She wakes before the alarm.
Not suddenly. Not with a gasp. Just a slow return to consciousness, like something releasing its grip, reluctantly. The room is dim, washed in pale blue light, soft but thick, like water diluted with ash. The ceiling fan hums steadily above her. Beside her, Mark lies on his back, one arm draped over his chest. His breathing is slow, even, familiar.
Everything is where it should be. She lies still for a moment, listening. The distant bark of a dog. A car humming down the street. The faint hum of life outside her walls.
Safe.
She turns her head. Mark's face is soft in sleep. Untroubled. The man who laughs too loudly at his own jokes, misplaces his keys, kisses her forehead every morning.
He shifts.
Just a fraction. But something feels… off.
His lips part slightly, as if to speak, but no sound comes. His jaw seems… misaligned, a drawer sliding in a frame too small. She blinks—and it's gone. Normal again. She exhales, a quiet breath she hadn't realized she was holding, and swings her legs off the bed. The floor is cold.
The kitchen smells faintly of yesterday's cooking, stale oil clinging to the tiles. She moves on autopilot, switching on the kettle, opening cabinets, reaching for cups. The tile beneath her foot is colder than the rest, sticky in a way her mind can't place. The clock above the counter ticks. She glances at it and freezes.
The hands are no longer metal. Fingers. Thin, pale, jointed. They drag across the numbers, bending at knuckles in impossible directions. One finger presses against the glass, stretching toward her.
Her breath traps itself in her chest. She blinks hard. The hands are normal again. Just a clock. Tick. Tick.
She lets out a trembling breath, forcing herself to turn away.
The kitchen greets her with routine. The kettle. The cups. The faint smell of yesterday's food still clinging to the air. Her hands move without thought, guided by habit.
Outside, the world is waking.
Mrs. Dada sweeps her yard in steady strokes. Back and forth. Back and forth. The dry scrape of the broom against concrete carries through the open window.
It's grounding.
Reassuring.
She watches her for a moment, letting the rhythm settle her nerves.
The kettle clicks.
She pours the water.
The sweeping stops.
Not gradually.
Not like someone pausing.
It just… ends.
The silence feels wrong.
She looks up.
Mrs. Dada stands still, broom resting against the ground. Her back is turned.
For a moment, nothing happens.
Then her head begins to turn.
Slowly.
Smoothly.
Too smoothly.
It keeps going past where it should stop. Past the natural limit. Her chin drifts over her shoulder… further… further…
Until her face is looking directly into the kitchen—
while her body remains facing away.
The angle is impossible.
Their eyes meet.
Mrs. Dada smiles.
A small smile at first.
Then wider.
Then wider still, until it stretches across her face in a way that pulls the skin too tight, too thin.
The kettle slips from her hand and strikes the sink with a sharp crack.
The sound echoes.
Behind her, the television comes alive.
Static.
Loud. Violent. Filling the house.
She turns.
Her husband is sitting in the living room.
Mark sits on the couch. She didn't hear him get up.
The light from the static dancing across the screen paints his face uneven. Parts don't belong together—an eyebrow stretched, a jaw misaligned, a skin tone that shifts subtly.
"Honey?" she says.
No response.
"Honey," she repeats.
His head tilts—not toward her. Not exactly. Something else is listening.
A faint, slow smile spreads.
"You're up early," he says.
The words are correct. The timing is wrong.
She swallows. "So are you."
Silence.
Mark's fingers twitch. Once. Twice. She watches, unable to look away, as one hand curls inward… bends at angles that shouldn't exist. Skin stretches, snaps, shifts. Something slides beneath it, reshaping.
Her throat tightens.
"Honey… your hand—"
It snaps back. Normal.
Mark turns fully toward her. Smile gone. Expression blank.
"What about it?"
She stares. Nothing.
"I… nothing," she says, forcing a laugh. "I thought I saw—"
A sound cuts her off.
Outside, the sweeping has stopped. The silence presses in like water.
She turns toward the window.
Mrs. Dada stands still, broom hanging limp. Her head is slightly bowed. Slowly, she raises it. Her neck looks too long—not stretched, but subtly impossible, a fraction too many vertebrae. Her lips stretch into that same deliberate smile.
The broom slips from her hand, clattering. No reaction.
Mark's voice behind her: "You should sit down." Gentle. Pressing.
She doesn't turn. "Did you see that?"
"See what?"
Her throat tightens further.
Mrs. Dada steps closer. Wrongly. Each step out of sync, the rhythm of her limbs fractionally misaligned. Her wrapper stretches at unnatural points.
"Mark—" Elena whispers.
Mrs. Dada smiles again. The skin on her belly shifts and bubbles. A second face pushes through the soft flesh. Eyes first, then a mouth that opens after the words form.
"You should go back inside," it says. Wet. Layered. Wrong.
Elena staggers back.
The street is a tableau of wrongness. A man's head tilts too far. A woman's arm bends twice before settling, a child's face shifts without moving. They all stop.
At once.
Slowly, and deliberately they turn to her. Smiles peeling, stretching, practiced. The child steps forward. Its feet barely move. Another expression, pressed from beneath, surfaces in its features.
Then the chorus begins.
All of them, layered voices, slightly out of sync:
"Olise…"
Her maiden name. Spoken wrong, yet undeniably hers. "You should go back inside." They chorused. The words echo in her skull, overlapping, a chorus of insistence.
That's it, this was the straw that broke the camel's back for her. She bolts from the house her legs pump frantically, feet slapping the pavement. The street twists unnaturally, houses looming, doors gaping. Every shadow seem to have come alive. Mrs. Dada hobbles in her direction, limbs bending like cracked porcelain, the second face in her belly whispering in a voice that merges with her own: "You can't escape…"
A neighbor leans from a doorway, skin crawling as if alive, with eyes opening in impossible places, mouths forming along forearms and knees. The mailman falls forward, uniform splitting from his skin as black bile oozes and drips onto the sidewalk, steaming where it touches the ground.
With Elena's lungs burning, her chest heaving, and her mind shrieking. Every step she took forward is filled with pain. The street stretches, contracts, pulsing under her. Roots like veins shoot up from cracks in the concrete, causing her to trip. She scrapes her palms. Pain lances up her arms.
Bodies fall around her with shapes that no longer looks human. Fingers stretching to hands within hands. Faces peeling from torsos. Every scream she doesn't hear, every movement she doesn't see, presses down on her mind.
Mark is there, emerging from shadows. His chest split open, needle-teeth lining the cavity where ribs should be. Limbs folding in grotesque origami. Yet the face , his face still wears that creepily elongated smile, as he watched in a calm, monstrous manner.
He reaches for her and as he grabs her. She catches the smell of rot and iron. She trips again, scraping her face, tasting blood.
A scream tears from her throat, a sound she couldn't control, filled with terror and panic.
Elena bolts upright.
The ceiling fan hums. Pale morning grey light filters softly through the blinds. Sweat drips from her hairline. Her body shakes uncontrollably. She touches the mattress , its solid, real but the nightmare has followed her.
"Just a dream," she whispers.
Mark sits on the edge of the bed, halfway through buttoning his work shirt. His movements are too precise, too measured. She swallows hard, trying to convince herself.
"Rough night?" he asks.
She lets out a jagged laugh, nodding. "Just… a really bad dream." He stands. "I'll get the coffee started." The relief should have settled but it didn't ,something didn't feel right. Her eyes drift to the kitchen clock. For a split second, she sees it again: jointed pale fingers bending along the numbers, pressing against the glass. She blinks and it's normal again. Tick Tick ,the sound fades as she drifts off in her thoughts.
Mark stops at the doorway. Then he says it, in that same calm, pressing voice from the dream:
"You should have sat down." Before she could react, his body began to twist and warp. His chest split like paper, rows of needle-teeth snapping open. His spine elongates, his vertebrae popping, skin splitting and reweaving. His limbs fold and stretch in impossible angles, each joint snapping violently, tendons unraveling like rope. Muscle tissue ballooning and contracting in the wrong directions. His face stretched, and then split, multiple times appearing briefly and vanishing, then reforming. Eyes appearing where none should be. His tongue forked like a snake, dripping black molten like liquid.
Elena screams, her breath ragged, full of pure terror. Her fingers claw at the sheets, breaking her nails in the process. Her body shook as the air around her seems to press in.
The nightmare hasn't ended, it might just be the beginning
It's real.
And it's far from over.
END OF CHAPTER ONE