When Aelis opened her eyes again, the sky was the color of drowned flesh.
Gray. Blue. Bruised.
She was outside—somehow. Lying in the middle of her street, nightgown soaked, feet bare, skin raw with scratches that hadn't been there before. Her body ached in ways that felt personal, like the hurt had been handpicked for her.
The houses around her were wrong.
Silent, but watching.
Their windows didn't reflect. They absorbed. The lawns were too still, too green, as if they'd been painted by something that didn't understand what grass was. There were no birds. No breeze. Only the low, almost-human hum that seemed to rise from the concrete beneath her.
She stood. Slowly. Her shadow stretched in three directions at once.
Behind her, her house waited.
It wasn't her house.
It looked like her house—but the longer she stared, the more it twitched. The front door was ajar, and from the crack seeped something thick and dark. Not blood. Not quite. It moved like it had somewhere to be.
And it was humming.
That same low sound.
Like someone was trying to hum through a throat filled with teeth.
She stepped toward it.
One step. Two.
The porch boards pulsed beneath her feet, squelching. Breathing.
The door opened before she could touch it.
Inside, her house was not a house.
It was a throat.
The wallpaper was raw and pulsing. The lights were dim, flickering from veins that bulged and twisted along the ceiling like parasitic vines. The air reeked of bile and roses. Her kitchen sink was vomiting black feathers. Her family photos bled from the eyes.
And there, at the top of the stairs, stood her mother.
Dead.
She had died when Aelis was seven. A car accident. Closed casket.
But here she was.
Wearing the dress they buried her in. Only…her mouth wasn't a mouth. It was stitched into a grin with fishhooks, torn so wide it nearly split her face in two. Her eyes were white. Her voice was a wet gargle that echoed from beneath her skin.
"I missed you, darling."
Aelis screamed. Turned.
The front door was gone.
Only hallway. Flesh. Twisting.
The house sighed around her.
Then—it whispered.
A hundred voices, all hers, crying from beneath the floorboards, behind the walls, inside the electrical sockets.
"Let us out, Aelis."
"You let it in."
"You let it touch you."
She stumbled backwards. Something squelched beneath her heel.
A tongue.
Human. Still warm. Still twitching.
It licked her foot.
She bolted for the basement—because it was the only door left. She didn't know why. But something pulled her there. Not physically. Worse. Lovingly.
The basement stairs were lined with fingernails—wedged like broken teeth into each step. Some were painted. Some still had bits of skin at the root.
At the bottom was a light.
Flickering. Greenish.
A single bulb hung from a tendon that writhed when she looked at it.
And in the center of the basement, sitting cross-legged in a puddle of spoiled milk and bone dust—
—was herself.
Another Aelis.
Naked.
Covered in carvings.
Words etched into her skin.
"MEAT."
"WAKELESS."
"HOME."
The doppelgänger's eyes were missing. In their place, tiny mouths blinked open, whispering backwards prayers.
And in her lap—rested Aelis's own heart.
Still beating.
Still connected to her chest.
Veins like threads, running from the real Aelis's sternum across the room, trailing down the stairs like puppet strings.
The second Aelis reached up—and ate it.
Not whole. Bite by bite.
Each time, Aelis felt it.
She collapsed to her knees, vomiting black ropes of something alive. It slithered away before she could see.
Above her, the basement ceiling opened like a mouth. Wet teeth. Stretching. Dripping.
And from that maw dropped the skinless man.
Arms first. Then the rest.
His smile had grown.
Now it reached behind his head, splitting his scalp like an unzipped hood. A dozen tongues dangled from his ribcage, all singing in harmony. A chorus of wrong.
He knelt beside her. His breath smelled of forgotten things.
And in a voice that sounded like a mother whispering into her infant's crib, he said:
"You are becoming. Isn't it beautiful?"
Then—
He reached into her face.
Not with hands.
With his memory.
And everything went red.