Soulmate

A stranger sat at her table, claiming to be her soulmate.

At first, Eliza thought she’d misheard. The cafe was bustling with late-afternoon chatter, the hiss of the coffee machine, the clink of spoons against porcelain. But when she looked up from her book, the man sitting across from her met her gaze with unsettling confidence.

„I’m sorry?” she said, her fingers tightening around the spine of her novel.

The man smiled. He had sharp cheekbones, deep-set eyes, and an odd air of familiarity. Not in the way of an old friend, but as if he belonged in a dream she’d long forgotten.

„You heard me,” he said. „I’m your soulmate. We were meant to meet today.”

Eliza let out a nervous laugh, glancing around to see if anyone else had noticed this bizarre intrusion. The cafe was full, but no one seemed to be paying them any attention.

„You’ve got the wrong person,”she said, pushing her cup aside as she prepared to leave.

„No,” the man said, his voice gentle but firm. „I don’t.”

Eliza hesitated. There was something deeply unsettling about his certainty, yet a strange curiosity rooted her to the spot. She had no reason to believe him, but for some reason, she wanted to hear what he had to say.

„Who are you?” she asked.

The man folded his hands on the table, his fingers long and pale.

„My name is Aidan,â”he said. „And I have waited a very long time to meet you.”

Eliza’s pulse quickened. There was something in the way he spoke; calm, measured, utterly convinced, that made her uneasy.

„And how exactly do you know we’re soulmates?” she asked, trying to keep her tone light.

Aidan tilted his head, as if considering how best to explain.

„I’ve known you before,” he said. „In other lives. In other places. Each time, we’ve found each other. Each time, something has torn us apart.”

Eliza let out a short laugh. „Right. So you’re telling me we’ve been reincarnated over and over again, and now what? We’re supposed to be together?”

Aidan’s expression remained calm. „Yes. But this time is different. This time, we have a chance to finally get it right.”

Eliza pushed back her chair. „Listen, Aidan, was it? This is a bit much for a Tuesday afternoon, and I don’t appreciate the weird..”

„Your dreams,” Aidan interrupted. „The ones where you’re drowning in black water, reaching for someone just out of reach. The ones where you wake up gasping, feeling like you’ve lost something precious.”

Eliza froze.

She had those dreams. Often. The same terrible feeling of sinking, of stretching out her hand only for her fingers to brush against empty air.

„You¦ How do you know that?” she whispered.

Aidan smiled, but there was no triumph in it. Just quiet sadness.

„Because I dream them too,” he said.

That night, Eliza lay awake in bed, staring at the ceiling.

She shouldn’t have listened to him. She should have walked away the moment he’d sat down. And yet, she had let him speak. She had listened as he told her stories of past lives; fragments of memories she had no recollection of, but which felt oddly real when he described them.

A woman in Victorian London, running through cobbled streets, calling out a name she couldn’t remember. A soldier in the trenches of France, clutching a bloodstained letter. A girl standing on the edge of a frozen lake, watching cracks spiderweb beneath the ice.

All of them searching. All of them losing.

„It always ends the same way,” Aidan had told her. „We find each other. We love each other. And then one of us dies.”

Eliza had laughed at that, shaking her head.

„Very romantic,” she had said.

„It’s not meant to be a story,” Aidan had replied. „It’s a warning.”

Now, in the silence of her flat, his words felt heavier.

She turned onto her side, forcing herself to close her eyes. She wouldn’t think about him. Wouldn’t think about his strange, knowing gaze. Wouldn’t think about how her dreams had started the moment she’d turned twenty-one, the same year her mother had died.

Sleep came slowly. And with it, the dreams.

Black water.

A hand reaching through the dark.

Aidan’s voice, whispering her name.

Eliza woke with a start, gasping for air.

Her sheets were damp with sweat, her heart hammering. The dream had felt more vivid than ever before, the water colder, the terror sharper.

And something else.

Someone had been watching her.

Not Aidan. Someone else.

A presence lingering just beyond the darkness, waiting.

She shivered, rubbing her arms. It was just a dream. Just her mind playing tricks on her.

A soft knock at the window made her blood turn to ice.

She turned slowly.

Her bedroom was on the third floor.

Another knock, louder this time.

Her breath caught in her throat.

She forced herself to move, to step towards the window. The streetlight outside cast a dim glow against the glass.

And then she saw it.

A figure, standing on the fire escape.

Not Aidan.

Not anyone she recognised.

Just a shadow, featureless and wrong, pressing its hands against the windowpane.

Eliza stumbled back, her pulse roaring in her ears.

The figure tilted its head. And then it moved-no, melted, slipping away into the darkness.

She didn’t sleep the rest of the night.

The next day, she found Aidan waiting outside her flat.

„You saw it, didn’t you?” he asked, before she could even speak.

Eliza hesitated.

„I don’t know what I saw,” she admitted.

Aidan sighed, running a hand through his dark hair. „It’s started again.”

„What has?”

He looked at her, his expression bleak.

„The thing that always comes for us.”

Eliza shivered. „What is it?”

Aidan hesitated. Then he said, „It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we have to run.”

She should have laughed. She should have told him he was insane.

But she remembered the dream.

She remembered the figure at her window.

And so, against all logic, she said:

„Where do we go?”

The next few days passed in a blur.

Eliza followed Aidan out of London, through winding country roads, past towns and villages that seemed to blur together.

She didn't know where they were going. Only that something was following them.

They never saw it directly. Only glimpses a shape in the rear-view mirror, a shadow at the edge of the motorway, a feeling of being watched that never quite went away.

At night, it was worse.

The dreams became unbearable. She woke each time gasping for breath, feeling as if something had been pressing down on her chest.

She stopped asking Aidan questions. He didn’t have answers.

And deep down, she was beginning to remember.

Flashes of other lives. Other endings.

Drowning. Burning. Falling.

Each time, the same presence watching. Waiting.

And always, Aidan reaching for her.

„We can stop it this time,” he said one night, as they sat in a tiny roadside motel, curtains drawn tight.

„How?” she whispered.

Aidan hesitated.

And then, softly, he said, „One of us has to die before it reaches us..”

Eliza felt her stomach drop.

She had known, somehow, that it would come to this.

She met his gaze, her throat dry. „And if we don’t?”

Aidan looked at her with something like sorrow.

„Then it takes both of us”

Eliza swallowed hard.

Outside, the wind howled.

And somewhere in the darkness, it was waiting