Seventeen Guests and the Sound of Rain
Framework: The Closed Circle Ensemble
The rain started the moment Proma arrived at the Shornomoyee Inn, perched on the edge of the Bay of Bengal like a prayer waiting to be answered. Three days before her wedding. Seventeen guests. One isolated coastal building accessible only by a narrow bridge that looked like it had been held together by stubbornness and salt air for the past century.
“Perfect,” her mother had said. “Romantic.”
Proma had thought so too. A destination wedding at a place that felt removed from the world, where she and Arko could start their lives together surrounded by only their closest friends and family.
Now, as the rain hammered against the windows and the lights flickered in the lobby, Proma wasn’t sure romantic was the right word.
Ominous, maybe.
The first night passed uneventfully. Seventeen guests arrived in clusters throughout the afternoon: Proma’s parents, her younger brother, her best friend Meera. Rafi’s side came later—his mother and aunt, his two childhood friends, his cousin from Chittagong.
Proma counted them all as they arrived. Seventeen people, including her and Rafi. A small wedding, the kind they’d both wanted.
Rafi was radiant at dinner, toasting their upcoming marriage with local palm wine, his hand warm in hers under the table. They’d been together for six years. Survived long distance, career changes, family drama. This wedding was supposed to be the easy part.
After dinner, they sat on the veranda and watched the storm build over the water.
“Three more days,” Rafi said, squeezing her hand. “Then you’re stuck with me forever.”
“Good,” Proma said. “I’ve been practicing being stuck.”
They kissed. The rain intensified. Rafi laughed and pulled her inside before they got drenched.
That was the last time Proma saw him.
She woke to hammering on her door at 6 AM.
“Proma! Proma, wake up! The bridge is out!”
Meera’s voice, panicked. Proma stumbled out of bed, disoriented. The room next to hers—the one she’d reserved for Rafi, maintaining tradition even though they’d lived together for two years—was empty.
Probably downstairs already, checking the damage.
She threw on clothes and ran down to the lobby, where a cluster of guests stood at the front windows, staring out at the rain.
The bridge was gone. Not damaged—gone. The entire center span had collapsed into the churning water below, leaving twenty feet of empty air between the inn and the mainland.
“How is this possible?” her brother was saying. “It was fine yesterday!”
“Old infrastructure,” Rafi’s friend Kamal said grimly. “Probably been weakening for years. That storm last night was just the final push.”
Proma scanned the room. Sixteen people. She counted again.
Sixteen.
“Where’s Rafi?”
Everyone turned to look at her.
“What?” Meera asked.
“Rafi. Where is he? Is he outside?”
Blank stares. Meera’s face creased with concern. “Proma, are you okay? Who’s Rafi?”
The room tilted. Proma gripped the back of a chair. “This isn’t funny. Rafi. My fiancé. Where is he?”
“Sweetheart,” her mother said gently, stepping forward. “You’re not engaged. You told us this was a writer’s retreat. Remember? You said you needed to get away from the city to work on your novel.”
“What? No. No, we’re getting married in three days. All of you are here for the wedding. You—” She pointed at Kamal. “You flew in from Singapore for this. You’re Rafi’s college roommate.”
Kamal raised his hands placatingly. “I think there’s been some confusion. I don’t know anyone named Rafi. I’m here because this inn is supposed to be great for bird watching. I come every year.”
This wasn’t happening. Proma looked around wildly. “Someone is playing a prank. Rafi put you up to this.”
But the faces looking back at her weren’t joking. They were concerned. Confused.
Scared.
“I’ll show you,” Proma said, pulling out her phone. “I have pictures. Texts. Our engagement announcement—”
Her photo gallery was mostly empty. A few landscape shots. Some pictures of street food. No Rafi. She scrolled frantically through her messages. Nothing from anyone named Rafi.
Her heart hammered. “Someone took my phone. Deleted everything.”
“Proma,” her brother said quietly. “You got here yesterday before any of us. You’ve been alone this whole time. Mom and I were worried because you seemed… distracted. You barely spoke at dinner.”
“Because I was sitting with Rafi! He was right next to me! He made a toast!”
Silence.
Then Meera, carefully: “You ate alone, honey. You said you preferred it. That you needed to think.”
Half the guests remembered Rafi.
Proma discovered this over the next hour, as the storm continued and the reality of their isolation set in. No bridge. No boat could launch in this weather. Cell service dead. They were trapped.
And they were divided.
Proma, obviously. Her parents claimed they’d never heard of anyone named Rafi. But her aunt—sitting in the corner, very quiet—finally spoke up.
“I remember him. The cartographer. You met at that conference in Sylhet.”
“Thank God,” Proma breathed. “Yes. Tell them.”
But Proma’s mother was shaking her head. “What are you talking about? Proma hasn’t been to Sylhet in five years.”
“We went last year,” Proma insisted. “For the lit fest. Rafi and I both presented.”
Rafi’s mother spoke up then. “My son is real. He called me yesterday to say they’d arrived safely.”
But Rafi’s mother’s sister, sitting right next to her, looked at her like she was insane. “You don’t have a son. We came here together. For the yoga retreat.”
“What yoga retreat?!”
The room erupted. People arguing, shouting over each other. Proma’s head spun.
Half of them remembered Rafi. Half had no idea who she was talking about.
It made no sense.
They made a list. Seventeen people. Nine who remembered Rafi:
- Proma (bride)
- Proma’s aunt
- Rafi’s mother
- Kamal (supposedly Rafi’s friend)
- Meera (Proma’s best friend)
- Rafi’s cousin, Faisal
- A guest named Shoma (Proma’s coworker)
- Proma’s brother
- A man named Toufiq (friend of Rafi’s)
Eight who didn’t:
- Proma’s parents
- Rafi’s mother’s sister
- Three guests who claimed they were here for a corporate retreat
- Two guests who insisted they were here for the bird watching
“This is mass delusion,” one of the corporate guests said. His name was Anwar. “Or mass suggestion. One person has a breakdown, starts insisting there’s someone who doesn’t exist, and half of you convinced yourselves you remember him too.”
“I’m not delusional!” Rafi’s mother snapped. “I gave birth to him. I raised him for twenty-nine years. Are you telling me I imagined my own son?”
“Are you telling me I imagined not having a nephew?” her sister shot back.
Proma felt like she was drowning. “He was here. I held his hand at dinner. He toasted us. He—”
“What was he wearing?” Meera asked suddenly.
Proma closed her eyes, trying to visualize. Rafi at dinner. Smiling. Toasting. But when she tried to picture his clothes, his face, the details blurred.
“I… a shirt. Blue, maybe? Or grey?”
“What did he toast with?” her brother asked, and there was something sharp in his voice.
“Palm wine. The local—” But even as she said it, she wasn’t sure.
“There wasn’t any palm wine at dinner,” her brother said quietly. “I asked for some. The innkeeper said they don’t serve it.”
The room went silent.
“You’re wrong,” Proma whispered.
But she could feel it now—the memories starting to fray at the edges, becoming less solid. Rafi’s face, which should have been as familiar as her own, was becoming difficult to hold in her mind.
What color were his eyes?
She couldn’t remember.
They searched the inn.
All eighteen rooms. The kitchen. The storage areas. The locked cellar (the innkeeper had fled when the bridge collapsed, leaving them his keys). No sign of Rafi. No luggage, no belongings, nothing.
But in room 7—the room supposedly reserved for Rafi—Proma found something.
A single page, handwritten, tucked under the mattress.
If you’re reading this, I’m gone. Or I was never here. I’m not sure which is true anymore.
My name is Rafi. I’m thirty-one years old. I’m a cartographer. Six years ago, I met a woman named Proma at a conference, and I fell in love with her instantly. We were supposed to get married three days from now.
But something is wrong with this place. The Shornomoyee Inn. It’s not what it seems.
I started noticing yesterday. Little things. The innkeeper’s face—it kept changing when I wasn’t looking directly at him. The number of windows in the building. I counted seven from outside. Then ten. Then twelve. The geography doesn’t make sense.
And then I realized: half the guests don’t know who I am. Including Proma’s own parents.
I tried to leave. The bridge was still up then. But every time I got close to it, I found myself back in the lobby. Like the building was looping. Refusing to let me go.
So I’m writing this down. Proof that I existed. Proof that Proma and I were real.
If you’re reading this and you remember me—hold on to that. Don’t let them convince you I was never here.
And if you’re reading this and you have no idea who I am—I’m sorry. I’m sorry for whatever is about to happen.
— Rafi
Proma’s hands shook. She showed the letter to Meera, to her brother, to Rafi’s mother.
“This is his handwriting,” Rafi’s mother said, tears streaming down her face.
“How can you be sure?” Anwar demanded. “You could have written it yourself to—”
“To what?” Proma snapped. “To fake a fiancé? To stage an elaborate breakdown? Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know. But I know what I know, and I know that I came here for a corporate team-building retreat, not a wedding. And I know there’s no one named Rafi.”
The nine who remembered Rafi huddled together. The eight who didn’t kept their distance, watching them with increasing suspicion.
And the rain kept falling.
On the second night, another guest disappeared.
Shoma. Proma’s coworker. The one who remembered Rafi.
Proma found her room empty at breakfast. And when she asked about Shoma, half the guests looked at her blankly.
“Who?” Anwar asked.
“Shoma! She was here yesterday. She works with me at the publishing house.”
But her mother was shaking her head. “Sweetheart, there’s no one named Shoma here. There never was.”
Proma counted.
Sixteen people now.
Eight who remembered Rafi. Eight who didn’t.
A perfect split.
“This is impossible,” Meera said, her voice high and strained. “I was talking to Shoma last night. We had tea together. She told me about her daughter’s school play.”
“You were drinking tea alone,” one of the corporate guests said. “I saw you. You were staring out the window, talking to yourself.”
The remembered and the non-remembered were staring at each other across the lobby now, two groups separated by an unbridgeable gap of conflicting realities.
“Someone is doing this,” Kamal said. “Someone is gaslighting us. Maybe the innkeeper. Maybe there’s something in the water.”
“Or maybe,” Anwar said coldly, “you’re all having a shared psychotic break, and you’re trying to drag the rest of us into it.”
Proma felt like she was fragmenting. Arko’s face was becoming harder to picture. She knew she loved him—she could feel that emotion, solid and real—but when she tried to remember specific moments, they slipped away like water through her fingers.
Had he proposed in a park? Or a restaurant? What had he said?
Why couldn’t she remember?
By the third day, three more people had vanished.
Toufiq. Faisal. One of the corporate guests.
Thirteen people remained. And the memories were degrading faster now.
Proma would find herself mid-sentence, talking about Rafi, and forget what point she was trying to make. His favorite food. The name of his hometown. Whether he had siblings.
She knew—knew—these were things she’d once known intimately. But they were evaporating.
Rafi’s mother spent hours in her room, writing down everything she could remember about her son. Physical descriptions. Childhood stories. His first words. She was desperate to document him before he faded completely.
But when Proma read her notes, they contradicted themselves. Rafi was tall. No, average height. He had a scar on his left hand from a childhood accident. No, his right hand. He studied cartography in Dhaka. No, Khulna.
The memories weren’t just fading. They were corrupting.
“The inn is eating them,” Meera said on the third night, as they all huddled in the main lobby, afraid to go to their rooms. “Eating our memories. Our people.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Anwar said, but even he sounded uncertain now.
“Then explain this,” Proma’s brother demanded, pulling out his phone. He’d been taking pictures obsessively, trying to document everything. “Look at this photo from yesterday. Tell me how many people you see.”
The photo showed the thirteen remaining guests, sitting at breakfast. Her brother scrolled to an earlier photo, from the first day.
“How many people in this one?”
“Thirteen,” Anwar said.
“Count again.”
Anwar counted. His face went white. “That’s… that’s not possible.”
“Seventeen,” her brother said. “First day, seventeen people. But I can only identify thirteen faces. The other four are… blurred. Like they’re being erased.”
Everyone crowded around the phone. It was true. Four faces in the photo were distorted, pixelated, unrecognizable. In a few spots, the figures were missing entirely, leaving gaps in the composition like someone had cut them out.
“Shoma,” Proma whispered, pointing at one of the blank spaces. “That’s where Shoma was sitting. Next to me.”
But when she tried to picture Shoma’s face, she couldn’t. She knew there had been someone. Someone who worked with her. Someone who liked tea. Someone who had a daughter.
But what was her name? Had there even been a Shoma?
The rain finally stopped on the fourth morning.
Ten people remained. Proma counted them obsessively, terrified that if she blinked, more would vanish.
And the bridge was back.
Not repaired—back. The entire structure that had collapsed was now whole again, as if it had never been damaged.
“We need to leave,” Meera said. “Now. Before this place takes anyone else.”
But Proma found herself frozen at the threshold, staring at the bridge.
“I can’t,” she said. “Not without Rafi.”
“Proma…” Meera’s voice was gentle. “Who is Rafi?”
Proma turned to her best friend. “You know who Rafi is. You were my maid of honor. You helped me pick out my wedding sari.”
But even as she said it, she could feel the memory degrading. The wedding sari. Had it been red? Or white? Traditional or modern? Had there even been a wedding planned?
Why was she here?
“I think…” Meera said slowly, and there were tears on her face. “I think I remember someone. But I don’t know his name. I don’t know what he looked like. I just remember… you were happy.”
Proma’s mother put a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s go home, sweetheart. Whatever happened here, we need to leave.”
But Proma couldn’t move. Because the truth was settling over her like a shroud:
She didn’t remember Rafi’s face anymore. She didn’t remember his voice. She didn’t remember how they met or when he proposed or what his favorite food was.
All she had left was a feeling. A bone-deep certainty that she’d loved someone. That she’d come here to marry someone.
And now that someone was gone.
Not dead. Worse. Erased. From memory. From photographs. From reality itself.
And soon, she would forget him entirely.
They left the Shornomoyee Inn in a silent group, walking single-file across the bridge that shouldn’t exist.
Proma was the last to cross. At the halfway point, she turned back.
Through the rain-streaked windows of the inn, she thought she saw a figure. Tall. Watching.
Was it him? Was it Rafi?
Or was it just her mind, desperately trying to reconstruct what had been taken?
She crossed the bridge. Got in the car with her family. Drove away.
That night, alone in her apartment in Dhaka, she found a box under her bed. Inside: wedding invitations addressed to names she didn’t recognize. A groom’s sherwani, sized for someone taller than her. A handwritten note that said Three more days, then you’re stuck with me forever.
The handwriting was unfamiliar.
Proma sat on her bedroom floor, holding the note, trying desperately to remember.
There had been someone. She knew there had been someone.
But when she tried to picture his face, all she saw was rain.
Epilogue
Rafi’s mother died six months later. A heart attack, the doctors said. But her sister told people that she’d died of grief for a son who never existed, whose name she’d kept repeating in those final days even though no one could understand who she meant.
Meera sent Proma a text a year later: Do you ever feel like something is missing? Like you forgot something important?
Proma did. All the time. A constant low-level grief with no object, no name.
She wrote about it, sometimes. Started a novel about a woman who went to a remote inn and lost something she couldn’t name. Critics called it “a haunting meditation on memory and loss.”
No one called it true.
And sometimes, on rainy nights, Proma would wake up crying. She would reach across the bed, expecting to find someone there.
But the space next to her was always empty.
Had it always been empty?
She couldn’t remember.
Principles Demonstrated:
- Closed circle (no one can leave): The collapsed bridge traps everyone in an isolated location
- Ensemble cast with hidden connections: Multiple perspectives and relationships create a complex social mystery
- Conflicting testimonies as puzzle: The guests’ contradictory memories form the core mystery
- Isolation amplifying tension: Being cut off from the outside world raises the stakes and paranoia
- The impossible premise played straight: The story treats memory erasure as real, not metaphorical, forcing characters to question reality itself