My heart was pounding so loudly that I was sure he could hear it through the mattress. I lay hidden under the bed, breathing in dust and fear, knowing one thing for certain: if I made even the slightest sound, there would be no turning back.

He moved around the bedroom with calm familiarity, as if the space still belonged to him. He opened the wardrobe, slammed the door shut, and muttered something under his breath. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed. The mattress sank just inches from my face. I could see his shoes—old, worn, painfully familiar. The same pair I used to clean for him myself.

— You’ve made a mess again… — he said sharply, as though I were standing right there. — Did you really think I’d stop coming just because you left?

A memory flashed through my mind: the day I changed the locks after we separated. I checked them myself, over and over, convinced I was finally safe. Now I realized he had been one step ahead of me all along.

He went into the kitchen. I heard the refrigerator open, then water being poured into my glass—the one with the chipped rim. The sound of him drinking echoed inside my head. He was living my life while I was gone. Using my things. Walking through my home. Talking to me—to someone who wasn’t even there.

I remembered his stare. The way he used to tell me I was nothing without him. How he laughed when I begged him to leave me alone. I had left that night with a single bag, certain it was over. For him, it had only been an intermission.

The footsteps came closer again. He returned to the bedroom and began searching for something. His hand lowered—he looked under the bed from the opposite side. Between his eyes and mine there was only shadow and the bedspread.

— I know you’re scared, — he said quietly, almost gently. — You’ve always been scared.

Something inside me snapped at that moment. The fear didn’t disappear, but it was drowned out by a surge of desperate anger. I understood that if I stayed silent now, he would keep coming back. Again and again. Every single day. Always at 11:20.

I burst out from under the bed and screamed. He jumped back, completely caught off guard. Surprise flickered across his face, then rage. But for one brief second—just one—he hesitated. That was all I needed. I ran for the door, stumbling over furniture, racing down the hallway and out without even closing it behind me.

My scream drew the neighbors. Someone rushed into the corridor. Someone called the police. He escaped through the back exit, but he was no longer invisible. No longer just “a voice in an empty apartment.”

Later, it came out that he had made a spare set of keys before I ever left. That he had been coming almost every day, talking out loud, shouting, arguing with me—as if I still belonged to him. The neighbor had been the only one who heard it before I did.

Now I live somewhere else. With different locks. Sometimes, even now, my chest tightens at exactly 11:20. But I know this for sure: the most terrifying thing isn’t that someone can enter your home. The most terrifying thing is letting the past believe it still has the key.