The House That Sleeps Inside You

They say every person carries a house inside them a place built of memory, silence, and shadow. Most never find its door. Some do, only in dreams.

Linh found hers on a night when thunder walked slowly across the sky. Sleep had come and gone like a tide, leaving her stranded between waking and the deep. The room around her shimmered, and she realized she was standing not in her apartment, but in a corridor she had never seen before. The walls breathed faintly. The air smelled of rain and old paper.

It was her house.
Not the one she lived in, but the one that lived in her.

She moved through it carefully. Each step echoed like a heartbeat. The walls were covered in faint marks fingerprints, scratches, familiar, though she could not recall why. Doors lined the hall, each slightly ajar, each exhaling a different temperature of silence.

The first door opened to a child’s room. The toys were arranged perfectly, but their eyes followed her. On the bed lay a music box shaped like a bird. When she turned its key, it began to sing not a lullaby, but a memory her own voice at six years old, promising never to be afraid of the dark again.

She closed the box quickly. The song continued faintly even after the lid shut.

The second door led to a kitchen full of half remembered smells rice, salt, smoke, and the faint bitterness of coffee. The table was set for two, though no one sat there. A cup of tea steamed gently beside an empty chair. When she leaned closer, she saw words written in the condensation on the porcelain:
“You forgot to come back.”

Her throat tightened.
She stepped away, deeper into the house.

Each room told a story she had buried.
The third door revealed a storm of photographs thousands of them, suspended in the air like frozen raindrops. Some showed moments she remembered vividly. Others were from lives she had never lived but could still feel echoes of what could have been.
In one photograph, she saw herself asleep beneath a tree made of glass.
In another, she was standing beside her mother, who smiled with eyes that knew the future.

As she walked, she realized that the house was growing. The corridors stretched endlessly, curling inward like thought. The ceiling whispered softly, a voice that sounded both near and ancient.

“You built me from everything you refused to feel,” it said.
“Now I am awake.”

She turned a corner and found the final door black, simple, breathing faintly like an animal in rest. The air around it was thick with familiarity. She knew what waited behind it, though she didn’t want to know.

Her hand trembled as she touched the handle. The metal was warm, pulsing faintly with her heartbeat. When she opened it, she saw herself sitting in a chair eyes closed, hands folded. The other Linh looked peaceful, almost asleep.

“Are you the dreamer or the dream?” Linh whispered.

The sleeping self smiled without opening her eyes. “Both,” she said. “I dream you when I am afraid. You dream me when you forget.”

Linh stepped closer. The air around her shimmered, and she felt the two versions of herself blur together memories folding, merging. The walls pulsed once, twice, and then fell silent.

When she opened her eyes again, she was lying in her own bed. The storm had passed. The air was clear. But she knew the house had not vanished. It had simply returned to its place within her, waiting, sleeping again.

Every time she blinked, she could almost hear it breathing softly in the dark, patient and alive a quiet reminder that the walls we build to contain our fears often become the only place they feel safe enough to rest.