He looked out the window at the house next door. Another figure stood there, draped in a floral-patterned sheet."I’m waiting for someone," the floral ghost signaled through the glass."Who?" C thought."I don't remember," the neighbor replied.
He saw himself—living, breathing, stubborn—moving into the house with M. He saw the moment he had tucked a small scrap of paper into a crack in the doorframe, a secret note she would never find.
Centuries collapsed. The house was torn down. He stood in the footprint of his bedroom while a skyscraper rose around him, cold and steel-eyed. He climbed to the roof and looked at a city that had forgotten the dirt it was built on. Then, he jumped.
The sheet collapsed. There was no one under it. The note fluttered to the floor, and the house was finally, truly, empty.
He didn't die; ghosts don't have that luxury. Instead, he fell back into the beginning.
He waited. He endured the loop until the house was empty once more. With a spectral fingernail, he picked at the paint, chipping away decades of grime until he reached the slip of paper. He pulled it out and read the words he had written to her when he was whole.