Title: A Passenger in My Skin
The reflection in the bathroom mirror wasn't mine. I mean, it looked like me—same tired brown eyes, same unruly black hair that refused to be tamed, same faded Ramones t-shirt. But the person staring back wasn't Kareem Johnson. It was wearing my face like a ill-fitting suit, and its eyes held a cold, ancient amusement that made my stomach liquefy.
I blinked, hard, squeezing my eyes shut until colors burst against my eyelids. When I looked again, it was just me, pale and wide-eyed, gripping the edge of the porcelain sink until my knuckles turned white. The fluorescent light above flickered, casting a sickly, strobing glow.
"Get it together, man," I whispered to the empty room. My voice echoed, thin and reedy, against the tiled walls.
The thing was, I hadn't been alone for days. Not truly. Since the incident in the old biology lab with the desiccated frog and the whispered incantation I never should have read, there had been a… presence. A weight on the back of my neck, a second heartbeat thudding just out of sync with my own. It was a low, constant hum in the back of my skull, a radio tuned to a station playing static and something older, something predatory.
School had become a special kind of hell. Every class was an exercise in not screaming. In History, Mr. d'Ambrosio was droning on about the Louisiana Purchase when a cold spike of alien interest shot through me. My head snapped towards the window, my eyes focusing on a crow perched on the rusted basketball hoop outside. For a terrifying second, I felt an overwhelming, visceral urge to fly out, to feel the wind against feathers, to peck at the shiny metal. I'd jerked back, knocking my textbook to the floor. The whole class laughed. Chloe, two rows over, had shot me a look of pure pity. That was almost worse than the fear.
Lunch was worse. The cacophony of the cafeteria—the clatter of trays, the shrieks of laughter, the bassline of a hundred overlapping conversations—wasn't just noise anymore. It was a physical assault. Each sound was a needle jabbing into my brain. I found myself sitting with Leo and Anya, my usual crew, but I felt a million miles away.
"You look like death warmed over, K," Leo said around a mouthful of pizza. "You pulling all-nighters again? That Eldritch horror fanfic can wait, dude."
Anya, ever observant, just watched me, her green eyes narrowed. "Your hands are shaking."
I shoved them under the table. "Didn't sleep well."
It was a lie. I'd slept fine. The thing inside me, however, didn't seem to need sleep. It was always there, watching through my eyes, listening through my ears. A passenger. A parasite.
"It's the thing from the lab, isn't it?" Anya's voice was low, meant only for us. She'd been there. She'd seen the shadows congeal, felt the temperature drop. Leo, our skeptic, had written it off as a bad draft and a collective freak-out.
Before I could answer, a wave of dizziness hit me. The world tilted, the colors in the cafeteria bleeding together into a nauseating swirl of orange and grey. A voice that was not my own, a dry rustle of leaves and breaking bones, whispered from a place deeper than thought. *Hungry.*
My body stood up. I didn't tell it to. My legs just moved, carrying me away from the table, towards the trash cans.
"Kareem? You good?" Leo called after me.
I couldn't turn around. My arm reached out, and my fingers, moving with a jerky, marionette-like grace, closed around a half-eaten apple core someone had discarded. Without a single conscious thought from *me*, my hand brought the rotting fruit to my mouth.
Revulsion, pure and primal, screamed through every nerve. *No!* I shrieked inside the prison of my own skull. I fought, a desperate, silent struggle, trying to force my muscles to obey *me*. My fingers trembled, hovering an inch from my lips. I could smell the sour, sweet decay.
With a gasp that tore from my throat, I wrenched control back. I threw the apple core into the bin as if it were on fire and stumbled out of the cafeteria, ignoring the confused stares from my friends. I didn't stop until I hit the boys' bathroom, locking the stall door and leaning my forehead against the cool metal, breathing in ragged, panicked gulps.
That's when I'd gone to the sink to splash water on my face. That's when I'd seen it in the mirror.
The rest of the school day passed in a blur of terror and forced concentration. I was a raw nerve, flinching at every sudden movement, every slammed locker. The thing inside me was quiet, but I could feel its satisfaction, a smug warmth in my gut. It was testing the controls. And it was learning.
When the final bell rang, I practically ran home. My house was empty, both my parents still at work. The silence was a blessing and a curse. Without the external noise, the internal one became louder. The hum was a constant pressure, the feeling of another consciousness nestled against mine, a spider in the center of my web.
I collapsed onto my bed, staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to my ceiling from when I was ten. They offered no comfort. I felt a foreign surge of contempt for them. Childish. Pointless.
*What are you?* I thought, directing the question inward, into the dark corners of my own mind.
For a long moment, there was nothing. Then, a feeling, not words, but a clear impression, bloomed in my head. An image of a vast, dark forest. Of roots digging deep into cold, rich earth. Of something old and patient, waiting in the stillness between heartbeats.
A Jumbie. That's what my Gran would have called it. She'd filled my childhood with stories of them—spirits, old gods, tricksters, and terrors from the islands. I'd always thought they were just stories. Scary tales to keep a curious boy from wandering into the woods at night. Now, I knew better. We'd summoned something, or maybe, we'd simply attracted its attention. And it had decided to hitch a ride.
A new sensation began to build, different from the hunger or the contempt. It was a sharp, focused pull. A compulsion. My body sat up, my head turning towards the window. The thing wanted to go outside. It wanted to go to the woods at the edge of our suburban development.
"No," I said aloud, my voice cracking. "We're not going."
A spike of pain lanced through my temples, so sharp I cried out. It wasn't a request.