I used to live in the entire city.
That is not a boast; it is a statement of geometry. Duskhaven had no suburbs, no outskirts, no exit signs—just streets that curled back on themselves like a Möbius strip made of brick and fog. On the day I arrived, I walked out of the train station, turned left, and never found the edge. Every boulevard ended at the fountain where I had started. Every road sign eventually spelled the same word: RETURN. There is no way out, the bricks whispered. The city had swallowed its own horizon.
By nightfall I was thirsty—really thirsty. The taps in all the cafés ran rust-red, and the bottled water in the vending machines had evaporated into labels and dust. A bent woman in a shawl tugged my sleeve. “If you want fresh water, you must visit the house,” she said, pointing down Sable Street. “But remember: it gives only what you need, never what you want.”
The mansion crouched at the end of the street like a spider wearing a roof. No number, no mailbox—just a door knocker shaped like a human tongue. Inside, the air tasted of damp velvet and old screams. Portraits blinked in sequence, as though taking turns to watch me. Each corridor looped back to the foyer; every staircase ascended into the cellar. A house of horror, yes—yet somewhere inside I heard water running, clear and bright.
I followed the sound down a staircase that grew narrower the farther I descended, until the walls pressed against my shoulders. At the bottom was a single mirror, taller than the house itself. Its surface reflected nothing—no me, no staircase—only a silver stream of water cascading within the glass itself. My throat burned. I cupped my hands and reached.
The moment my fingers broke the surface, the mirror rippled and poured into me. The water was colder than winter stars, sweeter than childhood mornings. I drank until my stomach ached, then drank again. When I stepped back, the staircase was gone. I stood once more in the foyer, tongue-knocker dripping.
Outside, the city had rearranged itself. Streets I’d never walked now curved toward the same fountain. The bent woman waited beside it, holding a tin cup. “Thirsty?” she asked, and I realized she wore my face. I looked down: my own hands were wrinkled, my voice cracked and ancient.
Understanding arrived like frost: the city needed a caretaker, the house needed a tongue, and the water needed a vessel. I accepted the cup. Every newcomer who stumbles from the station now meets me at the fountain. I offer them a drink and a warning, but the city has already decided. They, too, will walk the whole of Duskhaven—because the entire city is here, because there is no way out, because the house of horror is always thirsty, and because I still, endlessly, need some fresh water.
©Akash
