"The Negative Within"

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Mara Chen sees the world in frames—quiet alleys at twilight, the ghost of color in an abandoned storefront, the silent lives of strangers caught between shutter clicks. As a street photographer in the sprawling metropolis of Meridian City, she’s always trusted her camera to reveal truths she can’t quite name. Lately, however, her photos have revealed something else. After a strange episode of sudden disorientation—a fleeting blackout Mara writes off as exhaustion—her developed film shows anomalies: people she never saw, shadows where there were none, and worst of all, portraits of terrified faces she doesn’t remember taking. When one of those faces turns up dead in a bizarre and impossible accident, Mara realizes something is very wrong. And it’s not just the photographs. Plagued by escalating micro-sleep episodes, Mara digs deeper and uncovers a chilling pattern. Her darkroom, once a place of solace, has become a supernatural conduit—warping her creative trauma into something sentient. Something that watches her through the lens. Something that is taking shape. As the city around her fractures into dreamlike horrors and the line between reality and nightmare blurs, Mara must confront not just the entity stalking her, but the darkest parts of herself. Because the real threat isn’t what’s hiding in her photographs... It’s what’s developing inside her. Dark, immersive, and psychologically rich, The Negative Within is a gripping short novel of urban decay, creative obsession, and the dangerous magic hidden between sleep and waking.