Chapter one hundred and fourteen

Chapter one hundred and fourteen
Marlowe

I haven’t slept in three days.

Or maybe I have, and the hours have folded in on themselves, thinning until I can’t tell the seams apart. I keep waking—if waking is what it is—at my desk, papers scattered like molted skin, the lamp burning too hot and too bright, the bulb humming like an insect in my ear.

The files are thinner than they should be. I don’t mean missing. I mean thinner—pages that once had weight now feel flimsy, almost transparent. I hold them to the light and swear the words are lighter too, as though someone diluted the ink, softened the truth.

I catch myself whispering as I work. Not full sentences—just fragments. Names. Dates. And when I stop, when I force my jaw shut, I can still hear the murmurs, like echoes bouncing back from the walls.

Last night, or what I think was last night, I went to the archive room. The lock was warm. Do you understand? Metal isn’t supposed to hold heat like that. When I pushed inside, I felt certain someone had just left. But the air was still. And when I turned, I caught the shape of a man in the glass cabinet—a reflection, a distortion. But when I stepped forward, it was only me, drawn too thin by the glass.

I’m beginning to wonder if this is how madness begins—not with visions, but with subtle betrayals. Clocks ticking too loud. Files too light. My own reflection arriving before I do.

The question I can’t shake is this: is the case slipping through my fingers, or am I the one being unstitched, strand by strand, until the case is all that remains?

And if that’s true, then perhaps they’ve already won. Whoever “they” are.