Patient File No. 7
I bought a return ticket that same night. I didn't know where escape was possible, but I knew that staying in a strange city, alone, with no one who knew the story, was the worst possible choice.
During the flight back, I no longer waited for something to happen. I sat with the folder of letters from the five previous doctors on my lap and began reading them again, this time more carefully — not searching for fear, but for a pattern, a weakness.
There was one thing common to all the letters, something I hadn't noticed until that moment: each doctor, somewhere in their letter, had mentioned one specific thing — something Mr. Monday avoided, or at least grew weaker in the presence of.
Dr. Homayouni had written: "Whenever I said the truth out loud — not just thought it, but said it aloud — he seemed to pause for a moment. As if speaking the truth, instead of hiding it, somehow diminished his power."
The second physician, in a shorter letter, had written: "He hates the family's real name. When I said 'Sadeghi' instead of 'the thirteenth family' or whatever he called them, for a moment he lost his voice."
I sat there, on that plane, my mind finally starting to clear, and I understood something: this entity, this Mr. Monday, drew his power from the story — from being the narrator, from distance, from abstraction. When you called things by their real names, when you spoke the raw, unadorned truth out loud, instead of letting him turn them into "story" and "experiment," something in his power seemed to crack.
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When I returned to the city, the first thing I did was go to the hospital to follow up on Patient No. 7 — knowing full well he probably still hadn't been found.
I was right. The ward nurse said his file was still open, but there was no trace of him. The police, after a few days of superficial searching, had moved the case to "low-priority missing persons" — a bitter but common fate for patients with no family to follow up.
That night, instead of going to my apartment, I went to Golestan Alley — the place where this entire nightmare had begun.
I knew it was dangerous. But there was nothing left to lose that I hadn't already run from.
The street was exactly as I had seen it in my dreams, even in reality — the bakery with its light on, the park with three swings, the brick houses empty of residents. The redevelopment that was supposed to have happened years ago had never truly been completed; only a few rusted signs and abandoned scaffolding showed that someone had once intended to change this place.
I stood at the mouth of the street, in the very spot where I had stood the first time.
This time, instead of running, I said aloud — in a voice that trembled but didn't break:
"The Sadeghi family. Father, mother, ten-year-old son, five-year-old daughter. I found their names. I know who they were. Not the thirteenth family, not an experiment. They were people."
The wind, suddenly, swept through the street — a wind that hadn't been there until that moment.
"I know their names," I continued, my voice growing louder. "And I know yours too. You're not some being from the future. You're just something this street, this pain, this repetition created. You're a parasite on this place, not its savior."
The street shuddered — not in a physical sense, but as if the air itself, the very light glowing from the lampposts, became unstable for a moment, like an image with a flickering signal.
From within that instability, his voice came — this time not from behind me, not from a phone, but from everywhere at once, resonating through the entire alley:
"Why are you doing this?" And for the first time, in that voice, I heard something resembling pain, not just threat. "Do you think saying names changes anything? I'm still here. They're still gone."
"I know," I said, trying to keep my voice steady. "But you can no longer claim you're saving them. You can't rewrite their story to make yourself the hero. I know the truth now."
A long silence followed — a silence that was strangely heavier than any sound I had heard until that moment.
Then the voice came again, softer this time, closer, almost at my ear — though no one was there:
"Very well, Doctor. If you're so certain you know the truth... let me show you what no one else wanted to see."
The ground beneath my feet trembled, and before I could react, the world around me — the street, the bakery, the brick houses — all dissolved suddenly, like paint washing off a canvas, and in their place, a completely different image formed:
That same night, twenty-two years ago. The same alley, but younger, more lived-in. And at the end of the street, the Sadeghi family — father, mother, two children — stepping out of their house, ready to go somewhere, smiles on their faces.
And behind them, in the shadows, a figure stood — not the Mr. Monday I knew, but something younger, smaller, as if caught in its very first night of formation.
Mr. Monday's voice whispered from somewhere nearby: "Do you want to know how I began, Doctor? Do you want to know why no one — not even I — can stop this?"
I nodded, without knowing what I was agreeing to.
"Then watch," he said. "Watch, and then tell me if you still think speaking the truth is enough."
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To be continued in Chapter Thirteen...