The Prophecy
When I woke up that morning, everything felt wrong. The air was heavy, and I couldn’t tell if it was morning or afternoon. I had slept for almost twelve hours, which was unheard of for me, and it felt less like sleep and more like I had been pulled somewhere. I sat up, and for a few seconds I couldn’t even remember where I was. It wasn’t until I saw the phone on the nightstand that everything came rushing back—the text I’d sent, or thought I’d sent, the conversation with Enrique, the exhaustion that had hit me so fast it felt like my body had shut down. It wasn’t normal tiredness. It had been like a fever or a trance, and the dream that followed was so detailed that it didn’t feel like a dream at all. It felt like I had been watching my own life from somewhere else.
For a few minutes I just sat there, trying to separate what had really happened from what I had seen. I could still feel the dream pressing against me. I kept seeing flashes—of a house, not an apartment, never an apartment. A house with light pouring in through big windows and a red door. I could see rooms that didn’t belong to me yet, furniture that hadn’t been bought, a space where I would make content and work. I could feel him there. I could feel Enrique in that space, moving through it like it already existed. I saw him decorating, laughing, building things with me. I saw us living together, helping each other, sometimes fighting, sometimes quiet. It felt real enough that I knew, without question, that this was going to happen.
But the strange part wasn’t that I believed it — it was that I didn’t question it. It didn’t feel like a choice. It felt like an instruction. I could sense something behind it, something watching, organizing, nudging. It wasn’t threatening exactly, but it wasn’t kind either. It was just there, vast and neutral and unstoppable. There was an undertone in the dream that still clung to me that morning — a kind of whisper under the noise: trust what you see, not what you want. And I understood what that meant, even if I didn’t want to. It meant this wasn’t going to be simple. It meant that the good part, the love, the spark, the comfort — those would all be real — but so would the pain. It meant that he wasn’t just someone I was reconnecting with. He was the beginning of something much bigger, and much heavier, and maybe even dangerous.
It reminded me of how my life had always seemed to move—these impossible coincidences stacking on top of each other until they built a path I hadn’t planned. Spotify, Electronic Arts, PwC—every single one had appeared out of nowhere, at exactly the moment I needed it. Too many small things aligning perfectly for it to be luck. So part of me was scared, but part of me also felt that same strange calm. It was like, okay, this is one of those moments again. Something is shifting. Something’s being moved around.
I started to remember more pieces of the dream. There had been flashes of chaos—people marching, smoke rising, voices blending into thunder. It looked like a world cracking open. There was anger and grief, and something about it told me it wasn’t far away. I didn’t know if it was literal or not. I just knew that both of us were part of it, somehow. He was standing next to me in all of it, and there was this mix of terror and belonging. We weren’t just watching the change. We were in it.
When I finally looked at my phone, I realized I had never actually sent the message to him. The one where I said no, where I told him not to come. My screen was lit up with new notifications—texts from him, waiting, checking in, small messages that somehow didn’t surprise me. I sat there for a long time, just staring at them, feeling the weight of what I had seen still sitting on my chest.
And that’s when I felt it again — that pull. That same sense that something else was making the decision for me, that all I could do was agree. I opened the thread and typed, okay, I’m done arguing with fate.
I told him that I understood he was coming, and that if that was the way this was supposed to go, then we’d do it differently this time. I told him I’d rent a larger house, that he’d have his own room, that he’d help me with my business for a couple of months, that I’d pay the rent and the bills, and then he could decide what to do after that. He was thrilled. He couldn’t believe it. He started working with me right away on a project, and he did it beautifully. Everything suddenly felt like it was falling into place in a way that was almost eerie.
But underneath all of that, there was still this heaviness in my chest — like I’d just agreed to something sacred or dangerous, or both. It didn’t feel like a victory. It felt like a door had opened, and now there was no way to close it again. The air in the apartment even felt different, like the temperature had dropped just slightly. I told myself it was fine, that it was good, that it was movement — but deep down, I knew it was something else.
That morning was the start of the prophecy. Not because it was divine or even supernatural, but because it felt designed. Like I had just stepped into a path that had been waiting for me, whether I liked it or not. And somewhere in the back of my mind, I could already feel the storm beginning to turn.
