✨ The Diary of a Stranger

🖋️ Preface — The Diary of a Stranger

There are stories that choose their readers.
You open a book by chance, and somehow it opens you instead.
This one is not about ghosts in the ordinary sense — it’s about the echoes that remain when silence has lasted too long. It’s about women who write what they cannot say, and how their words linger, waiting for another soul to listen.
Every diary is a confession disguised as memory.
Every stranger is a reflection we are not yet ready to face.
This is Clara’s story — and Anna’s.
Or maybe it’s yours, once you begin to read.

Introduction

They said the apartment had been empty for years, yet every night, the faint sound of a pen scratching paper drifted through the walls. When Anna moved in, she thought it was the pipes, or maybe her imagination. But on the third night, she found it — a small, leather-bound journal hidden behind a loose brick in her bedroom wall.
The first page was dated March 2nd, 1983. The handwriting was delicate, elegant — a woman’s.
It began simply:

“To the one who will find this… you don’t know me, but you will.”

Story

At first, Anna laughed it off — who leaves a diary for a stranger to read decades later? But the more she read, the more it felt like the pages were reading her.
The woman’s name was Clara. Her words were filled with quiet longing, as if she had written them to someone who never came back. She described the city in fragments — rain on the window, a silver ring on her desk, a man who smiled like he knew her secrets.
Each night, Anna read one entry. Each morning, she woke up feeling different. The apartment seemed to change too — the scent of jasmine filled the room, even though she owned no flowers. Sometimes, she’d find her lamp slightly turned, or the window half-open. She began to wonder if Clara was more than just a name in faded ink.
By the seventh entry, Clara’s tone had shifted.

“I see him everywhere. In the crowd, in the mirror, in my sleep. He says he loves me, but his eyes say otherwise.”

Anna shivered. She’d seen a man like that, too — or maybe she just wanted to.
Then came the entry that changed everything.

“If you find this diary, you are not here by chance. The story repeats until someone decides to end it.”

That night, Anna dreamed of Clara. Not a vague image — she saw her: standing by the same window, wearing a silk gown, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears. When Anna woke, her hands smelled faintly of ink.
She decided to write back.
On a blank page at the end of the journal, Anna wrote:

“Clara, who are you? Why me?”

The next morning, there was a reply.

“Because you listened.”

Her pulse quickened. The ink was fresh, the words newly written. She touched them — they smudged under her fingertips.
For days, they exchanged letters through the journal. Clara spoke of a man who had promised to love her beyond time, but whose jealousy had turned into something darker.

“He locked me away in silence,” Clara wrote, “and I’ve been waiting ever since for someone to open the door.”

Anna’s curiosity deepened into obsession. She read the diary at dawn, at dusk, sometimes aloud. And each time she did, the air seemed heavier, like the walls were leaning closer to listen.
Then one night, the journal opened itself. The pages fluttered, stopping on an entry Anna had never seen. It read:

“Tonight, the circle closes. To free me, you must write my final line.”

The clock struck midnight. The light flickered. Anna picked up the pen.
“What should I write?” she whispered.
The answer came not in ink, but in the air — soft, breathy, close:

“Write the truth you hide.”

Her hand trembled. The truth. She hadn’t told anyone why she moved here — to escape a man who looked at her the way Clara described, with eyes full of love and fear.
Tears blurred her vision as she wrote:

“You were never the stranger, Clara. I was.”

The lamp shattered. The walls sighed. And for the first time, silence filled the room.
The diary closed itself.
When Anna woke, the sun was streaming through the curtains. The apartment smelled of jasmine again, but this time, it felt lighter, freer. The journal was gone — only a single page remained on her desk.
It read:

“Thank you for finishing my story.”

Conclusion

Weeks later, a new tenant moved into the building. On her first night, she heard it — the faint sound of a pen scratching behind the wall.
And somewhere, perhaps between worlds, two women’s stories had finally become one — a reminder that sometimes, the ghosts we find are only reflections of ourselves, waiting to be heard.

Follow me on Twitter 👇https://twitter.com/vayana2009?t=_U6EEdgmXpkJCCJgySuV7Q&s=09