3:17
Some part of her remembered the ending.
Nyla woke at 3:17 every morning with her heart trying to beat its way out of her chest.
No nightmare. No strange noise. No shadow creeping across the wall.
Just fear.
Raw, unreasonable fear.
By the third week, she was exhausted and mean as hell.
She snapped at coworkers. Forgot appointments. Called her mother twice before breakfast and demanded that her sister text whenever she got home.
“You’re doing too much,” Raven told her.
“I just want to know you’re safe.”
“I went to Target, Nyla. Not fucking war.”
Nyla knew she sounded crazy.
That was the worst part.
Nothing had happened. Nobody had threatened her. Nobody was following her.
Still, every goodbye felt wrong.
Too final.
Every time her mother drove away, Nyla wanted to drag her back inside. Every time Raven hung up the phone, something deep inside Nyla screamed, Don’t let her go.
Her doctor called it anxiety.
Her therapist called it unresolved fear.
Nyla called it bullshit.
Anxiety had a reason.
This felt like remembering something that had not happened yet.
Across town, someone else woke at 3:17.
He sat on the edge of his bed soaked in sweat, furious without knowing why.
He had been like that for weeks.
Restless. Broke. Angry at the entire damn world.
He drank until he passed out, but 3:17 always dragged him awake.
He told himself it was stress.
Nyla stopped sleeping alone.
Her mother, Denise, stayed in the guest room. Raven came over every evening, mostly because she was worried Nyla might finally crack.
For the first time in weeks, Nyla felt calmer with them nearby.
Then Raven suggested a weekend away.
Her coworker had a small rental house in the mountains. No neighbors close enough to be annoying. No cell service worth a damn. Just food, wine, and silence.
The moment Raven mentioned it, Nyla’s stomach twisted.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s becoming your answer for everything.”
“I said no.”
Denise sighed from the kitchen table.
That sigh changed Nyla’s mind.
Her fear had exhausted all three of them.
“Fine,” she said. “One weekend.”
The pressure inside her chest disappeared instantly.
Nyla should have felt relieved.
Instead, she thought, Oh, shit.
The house sat at the end of a narrow road surrounded by trees.
Nothing about it was frightening.
That almost made it worse.
They ate too much, drank wine, laughed at old stories, and teased Denise about falling asleep halfway through every movie she chose.
For a few hours, Nyla forgot about 3:17.
Before going to bed, she hugged her mother.
Then Raven.
Raven laughed. “Why are you acting like we’re being deployed?”
“Shut up.”
“I love you too, psycho.”
At 3:17, Nyla’s eyes opened.
Downstairs, something crashed.
She heard Raven say, “Who the fuck are you?”
Nyla ran into the hallway.
A man stood near the front door holding a gun.
He looked more terrified than they did.
His car had broken down farther up the road after a robbery. He thought the rental was empty. He needed keys and another vehicle.
Denise stepped out of her room.
The man pointed the gun at her.
“Everybody stay still.”
Nyla raised her hands.
“Take the car.”
Raven placed the keys on the floor.
“There. Take them and leave.”
He could have.
That was the part Nyla would remember.
The door was behind him.
The keys were right there.
Three women stood unarmed, begging him to get the hell out.
Then headlights passed across the windows.
A vehicle moved slowly along the road outside.
The man panicked.
His finger tightened.
The first shot hit Raven.
Denise screamed.
The second shot silenced her.
Nyla rushed him.
The third shot came so quickly that she never heard it.
When Nyla opened her eyes, she was still standing in the hallway.
The man grabbed the keys and ran.
“Mom?”
Denise did not answer.
“Raven?”
Nyla stepped forward and nearly tripped over her own body.
For several seconds, her mind refused to understand what she was seeing.
Then Raven appeared beside her.
Denise stood behind them.
Neither looked afraid.
Nyla looked down at their bodies.
“What the fuck just happened?”
And then she remembered.
Not with her brain.
With something older.
Before birth, the three of them had stood together somewhere without walls, bodies, or time.
They had chosen one another.
Mother.
Daughters.
One lifetime together.
One departure.
The date had been hidden from their human minds.
The time had not.
3:17.
That was why Nyla kept waking.
Her soul had been counting down.
Every strange goodbye, every desperate phone call, every need to keep them close had come from the part of her that remembered the contract. Their soul contract.
Her fear had never been warning her to run.
It had been pulling the three of them together.
Nyla stared toward the road where the murderer had disappeared.
“So he was supposed to kill us?”
The answer came from everywhere.
No.
Their deaths had been written.
His decision had not.
He had been given the door.
The keys.
A way out.
He chose murder.
Denise reached for Nyla.
“Come with us.”
Nyla looked down the road.
“I’m not done.”
For seven days, the killer tried to behave like an innocent man.
He washed his clothes. Hid the gun. Watched the news while pretending not to care.
No suspect had been named.
Nobody had questioned him.
Still, he could not sleep.
Every morning, his eyes opened at 3:17.
He had been waking at that same time before the murders too.
On the seventh morning, two police cars drove past his house within ten minutes.
Neither slowed down.
Neither turned around.
They may not have known he existed.
Guilt did not give a damn.
He shoved clothes into a bag, grabbed his money, and ran to his car.
He drove too fast through the wet mountain roads, staring into the rearview mirror for flashing lights that never appeared.
The dashboard clock changed.
3:17.
His hands tightened around the wheel.
Then someone beside him said, “You should’ve taken the keys.”
He turned.
Nyla sat in the passenger seat.
Not bloody.
Not rotting.
Exactly as she had looked before he pulled the trigger.
He screamed and jerked the steering wheel.
The car tore through the guardrail and rolled down the cliff.
Metal crushed.
Glass exploded.
Then silence.
The man stood above his body, staring down at himself.
Nyla appeared beside him.
Death returned his memory.
His soul had known too.
It had known his final hour was approaching long before he entered that house. The sleeplessness, the rage, the panic, the feeling that something terrible was coming.
His subconscious had felt his soul contract pressing against it.
But unlike Nyla, he had mistaken fear for permission.
He looked at her.
“Was I supposed to do it?”
“No.”
“Then why was I there?”
“You made choices.”
“My death was already written?”
“The time was.”
He looked at the crushed car.
“And the rest?”
Nyla watched Denise and Raven waiting for her beyond the trees.
“The rest was all you.”
He tried to follow when she walked toward her family.
Something pulled him backward.
Nyla took her mother’s hand and reached for her sister.
Behind them, the killer began screaming.
While the broken clock on the dash of the wrecked car kept flashing at 3:17.
This was so interesting i will definitely be reading more.
This made me think a lot:)