# 📖 STORY I — CHAPTER VIII## **The House That Devours Memories**

The house was already complete. And yet it continued to grow. As if each breath of the ghosts added new layers to it. The walls pulsated, as if blood were coursing beneath the boards—not red, but black, thick, sticky darkness.

Anna stared into the open interior, which resembled a throat more than a room. And when the fog shifted, she saw something else: pictures began to appear on the walls.

They weren't painted pictures. They were memories.

Her own.

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## Where Memory Disappears

The first memory was of her as a child, holding a doll. But the child's face was blurred, without eyes, without mouth, without identity.

The second memory—her first day at school. But the teacher had no head.

The third—her father's funeral.

Except… he was standing next to the coffin, alive, as if no one had told him he should be inside.

Anna began to feel a headache. Not a normal one, not a physical one. As if someone was trying to rip her memory out piece by piece and force it into another, darker form.

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## The Town Disappears

When she turned around, she noticed that the streets were… melting away.

Literally.

The houses were blurring like ink soaked in water. Shops, sidewalks, lampposts—everything was fading into a grayness that seeped into the ground.

Marek watched calmly, like someone who had accepted his fate.

“The town was never home,” he said. “Home is here.”

Anna felt herself beginning to forget the name of the street she lived on.

What was her neighbor’s name?

What was her school like?

What did she do with her life?

Memory crumbled like ash.

--

## The living are losing themselves

The remaining inhabitants stood silently, like figures. Spirits lingered within their bodies, but they weren't yet fully in control.

Some looked at the ground.

Some at the sky.

Some at nothing.

Anna saw the woman she had known her whole life—and suddenly couldn't remember her name.

As if someone were erasing it from her mind the moment she looked.

--

## Anna becomes someone else

The Lady of Clocks touched her hand.

And then Anna's skin began to change color. Slowly, but surely. First her fingers, then her wrist—as if a shadow were seeping into her flesh.

"It doesn't hurt..." Anna said through gritted teeth.

"Memory never hurts," the Lady of Clocks replied. "Only loss hurts."

And then Anna felt herself forgetting her father's face.

And then her own.

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## A Voice from Within

From the house came what sounded like a heartbeat. But it wasn't rhythmic.

Sometimes fast, sometimes slow.

Sometimes loud, sometimes completely silent.

As if the heart was trying to adjust to the new reality.

And then from inside the house, she heard her own name—spoken in her mother's voice.

"Anna..."

But this voice wasn't alive.

It wasn't human.

It was cold, deep, as if made of stone and night.

--

## The Last Sentence of the Chapter

And then Anna understood that when the house was complete, she would cease to be human—she would become the door.

**The door between the world of the living and that which should never return.**

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# If you want more:

CHAPTER IX will be even more nightmarish—

* the house will begin to consume time,

* the living will lose their past,

* ghosts will begin to speak with her voice,

* and Anna will become part of something that grows forever.

Just write: **Continue**.