She had been told that speaking would make her real. That the sentence, once completed, would close around her like a room — walls, ceiling, a door she could open from the inside. So she opened her mouth. She had been preparing for this her whole life: the exact words, the right order, the tone that would make someone believe her.

But before the first word reached the air it met something coming the other way. Not a sound. A doubling. She looked to her right and found herself already there, already speaking, already dissolving into the dark behind her. She understood then that the sentence had never been hers to complete. It had always been a threshold, not a room. She crossed it and found nothing on the other side except the evidence that she had.