#10 Eleanor’s Gap

Eleanor Westwood is charming, well-mannered, and effortlessly alluring—yet perpetually single. To her friends, it’s a running joke. Every man she dates, no matter how promising, inevitably disappears from her life. “It didn’t work out,” she says with a small, knowing smile. Her friends never pry. In their eyes, Eleanor is simply unlucky in love.

But behind the thin walls of Eleanor’s 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.

Eleanor doesn’t consider herself a monster. She tells herself she is preserving love in its purest form—frozen in time, untouched by betrayal, indifference, or decay. If she can’t have the perfect relationship, then 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 from the others. Kind. Attentive. He sees her in a way no one else has. And for the first time, Eleanor wonders—could this one last? Could he be the one?

She convinces herself that 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 headboard loose, won’t need to feel his body go slack in her arms as she whispers apologies into his hair.

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 Eleanor tries to mask with candles, the way her fingers linger too long on the headboard as if she’s remembering something—or someone.

And then he hears it.

A noise behind the wall. A sound no living thing should make.

Daniel’s curiosity leads him to the truth, and in doing so, he seals his fate. Eleanor cannot afford to let him go—not after everything she’s built, after everything she’s protected. But this time, something is different.

The wall is full. Her past is restless.

And for the first time in her life, Eleanor might not be in control.

But there are some people you just can’t let go…