Daniel had always believed fear was something you could see.
A shadow in the corner.A stranger at the door.A howl in the distance.
But he was wrong.
Fear was quieter than that.
It began the night the coyotes stopped howling.
The desert outside his window had always been loud at night — wind dragging sand across the earth, insects buzzing, distant animal cries. But that night, everything was still.
Too still.
Daniel lay awake, staring at the ceiling. His clock read 2:17 a.m.
Then he heard it.
A knock.
Not on the front door.
On his window.
Slow. Deliberate. Three taps.
He held his breath.
Their house sat far from town. No neighbors close enough to walk over. No trees for branches to scrape against the glass.
Three more taps.
He turned his head slowly.
The curtain was slightly open.
There was no face at the window.
Just darkness.
But deep in that darkness, he felt something watching him.
Not looking at him.
Studying him.
He shut his eyes and told himself it was imagination.
The human brain, he had read somewhere, fills in gaps when it cannot explain what it sees.
The brain hates uncertainty.
The next morning, everything seemed normal.
His mother hummed in the kitchen. His father drank coffee at the table. The sun rose over the desert like it always did.
But something felt… misplaced.
His mother looked at him longer than usual.
Not lovingly.
Carefully.
As if memorizing his face.
"You didn't sleep well," she said.
It wasn't a question.
That was the first crack.
The second crack came three days later.
Daniel was washing his hands in the bathroom when he looked into the mirror.
For a split second — less than a blink — his reflection did not move when he did.
He froze.
His reflection froze too.
But the feeling lingered.
Like it had been delayed.
Like something had been practicing.
That night, he heard his father's voice calling from outside.
"Daniel."
Soft. Calm.
"Come here, son."
But his father was asleep in the next room.
Daniel knew that because he could hear him snoring through the wall.
The voice came again.
Closer to the window this time.
"Daniel."
The tone was perfect.
Exactly his father's voice.
Exactly the same rhythm.
Except for one thing.
His father never called him "son."
Not once in seventeen years.
His pulse raced.
His thoughts began spiraling.
Was someone outside?
Or was something inside him breaking?
At school, he began noticing small things.
People staring too long.
Conversations stopping when he entered.
A teacher calling him by the wrong name — then insisting she hadn't.
Even his own shadow looked unfamiliar in the afternoon light. Longer. Thinner. Not quite aligned with his body.
Sleep became impossible.
Every time he closed his eyes, he dreamed of running on all fours across endless desert sand. He could feel the wind in his fur.
Fur.
He would wake up clawing at his arms.
But there was no fur.
Only skin.
Normal skin.
By the end of the week, Daniel began to question the one thing humans rely on most:
His own perception.
What if the creature wasn't outside?
What if the stories about shapeshifters weren't about monsters wearing human skin…
What if they were about humans losing their own?
One night, he stood again before the mirror.
He leaned closer.
"Who are you?" he whispered to his reflection.
This time, the reflection smiled first.