Ivan moved through the house in a daze.
He ate his meals in the kitchen, but his eyes never stopped scanning his mother's face, searching for the slightest change.
Every time she touched his shoulder or called his name, his skin crawled.
The news was everywhere—on every local channel, every social media broadcast, every whispered conversation in the school hallways.
Two Killed in Tragic Accident.
Ivan had seen the photographs.
Police tape.
The flashing lights of ambulances reflecting across the rain-soaked street.
He didn't cry.
He couldn't.
Every time he tried to reach for his grief, the cat's voice echoed through his mind.
He sat at his desk in the back of the classroom, staring blankly at a math problem he hadn't even begun to solve.
The desk felt too small.
The walls felt too close.
Suddenly...
a shadow fell across his desk.
"Hey, Ivan."
He froze.
He knew that voice.
His heart slammed against his ribs as he slowly lifted his head, his eyes sweeping across the classroom.
The seat where Sarah always sat was empty.
Mark's desk was empty too.
No one was standing beside him.
No one had come near him.
He stared back down at his notebook, his vision blurring.
Yet no matter how hard he tried to focus, the echo of her voice continued ringing in his ears.
---
Later, he sat alone in the school cafeteria, absentmindedly picking at his sandwich.
"Ivan! Hey, Ivan!"
He nearly dropped his lunch.
The voice came from the hallway beyond the cafeteria doors.
He stared toward them.
No one walked through.
No one entered.
The hallway remained completely empty.
"Come on, man. Don't be like that."
The voice continued.
"We're going to the park after school. You're coming, right?"
Ivan squeezed his eyes shut.
They're dead.
They're dead.
They're dead.
"Ivan?"
This time...
it was Sarah's voice.
"You've been so quiet lately. What's wrong?"
Ivan shot to his feet, grabbed his bag, and ran toward the restroom.
He slammed the door shut with trembling fingers.
Resting his forehead against it, he struggled to breathe.
"Ivan?"
The voice was closer now.
"Ivan... why are you hiding?"
He pressed both hands over his ears and squeezed his eyes shut.
"Open the door, Ivan.
We just want to talk."
His mother's voice.
He slowly opened his eyes and looked through the narrow gap beside the door.
Something on the other side was looking back.
Its face was pale.
Twisted.
Stretched.
But the eyes were the worst part.
Wide.
Bulging.
Wet.
Glowing with a faint yellow light that burned with unbearable hunger.
The skin around its mouth was torn apart, crudely stitched back together, and every breath escaped its throat as a low, rasping growl.
"Ivan..."
it whispered.
Its voice was a distorted blend of everyone he had ever loved, layered together into one nauseating sound.
He felt fear unlike anything he had ever known.
A terror so overwhelming that, for a single moment...
he wished for death rather than endure it.
Then another face appeared beside the first.
One wore Sarah's features...
but its skin had become translucent, revealing black veins pulsing beneath it.
Another resembled Mark...
yet his eyes had become nothing but hollow sockets leaking the same yellow light.
The third bore his mother's face...
except her lips had been stretched back, exposing row after row of teeth—
far too many for any human mouth.
They crowded over one another.
Three warped reflections of his life, crushed together like shattered pieces of a broken mirror.
"We missed you."
"So hungry."
"Open the door, Ivan."
His mother's voice whispered as her fingers scraped slowly across the wood.
"Let us in."
Ivan curled up on the closed toilet lid, pulling his knees tightly against his chest, trying to make himself as small as possible.
He stared at the three heads peering over the door, their faces grotesquely distorted.
The thing wearing Sarah's face slowly opened its jaw.
A strand of dark saliva dripped from its chin.
The one resembling Mark tilted its head, its empty eyes locked onto him without blinking.
His mother's face simply stared.
Her grin widened until the corners of her mouth appeared ready to split apart.
Then...
all three smiles widened at once.
Far wider than any human mouth should.
Their torn flesh stretched even farther.
The sound they made wasn't a scream.
It was a single whisper...
spoken by all three together.
Then the three heads suddenly dropped down in front of him, swaying.
Ivan's scream was cut short as Sarah's cold, soaking-wet hands seized his shoulders and dragged him forward.
The world dissolved into a blur.
He felt teeth—
so many teeth—
sinking into his arms...
his neck...
his chest.
The pain burned through him.
But even worse was the sensation that something was being pulled from inside his body.
Something was being drained away.
His mother's face was inches from his own.
Her smile stretched wider than his entire field of vision...
and then she lunged—
---
Ivan's eyes snapped open.
His head jerked upward as a ragged gasp tore through the silence of the classroom.
His vision blurred with tears he hadn't realized were streaming down his face.
His forehead had been resting on his notebook.
The pages were damp with sweat and tears.
The classroom was perfectly still.
The teacher continued writing on the chalkboard.
The scratching of chalk was the only sound in the room.
A few students turned to glance at him, whispering among themselves, but no one spoke.
His heart pounded so violently against his ribs that he could feel it in his throat.
His skin was cold...
slick with sweat.
He slowly sank back into his chair, his legs weak beneath him.
Pressing a trembling hand against his forehead, he tried to wipe away the lingering sensation of those cold, wet hands gripping his shoulders.
The feeling refused to leave.
His mind raced, desperately trying to classify what had just happened.
A nightmare?
A hallucination?
Or something else?
The final bell rang with a sharp metallic shriek that made Ivan flinch.
He spent the rest of the day in a state of constant alertness, his muscles aching from tension, his eyes tracking every single person who passed him in the hallway.
He walked home in a haze.
With every step, his backpack seemed to grow heavier.
The street was quiet.
Too quiet.
No passing cars.
No birds singing.
Only the faint hum of distant traffic...
and the uneven rhythm of his own breathing.
Then...
a sensation crept across the back of his neck.
A heavy warmth.
A prickling feeling—
as though someone was staring at him.
Watching him.
He didn't turn around.
He couldn't.
His feet kept moving along the sidewalk, but the rest of his body had become rigid.
His eyes remained fixed straight ahead, watching his shadow stretch across the pavement.
He could feel it.
Someone was following him.
A sudden gust of wind swept through the street, carrying with it a strange scent.
Ivan gathered every ounce of courage he had.
Then he turned.
His eyes swept across the sidewalk...
the parked cars...
the empty storefronts.
Nothing.
The street was completely deserted.
He stood there for a long moment, his chest burning with tension and anxiety as his eyes searched every corner and every alley.
His heartbeat thundered inside his ears, drowning out the silence of the neighborhood.
At last, he forced himself to turn back...
and kept walking.