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The Unseen Rift
An unreleased short story from the book:
Lost in Translation: When Communication Fails
It was just supposed to be another routine check-up for Olivia. A quiet day at the clinic. But when the translator chip embedded behind her ear flickered and buzzed, a sudden sense of unease settled over her chest, spreading like cold water into her veins. She didn’t think much of it at first—maybe a small malfunction, nothing to worry about. That was, until it happened again.
Olivia blinked, trying to focus on the nurse in front of her. The nurse’s lips moved, but the words didn’t make sense. They came out in a blur, a low hum that was both foreign and familiar. A jumble of gibberish that felt like an insult to her brain. Panic gripped her. She stared at the nurse’s mouth as if willing it to make sense, but it was like trying to read a language she had never learned.
“Excuse me?” Olivia croaked, her voice trembling. “I—I can’t understand you.”
The nurse smiled politely, though her eyes flickered with what Olivia could only interpret as confusion—or perhaps pity. But the words were still not there, still tangled in the air between them, unreachable.
Olivia’s heart hammered as the nurse turned, tapping on the wall of the clinic to signal the doctor. As the doctor approached, Olivia opened her mouth to ask what was happening, but her own words, too, seemed to vanish into thin air. The doctor was speaking, her lips moving, but the sound was alien, faint and distant. Like she was hearing it from underwater.
“I— I can’t—” Olivia stammered, but her voice faltered. “Why can’t I understand you?”
The doctor paused, her face blank. Was she even hearing Olivia? Was this happening to everyone, or was it just her? The silence around them began to grow heavy, oppressive. A sick feeling churned in Olivia’s stomach, a visceral unease creeping along her skin like the sensation of being watched. She tried again, her hands shaking as she reached up, touching the back of her neck, hoping to feel the familiar hum of her translation chip.
Nothing.
Her fingers scrambled at the skin around her ear. Her chip—it had to be malfunctioning, but the deeper she pressed, the more she felt an unfamiliar void. There was no connection. The chip was gone. But how?
“I’m sorry, Olivia,” the doctor finally said, her voice clear now, but the words themselves still felt like they didn’t belong. There was something off in the tone, a subtle shift, like a foreign accent she couldn’t quite place.
“I don’t understand,” Olivia whispered, panic rising like a wave in her chest. She could feel the walls of the clinic pressing in on her, the sterile white lights flickering as if they, too, were malfunctioning. The temperature dropped suddenly, a sharp chill in the air, and Olivia wrapped her arms around herself as the doctor’s eyes turned cold.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” the doctor said again, but her smile seemed frozen, strained. “We’ll just get you to the emergency room.”
The words—their meaning—tugged at Olivia, but she couldn’t grasp them fully. They seemed to swim in and out of clarity, their edges sharp and jagged. Panic clawed at her throat. She wasn’t being treated like a patient anymore—she was being treated like a problem. A glitch in the system.
No—she was the glitch.
The nurse stepped back, motioning for Olivia to follow, but Olivia’s legs felt heavy, unresponsive. She took a shaky step forward, but the clinic doors now seemed miles away. The walls were closing in, the noise of her own thoughts amplifying as she tried to scream, to break through the crushing silence that was suffocating her.
“Help me!” Olivia shouted, but her voice was muffled, as if trapped inside her own head. “Please, help me!”
But no one heard. The nurse only stared blankly at her, her expression unreadable. The doctor’s face seemed to blur, warping into something unrecognizable, her eyes now dark and hollow, staring through Olivia as if she were nothing more than an object.
Olivia stumbled backward, her mind racing. She was losing grip on reality, every inch of her skin prickling with the raw terror of not being able to understand or be understood. She tried to move faster, but her body wouldn’t obey, her legs like lead beneath her. The world felt wrong, too still, as though something essential had snapped inside her.
She looked at the other patients sitting in the waiting area—faces blurred, expressions vacant. Each of them seemed locked in their own little bubbles of confusion. Were they like her? Or were they just… normal? Were they speaking, and she was just unable to hear it? The longer she stared, the more it felt like they, too, were slipping further away from her.
A sudden realization hit her—she was no longer part of their world. She was in a place where no one understood, and no one could hear her. The chasm between her and the people around her had grown impossibly wide. In a world where communication had been instantaneous and flawless, she was now cut off from everything she had once known.
Olivia’s breathing quickened, her chest tightening as she backed into the corner of the clinic. The cold, sterile air felt suffocating now. The silence grew louder in her mind. She was alone, trapped in a world that no longer made sense. The chip that had once connected her to the world had failed her, and now, there was no way back.
A voice came from the doorway—soft, distant, and yet impossibly close. Olivia’s heart stopped.
“We don’t need you,” the voice whispered, but she could not comprehend the rest of the sentence. The words were a maze, spinning in her head, but they never reached their destination. The face of the speaker was like a shadow, the outline fading in and out.
Olivia opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came. The walls of the clinic closed in tighter. And then, just like that, everything went black.
Hours later, the clinic would report a missing person. Olivia was never found. Her last moments, trapped in a world where communication had become a deadly game, would remain a mystery. The language barrier, once a tool of connection, had become the final weapon of her destruction.
In the silence of the world that followed, no one would ever hear her story.
If you enjoyed this short story you will probably like our latest release available now:
Lost in Translation: When Communication Fails
$3.99
Lost in Translation: When Communication Fails is a spine-chilling collection of 35 dark, disturbing short stories that explore a world on the brink of collapse due to the breakdown of communication.
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