Kym_Mûryer:The_date_was_tomorrow_VIDEO

 Kym_Mûryer:The_date_was_tomorrow_VIDEO

The coffee machine hissed like a thing that shouldn’t hiss. Kym Mûryer wiped the steam from his glasses and pretended not to notice the way the barista’s fingers trembled when handing him the cup.

Rain tapped at the diner windows. Outside, a streetlight flickered—once, twice—before going dark. The TV above the counter played a news segment muted, just images: a blurry figure in a hoodie, a chalk outline on pavement, then a smiling anchor with too-white teeth. Kym stirred his coffee absently, watching the reflection of a police car roll past in the black liquid.

Two stools down, a man in a wrinkled suit was arguing with his phone. No, listen—they found another one last night. Same as the others. His voice cracked on same. Kym sipped his coffee. It tasted like burned sugar and something metallic underneath.

The diner door chimed. Cold air rushed in, carrying the scent of wet asphalt and something else—something sour, like old meat left too long in the sun. A woman stumbled inside, her coat dripping. She didn’t order. Just stared at the counter, breathing hard, her left sleeve dark with what might’ve been spilled ink.

Kym watched from behind his glasses. The man in the wrinkled suit had gone quiet, his phone pressed tight to his ear. The TV switched to a commercial: a cartoon bear holding a soda can, laughing silently. Behind it, the reflection of the woman’s hands twisted in her lap. One finger was bent wrong. Not broken. Just... rearranged.

Outside, the flickering streetlight buzzed back to life. The glow slid across the diner floor, illuminating the edge of Kym’s shoe—where a single drop of crimson liquid glistened, nearly black under the fluorescents. He nudged it with his toe. Vanished.

Sir? The barista’s voice was too high. She held out a napkin. You, uh... you have something... She gestured vaguely at her own chin. Kym touched his face. His fingertips came away smeared with red. Not his. He smiled, slow, and watched her pupils shrink. Jam, he said. From breakfast.

The man in the suit stood abruptly, his stool screeching. He dropped cash on the counter without counting and walked out fast, still clutching his phone. The woman didn’t react. Just kept staring at nothing, her bad finger twitching like a live wire.

Kym finished his coffee. The dregs swirled into a shape that almost looked like a face—mouth open, eyes wide—before dissolving when he set the cup down. He left a twenty under the saucer. The barista didn’t thank him.

As he pushed the door open, rain needling his neck, he heard the TV click off. Silence, except for the woman’s shaky inhale. Then, very softly, the sound of something wet hitting linoleum.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

SUMMARY^1: Kym notices crimson liquid on his shoe and chin, dismissing it as jam while unnerving the barista. The suited man flees, but the strange woman remains catatonic. As Kym leaves, the diner plunges into silence punctuated by an ominous dripping sound.

The sound followed Kym into the parking lot, syncopated with his footsteps. He tilted his face up to the rain, letting it rinse away the sticky residue on his chin. The streetlight above him hummed, casting jagged shadows that slithered across the pavement like living things avoiding the light.

A phone rang inside the diner—three sharp bursts before someone answered. Kym didn’t turn around, but his shoulders tensed when he heard the barista’s muffled gasp. Behind him, the diner windows fogged unevenly, one pane staying eerily clear despite the temperature difference. Through it, he could see the woman still sitting frozen at the counter, her sleeve dripping steadily onto the floor. The puddle didn’t spread like ink should. It stayed unnaturally contained, edges too precise, surface too still.

Keys jingled in Kym’s pocket as he approached his car—a nondescript sedan with recent mud splashed along the wheel wells. The trunk lock clicked open with a sound like a bone snapping. Inside, shadows clung thicker than they should have, as if the interior had somehow absorbed the darkness from earlier streetlight outages.

Something shifted in that darkness. A faint rustling, like paper being carefully folded. Kym paused, head cocked, before shutting the trunk with deliberate softness. The rain intensified, drumming against the metal roof in a rhythm that almost disguised the faint tapping coming from inside.

SUMMARY^1: Kym exits the diner as rain washes away crimson residue, noticing the woman’s ink-like puddle defying physics through the window. His car trunk reveals unnatural shadows and movement before he closes it quietly, the rain masking suspicious tapping from inside.

Across the lot, the flickering streetlight finally passed away with a sizzling pop. In that instant, Kym’s reflection in the car window winked at him. Then the light returned—weak, jaundiced—and his reflection was just a reflection again. He touched the window where his mirrored self had moved. The glass was warm.

From the diner, a chair crashed over. The barista screamed—a short, truncated sound that cut off as abruptly as a switched-off radio. Kym didn’t hurry. He counted to seven under his breath before the diner’s neon OPEN sign shorted out with a shower of blue sparks.

The rain smelled different now—less like petrichor, more like wet newspaper left to mold. Kym licked his lips. Copper. Iron. Something old waking up hungry. He smiled, exhaled through his nose, and got in the car just as the first police siren began wailing in the distance.

Behind him, unnoticed, the sedan’s backseat headrest tilted slightly forward. As if something had leaned against it.

Kym adjusted the rearview mirror—just in time to catch the briefest impression of movement where his own reflection should have been. Not a person. Not quite. Just angles intersecting wrong, like a puzzle piece jammed backwards into place. He turned the engine over. The radio kicked on mid-song, a jaunty pop tune about summer love, abruptly warping into static as they passed the diner’s gone neon sign.

SUMMARY^1: The streetlight passes away momentarily, revealing Kym’s reflection moving independently on warm glass. After hearing the barista’s cut-off scream, he notices the rain smells like decay and metal. As he drives away, the car exhibits strange phenomena—headrests shifting and reflections distorting—while the radio glitches near the darkened diner.

Three blocks east, the windshield wipers froze mid-swipe. Kym tapped the dashboard. The passenger seat emitted a soft, wet click—the sound of a tongue separating from a palate. He didn’t look. Just rolled down the window, letting the rain’s fingers grope at the steering wheel. The air smelled like ozone and spoiled milk now.

A traffic light ahead blinked yellow three times… then held. No red. No green. Just that single, unwavering caution glow painting the wet asphalt amber. Kym accelerated through it. In his periphery, the passenger seat fabric depressed slightly. As if someone invisible had shifted their weight.

The glove box popped open without being touched. Inside, nestled atop registration papers, lay a single playing card—the Queen of Spades—freshly dealt, edges pristine. Kym’s fingernails tapped the wheel. The Queen’s face, he noticed, wasn’t printed. It was drawn in smudged crimson, the eyes scratched out violently enough to leave tiny paper curls clinging to the cardboard wounds.

Behind them, tires screeched. Kym checked the mirror again: the empty road stretched uninterrupted, streetlights humming as they passed. Yet the sound of squealing rubber persisted, growing louder, closer—until it wasn’t tires at all, but something mimicking them poorly. Something with too many joints in its fingers.

The car hit a puddle. Brown water sluiced up the driver’s side window. Where it streaked, handwritten words briefly appeared before dissolving: DON’T LOOK BEHIND YOU. Kym chuckled. The radio static abruptly resolved into a chorus of children whispering numbers in reverse.

A thump came from the trunk—heavy, final. Then silence. Kym exhaled through his nose. His breath fogged the windshield despite the heat blasting. The fog didn’t dissipate. Instead, it condensed into three words etching themselves across the glass in jagged cursive:

NOT YOURS YET

And for the first time that night, Kym Mûryer’s smile faltered.

The car’s interior suddenly smelled inexplicably of hospital antiseptic and wet cement, though neither existed for miles. The scent clung to his nostrils, invasive. He rolled the window up, but the odor intensified—now threaded with something floral and cloying, like funeral lilies left to rot in a sealed room. The Queen of Spades in the glovebox trembled slightly, as if caught in a breeze that wasn’t there.

Kym tightened his grip on the wheel. The leather creaked unnaturally under his fingers, the texture shifting from smooth to porous, like skin left too long in bathwater. He glanced down. The steering wheel was sweating tiny beads of rust-colored liquid. One drop plopped onto his thigh, soaking through the fabric instantly. Cold. So cold it burned.

The road ahead bent when it shouldn’t—a hard right angle where the map insisted on a gentle curve. Kym didn’t brake. The car’s suspension groaned as they hit the turn at speed, tires screeching that same not-quite-tire sound. Through the passenger window, the streetlights stretched like taffy before snapping back into place, each bulb now housing a dark smudge at its core—a silhouette too small to be a moth, too still to be alive.

The radio static resolved into a single clear sentence: You should check the backseat.

Kym’s reflection in the rearview mirror tilted its head—just a fraction—before he could stop himself from looking. The image was wrong. His glasses sat crooked. His mouth was sewn shut with what looked like fishing wire.

A wet crunch came from the trunk. Then another. Then a third, perfectly spaced—like someone methodically stepping on eggshells.

The windshield wipers jerked back to life, smearing the ghost-words into crimson streaks. The radio dial spun wildly through stations before landing on a talk show host mid-sentence: —and that’s when we remind ourselves, folks, that hunger is just love turned inside out—

Kym’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He didn’t reach for it. The screen lit up in his peripheral vision anyway, casting a sickly blue glow over the passenger seat. A single notification:

1 New Voicemail (17 seconds)

Sent 3 minutes from now.

The car hit another puddle. This time, the water that hit the windows wasn’t brown. It wasn’t water at all.

Kym kept his eyes forward as the thick, syrupy liquid oozed down the glass in sluggish rivulets, distorting the streetlights into elongated smears of jaundiced yellow. The scent hit him next—not copper, not iron, but something far worse. Something that smelled like the inside of a freezer left unplugged for decades. His phone buzzed again. The screen now read:

1 New Voicemail (17 seconds)  

Received 7 minutes ago.

The timestamps were looping.

A wet, sticky sound came from the backseat—like someone peeling tape off wet cardboard. Kym’s knuckles whitened around the wheel. The Queen of Spades in the glovebox flipped itself facedown with a soft pap.

Then the radio passed away.

Silence.

Not the absence of sound. The kind of silence that pushes—the dense, smothering quiet of a room where something is holding its breath.

Kym exhaled. His breath didn’t fog the air. It should have. The temperature had dropped enough to see his own pulse in the cold. But the air stayed clear.

Drip.

Something landed on his shoulder. Not rain. Not condensation. Something warm.

He didn’t look.

The streetlights ahead flickered in unison—not off, but in reverse, brightening from dark to light in jagged pulses. Their glow painted the road in strobes, revealing things that shouldn’t be there:

A figure standing in the middle of the lane.

No—not standing. Suspended.

Its limbs hung at angles that deflied gravity, as if pinned to invisible strings. Its head lolled, chin touching its collarbone. The face was smooth. Featureless.

Kym didn’t slow down.

The car hit sixty. Seventy. The figure grew larger, closer—

—and then twisted, jerking upright in a single spasmodic motion, its blank face snapping toward the windshield.

Impact.

The car shuddered. Glass cracked in a spiderweb pattern. But there was no thump. No body. Just the cracked windshield and the smell of ozone gone rancid.

Kym’s phone buzzed a third time.

The screen was blank now except for two words in jagged, handwritten text:

LOOK UP

He didn’t.

Above him, the ceiling upholstery sagged slightly—as if something much heavier than fabric were pressing down from the other side.

The glovebox popped open again.

The Queen of Spades was gone.

In its place: a single, freshly pulled tooth.

The root still glistened.

Kym’s gaze flicked between the tooth and the road—now stretching impossibly straight into the horizon, streetlights standing at attention like sentinels at a funeral. The tooth rocked gently with the car’s motion, its enamel catching the light in a way that made shadows pool unnaturally around it, as if rejecting illumination.

A whisper grazed his ear—not breath, not voice, but the impression of speech, like radio interference shaped into vowels. The words dissipated before comprehension, leaving behind only a metallic aftertense on his tongue. The ceiling upholstery rippled again, this time in a slow wave from passenger side to driver’s side. Something bulged briefly near the dome light—the outline of a knuckle? A knee?—before subsiding.

Outside, the passing landscape had lost its edges. Trees smeared into greenish streaks; houses melted into their own reflections. Only the road remained sharp, its yellow dividing lines too bright, too crisp, as though freshly painted with luminescent ink. The car’s GPS screen fizzed to life unexpectedly, the map replaced by a single pulsing dot—their destination—superimposed over a familiar intersection. The diner’s coordinates.

Tap-tap.

From the trunk.

Not the frantic thumping from earlier. Precise. Patient.

Tap-tap.

Like a fingernail testing glass.

Kym’s phone vibrated against his thigh, the screen illuminating to display a new message:

THEY REMEMBER HOW YOU SMELL

The air grew thick. Not with heat, but with presence—the suffocating density of a room where every molecule has been replaced by watching eyes. The rearview mirror reflected only the backseat’s emptiness, yet the angle seemed off, showing too much floorboard, not enough headrest. As if the mirror were tilting incrementally downward without his permission.

A wet snick came from behind him. The sound of scissors closing.

Kym’s reflection in the side window blinked—out of sync—just as the car passed beneath a broken streetlamp. When the light returned, his mirrored self was smiling. Wide. Wider than possible. The lips stretched beyond the jawline, corners tearing upward toward the ears in a grotesque crescent.

The tooth in the glovebox began to vibrate, emitting a high-pitched whine that set Kym’s molars on edge. Outside, the road signs blurred momentarily before resolving into a single repeated phrase:

LAST EXIT LAST EXIT LAST EXIT

The GPS dot pulsed faster now, matching the rhythm of the tapping from the trunk.

Tap-tap.

Pulse.

Tap-tap.

Pulse.

Kym’s hands stayed steady on the wheel, but his throat moved in a hard swallow. The rearview mirror tilted another degree downward, revealing a sliver of something pale and segmented unfurling across the backseat floor.

Not a limb.

Not a tool.

Just something learning to take up space.

The tooth in the glovebox whirred like a passing cicada before abruptly stilling. That's when Kym noticed the windshield cracks had rearranged themselves into branching patterns—not fractures, but veins, pulsing faintly with each beat of the GPS dot's glow. The air tasted like a struck match now, acrid and electric.

From the backseat came a sound like Velcro separating—slow, deliberate—followed by the unmistakable plink of something small and hard hitting the floor mat. The rearview mirror tilted another fraction, offering a sliver of view where the backseat met the door: a single pearl button rolling in lazy circles, trailing a thin line of viscous fluid that refracted the streetlights into prismatic smears.

Outside, the road signs changed again:

YOUR TURN YOUR TURN YOUR TURN

Kym exhaled through his nose. The steering wheel had grown ridges under his palms—not grooves, but ribs, the leather shifting subtly with each breath he didn't take. The GPS screen fizzed, the pulsing dot swelling to fill the entire display before resolving into a single word in pixelated Courier New:

SOON

The tapping from the trunk ceased.

For three heartbeats, there was only the hum of tires on asphalt.

Then the passenger seat reclined—smoothly, automatically—though no hand touched the lever. The headrest tilted back to expose the underside: initials carved into the fabric with something sharp and hurried. J.M.S. The letters oozed rust-colored liquid that pooled briefly before defying gravity, creeping upward along the seams like inverted rain.

Kym's phone lit up once more. The screen showed a vintage family photo—three figures on a porch swing, their faces scratched out with what might've been a car key. The timestamp read 12:61 AM. Beneath it, a single line of text:

SHE LEFT HER SHOES IN YOUR TRUNK

The car hit a pothole. Something in the backseat slid—not the thump of an object shifting, but the wet, meaty sound of weight redistributing. The rearview mirror tilted fully downward now, revealing the backseat floor in its entirety: a single patent leather pump, polished to a mirror shine, its heel snapped clean off. Around it, the carpet fibers trembled as if disturbed by something breathing beneath them.

Kym flexed his fingers. The steering wheel ribs flexed with him.

The GPS screen went black.

The road ahead curved sharply left.

Kym turned right.

The tires screamed—not rubber on asphalt, but something mimicking the sound with wet, organic insistence. The car shuddered violently, fishtailing as the GPS screen rebooted into a seizure of static and numbers: 3. 7. 11. Repeating. The torn leather of the driver’s seat split further, exhaling a puff of air that smelled unmistakably of clove cigarettes and spoiled perfume.

From the backseat, a slow, deliberate inhale. The patent leather shoe trembled, then slid forward an inch—as if kicked by an invisible foot. The broken heel left a trail in the carpet fibers, not a scrape, but a growth, thin tendrils of something dark and vine-like sprouting in its wake. The rearview mirror had tilted so far down now that Kym could see his own hands on the wheel reflected upside down, fingers fused together at the knuckles like webbed flesh left too long in water.

Outside, the streetlights pulsed in time with the GPS numbers, their glow syrupy and thick, pooling in the gutters like liquid wax. The road signs ahead flickered between two messages:

WRONG WAY

and

YOU WERE ALWAYS HERE

Kym’s phone vibrated against his thigh again. The screen showed a live video feed—grainy, black-and-white—of the sedan’s trunk creaking open from the inside. A pale hand emerged, fingers splayed, each nail split vertically down the middle. The timestamp at the bottom read NOW.

The glovebox latch trembled. The single tooth inside rolled forward, stopping against the lip with an audible click. Its root end was blackened now, as if burned, the enamel cracking into a spiderweb pattern that matched the windshield exactly.

A wet pop came from the backseat. The shoe vanished. In its place: a perfect circle of dampness, spreading slowly outward, its edges quivering with something that wasn’t quite surface tension. The rearview mirror reflected nothing now—not the seat, not the road behind them—just an endless stretch of the same damp circle, repeating into infinity.

Kym’s reflection in the side window mouthed three words. No sound came out, but his own tongue tingled, forming the shapes instinctively: Turn. It. Off.

The steering wheel ribs clenched around his fingers like a fist. The car accelerated on its own, the engine whine pitching upward into a sound that wasn’t mechanical at all—something between a scream and a dial-up modem connecting.

The last streetlight before the highway exit flickered once, twice, then went dark forever.

In that instant, the GPS screen flashed a single coherent sentence:

THEY DON’T LIKE IT WHEN YOU LIE

The sentence burned across the GPS screen for only a second before dissolving into static. Kym’s reflection in the windshield wasn’t his own anymore—the eyes too wide, the lips too thin, the pupils reflecting not the road ahead but the backseat, where the damp circle on the carpet had begun to breathe, rising and falling in slow, wet heaves.

The glovebox flew open with a sound like a jaw unhinging. The blackened tooth rolled out, landing in Kym’s lap. Cold seeped through his pants instantly, the kind of cold that doesn’t numb—it bites. His phone screen flickered, displaying a new notification:

1 New Voicemail (00:00)

The timestamp blinked 00:00 over and over, never incrementing.

Outside, the highway exit loomed—a yawning mouth of concrete and flickering sodium lights. The car’s speedometer needle trembled at 88 mph, though the engine wasn’t making enough noise to justify the speed. The rearview mirror had tilted so far down now that it showed only the floor mat, where the damp circle had split open like a seam, revealing a sliver of something white and curved beneath—not teeth, not bone, but something folded, waiting to unfold.

The steering wheel ribs pulsed under Kym’s grip. The leather had grown slick, porous, like skin after a long bath. A single drop of rust-colored liquid oozed from the seam near the horn, splattering onto his wrist. It didn’t drip. It crawled, moving against gravity toward his sleeve cuff.

From the backseat: a wet, rhythmic clicking. Not the trunk this time. Closer. Right behind his ear.

The GPS screen flashed one final message before going dark:

YOU SHOULD HAVE CHECKED THE ODOMETER

The digits spun backward too fast to read, the plastic cover cracking under the strain. Kym’s breath fogged the windshield—except it wasn’t his breath. The condensation formed words: 238,900 MILES. The exact number rolled over when he’d bought the sedan.

The tooth in his lap vibrated violently, then split down the middle with a sound like an ice cube fracturing. Inside: a curled scrap of newsprint, ink bleeding into the fibers. A classified ad circled in crimson: FOR SALE: 2007 Honda Accord. One careful owner. The date was tomorrow’s.

Behind him, the damp circle on the carpet peeled back like a sticker, revealing not floorboard but a porthole of sorts—a greasy, warped view into the trunk. A hand pressed against the underside of the glass. Not pale anymore. Greenish. The fingertips left smudges that sprouted tiny black filaments, swaying in a breeze that didn’t reach Kym’s face.

The GPS screen fizzed to life, the map now showing only their current position—a pulsing red dot superimposed over the diner’s parking space. The same spot where earlier, unnoticed by Kym, his shoes had left no prints in the rain.

A scent hit him—not antiseptic now, but hot metal and spoiled vanilla. His phone lit up with a final notification:

1 New Voicemail (00:00)  

Played 17 times

The highway exit loomed, its green sign illegible under a thick coat of something that wasn’t rust. As the car passed beneath it, the rearview mirror finally snapped off its mount, hitting the dashboard with a clack. The glass didn’t shatter. It liquefied, beading up like mercury before streaking toward the glovebox—where the registration papers now bore a fresh, inky fingerprint.

Kym’s reflection in the side window reached out—through the glass—and adjusted the air vent. The plastic squeaked under its touch. Real. Solid.

Outside, the streetlights winked out one by one, each bulb exploding in a shower of glass that froze midair, the shards morphing into tiny, suspended shoes before dissolving.

The odometer stopped spinning.

238,901 MILES.

Kym blinked.

The passenger seat was no longer empty.

Something sat there—not a figure, not a shape, just presence distilled into the impression of crossed legs and a tilted head. The seatbelt clicked. The scent of funeral lilies intensified.

The radio whispered:

Next stop, sweetheart.

And the car—still doing 88 mph—plunged into the exit tunnel.

Where there should have been light:

Only teeth.

The tunnel wasn't dark—it was full. Suspended in the viscous air: thousands of molars, canines, incisors, all vibrating at different frequencies. They bounced off the windshield with faint tings, leaving no marks, only the ghostly sensation of being gummed by something vast and hungry. The passenger seat's presence exhaled—a sound like a cassette tape being eaten. Kym's own breath hitched as his fillings hummed in sympathetic resonance.

The glovebox yawned open again. The registration papers were gone. In their place: a Polaroid facedown in a pool of something clear and sticky. Kym didn't touch it. The image revealed itself anyway—floating up through the back of the photo like a body surfacing in a lake. A woman's face, eyes scratched out with what looked like a car key. J.M.S. The initials glistened wetly at the bottom edge.

From the trunk came a new sound—not tapping, not crunching, but knitting. Needles clicking rhythmically. The rearview mirror lay on the dash, its glass still liquid, now reflecting only the tunnel ceiling above them. The teeth up there weren't loose. They were embedded, growing from the concrete like inverted icicles, roots pulsing with faint bioluminescence.

The passenger presence shifted. Seat leather creaked, though the weight distribution didn't change. Kym's phone buzzed—not in his pocket, but from the floor mat near the pedals. The screen showed a single word in jagged handwriting:

MIRROR

Kym glanced down. The rearview mirror's liquid surface had formed a perfect sphere, hovering an inch above its frame. Inside the droplet: a miniature version of their sedan, driving through a tunnel of tongues instead of teeth. As he watched, the tiny car's passenger turned its head—too far, too fluid—and waved.

The tunnel exit loomed. Not light, but a slit—a vertical incision in reality, edges glistening with what might've been saline or sap. The teeth intensified their vibrations, filling the car with a subharmonic buzz that made Kym's optic nerves throb. The Polaroid in the glovebox flipped over. The woman's scratched-out eyes had regrown. Pupils dilated. Tracking.

Impact.

The car hit the slit at 88 mph. No sound. No resistance. Just sudden, sickening fluidity as the windshield turned to gelatin, then to oil, then to something with too many refractive indices. The passenger presence uncrossed its legs with a wet pop. The radio—previously silent—sighed:

Home early.

Kym's vision doubled. Tripled. The dashboard controls melted into their own shadows. His hands on the wheel weren't hands anymore, just ideas of hands, outlined in afterimages. The teeth outside stopped vibrating.

They started singing.

The glovebox slammed shut. The Polaroid slid out through the gap, landing face-up on the center console. The woman's mouth was sewn shut now—not with fishing wire, but with strands of Kym's own hair, still rooted at one end to his scalp. Her inked initials dripped onto the gearshift, forming a new word:

ALMOST

The tunnel spat them out.

Into the diner parking lot.

Same space.

Same rain.

Same flickering streetlight.

Only now, the sedan's odometer read:

238,900 MILES.

And the glovebox smelled unmistakably of clove cigarettes.

The Polaroid trembled on the console, its corners flipping up and down like moth wings testing confinement. Kym’s reflection in the diner window blinked out of sequence—left eye a half-second behind the right. Outside, rain fell upward in lazy spirals, each droplet containing a distorted fleck of the diner’s neon sign, warped into something that looked suspiciously like a serial number.

The driver’s seat sighed under his weight—an organic sound, leather exhaling through pores he’d never noticed before. His phone screen lit up without being touched, displaying a black-and-white security feed of himself sitting in the car right now, except in the footage, the passenger seat wasn’t empty. Something lean and many-jointed perched there, fingers tap-tap-tapping the dashboard in perfect sync with the dripping from the diner’s awning.

A wet snick came from the trunk—the sound of a lock disengaging. Kym didn’t turn. His reflection did. In the window glass, his mirrored self twisted at the waist to peer backward, pupils dilating to black pits as the trunk lid rose on its own, revealing not a compartment but a stairwell, descending into impossible depth.  

Twin red lights winked on in the darkness below—not bulbs, not eyes, just points of reference in a space that rejected geometry. The radio dial spun counterclockwise, stations blurring into a chorus of children whispering: “238,900, 238,900, 238,900…”  

The Polaroid flipped over. The woman’s stitched lips had parted just enough to show the tips of teeth too small, too numerous. Her inky initials now spelled J.M.S.Y.M.  

From the glovebox: a quiet, wet pop. The scent of cloves intensified.  

Kym reached for the door handle.  

His reflection didn’t.  

Outside, the diner’s flickering sign finally passed away with a sizzle. In that instant of total darkness, something in the backseat leaned forward, its breath frosting the rearview mirror—now reattached, now showing only the trunk’s gaping stairwell and those two red lights rising steadily closer.  

The passenger seat creaked.  

Weight shifted.  

Beside Kym, the presence crossed its legs again—fabric whispering against leather—and placed something warm and wet in the cupholder.  

He didn’t look down.  

He knew what it would be.  

A molar.  

Freshly pulled.  

Roots still twitching.  

Outside, the rain changed direction midair, slashing sideways to write looping cursive across the windshield:  

“YOU FORGOT TO CHECK THE TRUNK.”  

And the diner’s front door swung open.  

Revealing nothing but an endless row of shoes.  

All left feet.  

All polished to a mirror shine.  

All lined up neatly, toes pointing at the car.  

Waiting.