EP06: Echoes That Weren’t Mine

I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of pouring rainfall.

Everything else was quiet. Too quiet. The kind of stillness that feels deliberate, like the universe is holding its breath.

I sat up slowly, disoriented — not scared, but unsettled. Like I had been pulled out of sleep too early, like something unfinished has been paused inside me.

I slipped out of bed and sat on the cold floor for a minute. Not sure why. Just sat there — staring into the dark room, listening to the rain, waiting for… I don’t know what.

The clock said 3:13 a.m.
Of course it did. The hour where nothing good happens but everything real begins.

My throat felt dry — not just thirsty, but hollow. I reached for my water bottle on the bedside.

Empty!

That’s not usual. I almost always fill my bottle before bed. Always.
That small routine had never failed. But tonight… it had.
Or I had.
Or something else had.

I frowned, already feeling that strange sensation in my gut — the kind you get when you notice a detail that doesn’t fit, but can’t explain why it matters.

I got up, walked to the kitchen, and turned on the light.

That’s when I saw it.

My grey rubber band — the one I had been hunting for all day — lying quietly near the edge of the counter. Exactly the one.
I froze for a second. I had looked everywhere earlier. My cupboard, my drawers, the TV cabinet and everywhere else.

And yet… here it was.

I hadn’t seen it here before or maybe I don't remember.

I picked it up without thinking, like my hands moved faster than my mind. Then I drank some water and stood there — for a little too long.

I came back to my room, rubber band in hand, placed it besides me, opened my laptop and started typing.

Because 30 minutes ago, I saw a dream.

Maybe it was the rain.
Maybe it was The Reappearance of Rachel Price, the psychological thriller I’ve been reading — where secrets from the past twist into voices and questions that won't stay buried.
Honestly, it messes with your head in the best way.
But this dream… it felt oddly personal.

And I’m not entirely sure I woke up from it.

---

In the dream, I was sitting on the edge of a vast cliff. Alone. The sky above glowed a soft amber, and endless greenery stretched out in every direction, as far as my eyes could see. There was no phone in my pocket. No map. Just an overwhelming sense of presence, like I had finally arrived where I was meant to be — without knowing where, how & why .

Almost exactly how it looked...

I leaned forward and shouted: “Hello!”

It echoed back: “Hello!”

“Who are you?” I joked, half-smiling.

There was a pause.

And then the echo returned,
“Who are YOU?”

But I hadn’t said that.

If that gave you chills… read it again.

I stood still. Confused. A little spooked.

“Okay… is this a dream?” I mumbled, which is the classic thing people say in dreams.

The cliff didn’t answer. It didn’t need to.

Something in me stirred — a mix of fear and familiarity, like I had heard that voice before, somewhere between childhood and becoming an adult.

“I don’t know,” I whispered.

“That’s a start,” the voice echoed back.

So I sat on a stone, in the middle of this dream cliff, and for reasons I can’t explain — I started talking.

Not to the cliff. Not to the voice.
To myself.

About everything I hadn’t admitted in a while.
About restlessness.
About feeling lost in the life I chose.
About voices that feel like my own, yet somehow don’t sound like me anymore.

I spoke about the work that kept me up at night, that made me feel exhausted even while sleeping and of course the next day.
I confessed that I had dreams once, the kind I wrote in diaries and spoke of over chai with my brother — and now I couldn’t even remember where I had kept those diaries.

I admitted I missed someone, though I wasn't sure if it was a person or just a version of me.

And every time I spoke, there was no echo.

Only silence.

The cliff didn’t echo. It listened.

Before I turned to leave — (or wake up), I guess I noticed something lying near the edge of the cliff — small, familiar.

A grey rubber band.
My rubber band.

Just sitting there. Like it had fallen from a pocket I wasn’t wearing.

I had picked it up in the dream too.

I turned back and called out once more:

“Will I be okay?”

And this time, softly, surely, the cliff replied:
“You already are.”

---

I blinked, and the dream dissolved. I was back in my room, rain still falling outside, reality still unshaken.

But something inside had shifted.

So here I am, at 3:47 a.m., writing this down. Because I don’t want to forget that voice. The one that didn’t come from the cliff, but from somewhere deeper. Somewhere I hadn’t visited in a while.

Sometimes, we don't need a new answer — we just need to hear our own questions echoed back at us.
And maybe, just maybe, the dreams we forget are the ones we most needed to remember.

The rubber band lies quietly next to my laptop now.

The same one I found in the kitchen.
The same one I saw in the dream.

I’m not even sure if I’m writing this here… or still there.
Not sure if this laptop is real, or just another layer of the dream I’m trying to escape — or stay in.

In the morning—

Let’s see if the rubber band is still there!

Let’s see if this draft is still here when I wake up!

Because if it’s gone…

Then maybe,
just maybe,
I never really left the dream.