Hollow Man (2025)

He drives home through streets he knows by heart but cannot love. The radio plays a song he used to cry to. Now it’s just sound passing through.

He is a bell with no clapper. A letter with no address. A flame in a vacuum— still orange, still hungry, but touching nothing.

And in the dark, he whispers to the ceiling: I was here once. Weren’t I? The ceiling says nothing. Because the ceiling, too, is hollow. Would you like a different tone—more poetic, more eerie, or more like a short story? Hollow Man

He wakes to the sound of his own silence. No alarm. No birds. No blood rush behind his ears. Just the hum of a world that forgot to wait for him.

At work, they call him by name. He nods, shakes hands, laughs at jokes that land like stones in still water. No ripples. No echoes. Just the performance of a man who once felt real. He drives home through streets he knows by

In the mirror, a face stares back— familiar as a stranger, polite as a lie. He touches his cheek. Feels skin. But not himself.

Night folds over him like a second skin. He lies next to someone he’d die for— but dying would require having lived. And living would require feeling the knife. He is a bell with no clapper

Here’s a short original piece titled Hollow Man