**“The House That Breathed Sand”**

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By Carlos Davila Medina

They told us not to go past the dune line after sunset.

Said the wind whispered the names of the dead there.

Said the house buried in sand wasn’t always empty.

But we were curious. Stupid. Young.

We thought the desert had no memory.

It took us less than an hour to find the house.

Its bones were still standing—cracked walls, open windows, and sand poured inside like breath through rotted lungs.

It didn’t feel abandoned.

It felt… watched.

The wind didn’t howl—it spoke.

Low. Garbled. Hungry.

“Do you hear that?” Mateo asked.

I didn’t answer.

Because I heard something else.

Footsteps.

Soft. Crunching.

But we were the only ones inside.

That’s when the door slammed shut.

The sand shifted violently, as if something underneath was writhing.

A scream echoed—not from any of us, but from the walls.

Something was waking.

From the grains, a hand emerged.

Skin like dried leather. No nails. Just jagged stubs and sand-packed knuckles.

Mateo ran.

I didn’t.

The house swallowed his scream whole.

No blood. No body. Just silence… and sand where he once stood.

Then I heard the voice—inside me this time.

“Now you belong to the desert.”

The door creaked open behind me.

The ocean was visible in the distance, beautiful and mocking.

But when I tried to walk, my feet wouldn’t lift.

The sand had gripped me.

Was pulling me down.

The last thing I saw before I sank was a mirror—

and in it, my face was smiling.

But I wasn’t.