Christopher

February 13, 2017.

The storm has ceased, but the water has not gone. I hear it behind the walls, in the baseboards, in the wood creaking with that freshly dead castaway groan.

Last night I dreamed of the foyer. I wasn't there physically, but I walked through it. It was cleaner, newer, as if the hotel breathed from another era, one where it didn't yet reek of oblivion. The old woman at the front desk was gone. Instead, a huge mirror covered the back wall. In it I saw the door to my room open. But I didn't see me. I saw him. Me, but not me. Younger, or older. I don't know. He was holding the brooch in his hand, but it hung around his neck like a medal.

When I opened my eyes, I had the same mirror in front of me. One that, until that night, had not been there.

I dressed with trembling hands. I went to the reception desk. The old woman ignored me as usual, and without a word, I pushed the door behind the counter. She put up no resistance.

Behind: a narrow staircase descended like an open wound. The air was humid, dense, laden with that sweet, false perfume that permeates every corner of this place. I descended.

The basement is a dead archive. Papers piled up in decayed boxes, notebooks with ink worn away by decades of humidity. The light doesn't reach well, barely a bulb flickering like a sick eye.

I wasn't looking for anything. I was looking for anything. And, of course, she was there.
A loose sheet of paper. Check-in letter dated February 13, 2012.
Guest: C. B. / Room 3 / Provenance: Melbourne.

My heart stopped.

But it wasn't just that.

Just below, another entry:
Guest: D. M. / Room 3 / Provenance: Melbourne.

The ink was fading on the edge of the paper, but I could see that the names had been crossed out. Not once. Not in anger. But with precision. As if someone was trying not just to hide them, but to erase them from time itself.

Filled with senseless fury, I opened more boxes, rummaged through damp leaves and bits of mold. Until I found something else.
A letter. Handwritten. By me. Or someone who wrote like me. Same handwriting, same slant.
But I didn't remember it.

"If you see her, don't tell her anything. She no longer listens. She only remembers. And that's worse. Don't try to rescue her. The sea does not give back what it takes. It only offers you an echo. If you read this, it means you couldn't help yourself. Just like me. Just like everyone else. Give it your name. It's the only way. She needs it to forget hers."

The letter ends with a signature: “Christopher Brando.”

My name.

Or the name I thought was mine.

I sat there, in that stinking archive, paper fibers on my skin like filth from another life. I kept whispering the name. Christopher Brando. Over and over. It felt foreign. Like I was chewing someone else’s bones. I looked at my hands. I didn’t recognize them. They moved, sure, but the way they curled, the way they trembled because they weren’t mine. I found a broken shard of mirror tucked between boxes, probably part of some cracked photo frame. I looked into it. And what looked back... blinked out of sync with me. Like a puppet mimicking the ghost of a man.

I sat down on the floor. The mold on the boxes was spreading into the seams of my clothes. My name, it echoed in my head like a word I was trying to forget. Christopher Brando. It sounded staged. Like an actor's name, or a placeholder. I repeated it again. Louder. Then screamed it. IIt didn’t change anything… just strained my already weak throat from all the salt I drank almost a week ago.

I returned to the room, my hands stained with history. The brooch was still on the table, glinting with that fake blue stone like an antique doll's eye.

I picked it up.

I hung it around my neck. The chain was thin, almost imperceptible. As if it had belonged to me before.

The mirror was still there. It didn't reflect me. Only the open door. The same as in the dream. In the background, I saw the beach. The waves breaking in slow motion. She was standing, barefoot, her wet dress clinging to her body.

She wasn't looking at me. But she was mumbling something. The sound wasn't coming from the mirror. It was coming from my throat.

“Give her your name...”

I closed my eyes. I pressed the brooch to my chest. I remembered my full name. I repeated it like a mantra. Like an anchor.

Nothing.

When I opened my eyes, the mirror was empty. Only my reflection. Just the room. Just the salt floating in the air.

The weight of the brooch felt insignificant… but my chest pulsed beneath it, as if something inside me recognized it before I did. I stood in front of the mirror for minutes — or hours. It didn’t matter. The reflection wouldn’t stabilize. Sometimes I was alone. Other times, the room behind me stretched endlessly, full of doors. I saw shapes moving in them. I saw her. I saw versions of me. A thousand possibilities, all drowned in salt and time.

I tried to touch the mirror, but my hand didn’t meet glass. It met water. Cold. Alive. It rippled and pulled slightly, like it wanted me inside.

I should have stepped back.

I didn’t.

My fingertips disappeared. Only for a second. But when I pulled back, they were pruned. As if they’d been soaking for hours.

I laughed. I don’t know why. Maybe because it’s all unraveling and laughter is all I have left. Or maybe because I realized I was never meant to leave. Not this place. Not the salt. Not her.

Final note:

I'm going down to the beach tomorrow. Not like before. This time not to look for her. This time to talk to her. To give her what she asks for. I don't know if it's my name, my soul or something else. But I'll know when I take it off. And when I do, maybe I'll be free.

Or maybe it will finally sink me altogether.