The first thing I noticed was not the hand.
It was the mark.
A barely visible line on the skin of my neck, just above the collarbone.
It could have been there since morning.
It could have been the fold of a shirt.
It could have been anything.
Even so, I looked again.
Not because it seemed important.
Precisely because it did not.
I kept working for a few minutes before raising my hand to my throat once more. The mark was still there. Neither darker nor lighter. Exactly the same.
That was what forced me to check a third time.
Its stillness.
Real things change.
Pressure from clothing fades.
Skin returns to its original shape.
The small traces of the day correct themselves.
That line remained where it was.
I opened the camera on my phone.
I took a photograph.
I was not looking for evidence.
I was looking for an excuse to stop looking.
For a few seconds, it worked.
Then I zoomed in.
The photograph showed the same line.
But it showed something else as well.
A slight interruption.
A small gap.
As if the mark had not been continuous.
As if something had rested around my neck and left a precise separation at one specific point.
I touched the skin again.
I found no irregularity.
The photograph still showed one.
It was not a large difference.
Perhaps one or two millimeters.
Enough to make me zoom in again.
And again.
And again.
The strange thing was not the mark.
The strange thing was the feeling that I had expected to find exactly that interruption.
As if part of me already knew where to look.
I left the phone on the table.
I tried to focus on something else.
It did not work.
Every few minutes my attention returned to the same place.
The screen.
The photograph.
The neck.
The photograph.
The neck.
The photograph.
Until I stopped trying to remember when it had started.
The question changed.
It was no longer what had caused the line.
Not even why it appeared in the image.
The question became something else.
Why did I feel relieved every time I checked and found it still there?
I stepped closer to the mirror.
The mark looked fainter.
I looked at the photograph.
In the photograph it looked deeper.
Back to the mirror.
Back to the photograph.
At some point I stopped comparing two versions of the same thing.
I started waiting for one to contradict the other.
And when I realized that, something worse appeared.
I was not discovering an anomaly.
I was recognizing a routine.
I need to move my neck.
I am not moving it.
The hand is not here.
That is what I keep telling myself.
The hand is not here.
Then why do I keep checking the exact place where it should be?
I have to move my neck I am not moving it…
