sound quite right.
I am the bed you wake up in, but don't remember falling asleep on.
---
And tonight?
I found someone new.
She looked so tired.
So curious.
So full of guilt.
I handed her the key.
And she said the words I once said:
> "It's just a room. I'll be fine."
She won't be.
But that's how it begins.
And it always begins.