The kitchen fan continued its losing battle against the August heat, spinning with a rhythmic, weary "clack-clack." The light filtering through the window wasn't natural; at this hour of the evening, the sky should have been turning navy blue, but outside had taken on the color of a bruised peach, oscillating between a sickly yellow and purple static. That endless summer cycle, where asphalt melted and shadows lengthened, had seeped all the way into the house.
Elara looked at the rosemary chicken on her plate. Mark sat across from her.
"You're not eating," Mark said. His voice was smooth yet synthetic, like static in an old radio broadcast. "And yet, I made it just the way you like. Crispy skin, juicy inside."
Elara rested her fork on the meat. The sound of metal hitting porcelain echoed more than it should have in the kitchen. In her stomach, there was a contraction that had nothing to do with hunger, resembling more of a primitive warning mechanism.
"It's the heat," Elara said, wiping the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. "Just because of the heat."
Mark smiled. This smile was as if it had been cut from a photograph and pasted onto his face. The corners of his lips curled upward, but those familiar crinkles didn't form at the corners of his eyes. Only the lips moved.
Mark pushed his chair back and stood up. "Let me get you some ice water."
There was an issue with the fluidity of his movements. When people stand up, they lean forward slightly to shift their center of gravity, tensing their muscles. Mark, however, rose effortlessly on a vertical plane, as if a puppet's strings were being pulled upward.
He walked toward the counter. He reached for that old, oak-veneered pantry beside the refrigerator.
At that moment, the thin glass wall in Elara's mind shattered.
The kitchen's 180-centimeter shelf had always been a unit of measurement for Elara. When they first rented this house, Mark had to rise onto his tiptoes to reach the top of that shelf. Mark was one meter seventy-six centimeters. This was an immutable biological fact. It was the data recorded in his passport, his driver's license, and Elara's memory.
But now, Mark stood right in front of that shelf, and the top of his head was aligned exactly with that wooden line.
Not a centimeter below, not a centimeter above.
Elara narrowed her eyes. It had to be a trick of the light. Or perhaps Mark was wearing thick-soled slippers. She shifted her gaze under the table. Mark was barefoot. His heels were flat on the floor.
This impossible physical change left a bitter taste in Elara's throat. Conservation of mass. Something had gone wrong. This "thing" before her had made a mistake while copying Mark's form. It had confused the data for an average male height with the specific Mark data.
"Mark," Elara said, struggling to keep her voice from trembling.
Mark stopped as he took the glass from the cupboard. His back was turned. The hair on the nape of his neck was as orderly as if he had just been shaven.
"Yes, honey?"
"Last year... you know, when you sprained your ankle on that camping trip," Elara said, while calculating how quickly she could reach the pocketknife inside her bag sitting under her chair. "Which foot was it?"
Mark turned to her slowly. The glass in his hand was empty, but his fingers gripped it tightly enough to shatter the glass.
"My left foot," Mark said, without hesitation.
It was the right answer. But Elara didn't relax. Because as Mark spoke, another scent began to rise from beneath that heavy smell of rosemary in the kitchen. Hot sugar fresh from the oven. Burnt vanilla. And strawberries on the verge of rot.
This wasn't the scent of a human. This was the smell of that broken ice cream truck, the *Calliope* music she used to hear in parks during her childhood.
Mark didn't return to the table. He continued to stand there with his perfect 180-centimeter height. His ribcage was rising and falling, but the rhythm wasn't synchronized with the ticking of the clock in the room. It was too slow. He inhaled for three times the duration it should take a human to fill their lungs, then waited without exhaling at all.
"Why do you ask, Elara?" Mark said. He tilted his head slightly to the right.
This movement was also wrong. The neck muscles didn't tense. The head fell to the side as smoothly as if it were on a ball joint, at nearly a ninety-degree angle. A flexibility that human anatomy would not permit.
Elara's heart was hammering against her ribcage. Adrenaline had triggered that strange resistance to poison in her blood, sharpening her mind like a razor. There was fear, yes, but anger was more dominant. This thing was in her home. This thing was wearing her husband's face.
"Because," Elara said, slowly sliding her hand under the table toward her bag. "You didn't sprain your ankle on that trip, Mark. You were stung by a bee."
The silence in the kitchen was broken by the crackling ice cream music outside. The melody seemed to come from inside the walls of the house.
That photo-smile on Mark's face froze. He wasn't blinking. He hadn't blinked even once for minutes. His eyeballs should have been dry, yet they still had a wet, gelatinous sheen.
"Memory is deceptive," Mark said. His voice no longer belonged to Mark. It had taken on a tone that came from deep, very deep, resembling the whispers of thousands of drowned children. "Just like your eyes."
A drop of sweat trickling from his forehead slid down his cheek. Elara noticed with horror that the drop was not transparent.
The drop was pink. A thick, syrupy pink.
Mark's skin had melted slightly where the drop had passed, revealing the wax-like texture beneath.
Elara bolted upright, knocking over her chair. The pocketknife was in her hand now. The coldness of the metal burned her palm.
"You aren't him," Elara whispered.
The Entity took a step forward within that perfect, wrong 180-centimeter body. From its bare feet pressing on the floor, a sticky, sugary trail emerged on the parquet.
"I am better," said the Entity. When it opened its mouth, there was no tongue behind its teeth; only a swirling pink vortex. "I never leave. I never grow old. And I... am very hungry."