The bandage itched.
Aelis sat on the edge of her bed, fingers trembling as they hovered just above the wound. She hadn't unwrapped it. Not yet. Couldn't. The memory of tearing herself free from the ooze had calcified behind her eyes, playing on loop like a cracked film reel. She blinked, and she was back there—in the meat-room, in the red-womb, in the thing.
But this was real, wasn't it?
The sun was out. Her alarm clock blinked 7:03 AM. A bird chirped outside her window.
And yet, the air still smelled faintly wrong. Like rusted pennies melted into wet wood.
Downstairs, the house creaked.
Not like wood settling. It creaked like it remembered something.
She stood, slowly, and caught her reflection in the vanity mirror.
Something inside her stopped.
Her reflection…was smiling.
Her face—her face—but slack-jawed, teeth bared, lips stretched until they cracked. Blood wept from the corners of the grin.
Aelis didn't move.
The reflection did.
It raised one hand and pressed it to the inside of the glass. The fingertips were flayed. The nails were missing. The flesh there squirmed, like a sack of worms packed too tight.
Behind that smiling reflection, in the shadows of her reflected room, something else moved.
A shape. Tall. Throbbing.
A vertical mouth—grinning.
The mirror shuddered—not cracked, not broken—but convulsed, like it was trying to vomit.
And then she blinked.
Gone.
The mirror was normal.
Her reflection was her own.
Only now…her bandage was missing.
Her arm?
Unwrapped. Red. Torn.
Exactly like it had been in the dream.
"Not a dream," she whispered.
From behind her closet door came a soft knock.
Three beats.
Slow. Wet.
She backed away. No footsteps. No breath. Just her heartbeat trying to dig its way out through her ribcage.
Another knock.
This one scraped.
She grabbed the nearest thing—a lamp—and approached the closet. The brass shook in her grip, humming with her pulse.
Her hand reached for the doorknob.
She didn't touch it.
It turned on its own.
The door creaked open.
Inside wasn't the closet.
It was the hallway—the one inside that thing's chest. The one filled with twitching limbs and wet-faced horrors.
And something was crawling out.
A little girl.
But not really.
Hair matted to her face. Skin grey and peeled in places, as if the dermis had simply given up. Her eyes were sewn shut—with barbed wire. Her mouth was wide open. Not screaming. Just open. A silent gape.
From her mouth poured a string of teeth. Human teeth. Dozens. Hundreds. Like they were being spit out by something deeper, something inside her.
The girl raised her hand.
Pointed.
At Aelis.
The mirror shattered behind her. Every shard hovered in the air, each one reflecting a different face—all hers, all in pain, all screaming silently.
And then—every shard bit.
They didn't fall. They lunged. Tiny razors, they dug into her back, her arms, her neck. Blood ran in rivulets down her sides as if trying to escape first.
She screamed.
No sound.
She looked at the girl—
Gone.
The hallway—
Gone.
Only her closet. Still.
Still.
But her bed now twitched.
She turned.
The sheets writhed, lumps forming beneath them like rats in heat. A hand burst forth. Not human. Long, blackened. Too many joints. Nails curved like hooks.
Another followed. Then a third. Then—
The sheets ripped.
The thing that rose from her bed wore her face.
But stitched. Pinned. Wrong.
Her eyes were inside its mouth. Her mouth was in its chest. Her scream echoed from its throat.
The bedroom twisted.
The walls pulsed.
The window bled light like pus.
And then—her own body betrayed her.
Her feet moved.
She walked forward.
Toward it.
She begged herself to stop—but her muscles didn't belong to her anymore.
It reached for her. Not with arms—but with thought. It unfolded.
Inside it was not horror.
It was home.
A voice—hers, but deeper, wetter, older—whispered:
"You were never meant to wake."
The world collapsed.
Everything folded inward, as if reality had been a trick of wax and heat.
And she fell—
—screaming—
—into something red—
—and waiting.