#10 The Gap

Eleanor Westwood is charming, well-mannered, effortlessly alluring - and perpetually single.

To her friends, it’s a running joke. Every man she dates, no matter how promising, inevitably vanishes. “It didn’t work out,” she says with a small, knowing smile.

They never pry.

In their eyes, Eleanor is simply unlucky in love.

But behind the walls of her bedroom, the truth is entombed in silence. The hollow space behind her headboard is crowded - a hidden graveyard of past lovers.

Some are curled in eternal repose, their limbs contorted in their final moments. Others are little more than husks, dried and shriveled by time.

Each man was someone she once adored.

Each man let her down.

And so, she kept them. Embalmed by a hardening liquid she found online.

Eleanor doesn’t see herself as a monster. She tells herself she is preserving love - frozen in time, untouched by betrayal, indifference, or decay.

If she can’t have the perfect relationship, at least she can keep what remains.

Each failed romance is another lesson. Another addition to her collection.

Then she meets Daniel.

He is different. Kind. Attentive. He sees her in a way no one else has. And for the first time, Eleanor wonders—could this one last?

She convinces herself Daniel will be the exception.

She won’t need to open the wall again.

She won’t have to listen for his breath slowing in the dead of night.

She won’t need to pry the gap loose, won’t have to feel his body go slack in her arms as she whispers apologies into his ear…

But love is never perfect.

As weeks turn to months, cracks begin to form - not just in their relationship, but in Eleanor’s carefully constructed reality.

Daniel notices things: the strange creaks in the walls at night, the persistent smell masked by candles, the way her eyes linger too long on nothing - like she’s remembering something.

Or someone.

Then he hears it. A noise behind the wall.

Something shifting. Slipping.

Something settling deeper into place.

Curiosity leads Daniel to the truth, and in doing so, he seals his fate.

Eleanor cannot afford to let him go - not after everything she’s built. But this time, something is different.

The wall is full.

Rammed to breaking point.

Its contents swell and retract with the temperature of the seasons.

Her past is restless. And for the first time in her life, Eleanor might not be in control.

True love doesn’t deserve to be hidden behind a wall.

Eleanor thinks a glass display box might be in order…