“Do You Remember Me?” 😱🐾
A Morning That Should Have Been Ordinary
Some mornings slip by unnoticed — quiet, uneventful, destined to fade into memory.
Last Tuesday should have been one of them.
Drive to work. Grab coffee. Answer emails. Nothing more.
But fate doesn’t knock. Sometimes, it waits on the side of a deserted road.
Halfway down a desolate stretch of Maple Street, something caught my eye near the fence line of an overgrown, abandoned lot. A dog — tan, medium-sized — sat tied to a wooden post.
It wasn’t barking or pulling at the rope. It just sat there, eerily still, as if waiting for someone.
But what stopped me wasn’t the dog. It was what was around its neck:
A manila envelope, secured with twine.
My name was written across the front in block letters — crisp, unfamiliar, deliberate.
For a moment, I stayed in the car, engine idling, paralyzed by a strange sense of orchestration — like the whole scene had been arranged… for me.
Finally, curiosity overrode caution.
I opened the door and stepped into the stillness.
The Envelope That Shouldn’t Exist
The dog didn’t flinch as I approached. It simply tilted its head — calm, patient, almost expectant.
The closer I got, the more unsettling it became. There was something in its eyes…
Recognition?
Memory?
With trembling fingers, I untied the envelope. The paper was worn at the corners but dry. It hadn’t been there long.
Inside was a single photograph.
At first glance, it was unremarkable — until I realized what I was seeing.
It was our old house. The one my family abruptly left twenty years ago without explanation.
Everything was there: the white picket fence, the rose bushes my mother used to tend, even the cracked front step where my brother once tripped and split his lip.
But the photo hadn’t been taken from the street.
It was taken from the woods behind the house.
Someone had been close. Close enough to see into the windows.
And scrawled at the bottom in red, slightly smeared ink, were four words:
“Do you remember me?”
The Memory That Should Have Stayed Buried
The question hit like a punch to the chest.
For years, I told myself the move had been normal — a better job, a better neighborhood. That’s what my parents said.
But they never spoke about it again.
Not once.
We packed up in silence. We left everything behind. And we were told — warned — never to look back.
But now, standing on a deserted road with that photo in hand, pieces began to shift in my memory — fragments I had buried too deep to retrieve before.
The attic.
The voice behind the wall.
The diary.
My brother and I had found it hidden behind a loose floorboard. Pages and pages of a stranger’s handwriting — not ours, not our parents’. It documented our lives in disturbing detail: what we ate, what we said, when we slept.
One line still echoes in my head:
“I am observing the family. I must protect them from what they cannot see.”
My mother had torn the book from our hands. My father burned it that same night without a word.
By morning, the move had begun.
“It’s over,” he said.
“Forget about it.”
But it had never been over.
The Messenger With the Silent Eyes
The dog was still watching me.
Its gaze was unnervingly calm — not curious, not afraid. Knowing.
I knelt beside it, brushing my hand along its fur.
“Who sent you?” I whispered.
It gently nudged the envelope against my hand again, urging me to look closer.
Around its collar was a small brass tag — weathered, but polished.
Two engraved letters: R.M.
They meant nothing at first… and then everything.
My father’s name was Robert Matthews.
I felt my breath catch. Whoever orchestrated this… knew us. Intimately.
The House That Shouldn’t Still Be Waiting
I don’t even remember getting back in the car. One moment I was at the fence — the next, I was driving. The photo lay beside me on the passenger seat. The dog rested in the back, silent and still.
Every so often, it would glance at me in the rearview mirror — as if to make sure I hadn’t turned away.
I told myself I just needed to see the house. Confirm it was all some twisted prank. But deep down, I knew.
This wasn’t random.
I was being called back — to something unfinished.
Three hours passed in silence.
When the sign for Hawthorne County appeared, my pulse quickened.
Everything was smaller. Paler. Like a memory fading around the edges.
The road to our old home was almost gone — swallowed by weeds and time. But the mailbox still stood, slightly tilted.
My father’s name was barely legible, but still there.
The dog’s tail gave a soft wag.
It remembered.
The Second Envelope
I parked near the gate and stepped into the stillness. The house stood ahead — broken, boarded, abandoned.
And yet, not forgotten.
That’s when I saw it:
Another envelope.
Resting neatly on the porch, held in place by a river stone.
Same handwriting. Same paper.
Hands trembling, I opened it.
Inside were two things:
- A brass key — identical to the one that used to unlock my father’s study.
- And a note, in the same red ink:
“You were never supposed to forget.”
The dog whined softly, its eyes fixed on the door.
The Door Back to the Past
My phone buzzed: No Signal.
I looked back down the empty road — no traffic, no wind, no sound.
I turned the key in my hand, heart pounding.
Whatever had waited here for the past twenty years… hadn’t left.
And it wasn’t finished with us.
The Unfinished Chapter
As I stepped across the threshold, the air inside hit me — a mix of dust, silence… and something unmistakably human.
The past hadn’t moved on.
It had simply waited.
And now, I was home.
