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.

The_reflection_smiled_VIDEO

 The static began at 3:47 AM. Not from the radio, or the TV—but from the walls.

Mrs. Alrez pressed her palm flat against the peeling wallpaper, expecting warmth, a hum, something explainable. Instead, her fingers came away damp. The liquid wasn’t water. It wasn’t anything she could name.

Downstairs, the VHS player whirred to life without power. The screen flickered, showing only a figure standing in the corner of a room that wasn’t hers. Its edges blurred, like a photograph left in the rain.

She reached for the phone. The dial tone dissolved into a sound like distant screaming, then cut off. The last thing she heard before the line went silent was her own voice, whispering back at her from the receiver.

The damp patch on the wallpaper spread. It curled at the edges like old parchment, revealing something beneath—not plaster, but a surface too smooth, too dark. She caught her reflection in it for half a second before it twisted, elongating her face into something unrecognizable. Her breath hitched. The reflection didn’t mimic the motion.

Downstairs, the VHS tape ejected itself with a click. The figure on the screen hadn’t moved, but its head tilted slightly—just enough to suggest it was now aware of her. The screen flickered again, this time revealing the same corner from a different angle. Mrs. Alrez’s favorite armchair sat there, empty. The cushions were indented, as though someone had just risen from it.

A draft snaked through the house despite the sealed windows. It carried a scent like ozone and wet earth, curling around her ankles before dissipating. The figure on the screen lifted one hand, palm out, fingers splayed. The gesture might have been a warning. Or an invitation. Mrs. Alrez realized, with a creeping certainty, that the figure wasn’t in the tape at all. It was standing just behind her.

She didn’t turn. The wallpaper’s dampness had spread to the ceiling, dark patches blooming like ink dropped in water. The liquid dripped onto the carpet in thick, deliberate globs. Each one landed with a sound like a whisper—muffled words in a language that slithered just beyond comprehension.

The VHS player whirred again. The screen flickered to black, then flashed an image of her own living room—empty, pristine, untouched. The timestamp in the corner read 3:47 AM. Today’s date. The figure was gone. But the indentation on the armchair remained, the fabric slowly rising back into shape as though something invisible had just stood up.

A cold pressure settled against Mrs. Alrez’s back. Not a touch, exactly—more like the space itself had thickened, had become aware. The phone rang once, a sharp, unnatural trill. When she lifted the receiver, the screaming had been replaced by a single sentence, repeated in her own voice, each word stretched thin:

Mr.’t look. Mr.’t look. Mr.’t—

The line cut off. The wallpaper split down the middle with a sound like tearing paper, revealing not the wall behind it, but a hallway—long, impossibly so, lined with doors that didn’t quite match her own. At the far end, something shifted in the dark. She knew, without seeing it, that it was the same figure from the tape. And it was walking toward her.

The VHS player ejected another tape she didn’t own. The label, written in her handwriting, read: PLAY ME.

Mrs. Alrez’s breath fogged the air despite the thermostat reading 72 degrees. The wallpaper’s tear didn’t bleed shadows—it swallowed them, the hallway beyond pulsing like a vein. The figure’s footsteps made no sound, but the doors along the hallway trembled in sequence, as though something heavy passed behind them.

Her reflection in the hallway’s warped mirror didn’t blink when she did. It smiled instead, lips parting to reveal nothing but static. A pressure built behind her eyes, liquid and insistent, like tears that refused to fall. The phone rang again—not from the kitchen, but from inside the hallway. The receiver lay on the floor near the third door, its cord severed cleanly.

The VHS screen flickered. Now it showed the hallway from above, the camera angled down as though suspended from the ceiling. Mrs. Alrez watched her own form—small, hunched—standing frozen at the threshold. The figure hadn’t moved closer. It had multiplied. Three identical silhouettes now stood at irregular intervals down the hall, their heads cocked at the same slight angle.

A whisper brushed her ear—not a voice, but the impression of one, like a tongue dragging over teeth before speech. The words evaporated before they formed. The ceiling’s dark patches dripped in reverse now, liquid retracting upward into the plaster, leaving no stain behind.

The last door at the hall’s end creaked open. Inside, the armchair from her living room sat centered in an otherwise empty room. The indentation in the cushion deepened, as though an invisible occupant had just settled into it. The VHS tape whirred, the screen cutting to a close-up of the chair. Something invisible pressed against the fabric, the creases spreading like fingers gripping tight.

Mrs. Alrez’s legs moved without her consent. One step into the hallway. Then another. The doors began to close—not slamming, but sealing, their edges fusing with the walls until only the path to the final room remained. The figure—figures—didn’t follow. They faded instead, dissolving into the hallway’s walls like sugar in liquid.

A new reflection appeared in the hallway mirror as she passed: not her, not the static-smile thing, but the faceless silhouette from the tape. It raised its palm again. This time, the gesture was unmistakable.

A greeting.

Not from behind her.

From inside her.

The realization hit Mrs. Alrez like a jolt of electricity—every hair on her arms lifting in unison as the silhouette's hand pressed against the mirror from the wrong side. Her own fingers twitched in response, muscles moving without her permission, knuckles brushing the glass. The surface didn't feel cold. It didn't feel like anything at all. Just absence.

The phone inside the hallway rang again, shrill and insistent, but the sound came from her throat this time—a wet, metallic vibration that made her molars ache. She tried to scream. The reflection mimicked her open mouth perfectly. No static this time. Just darkness pooling between its teeth like ink from a punctured cartridge.

The VHS player downstairs let out a high-pitched whine. On screen, the camera angle had shifted again—now showing the hallway from her own perspective, as though the tape was recording through her eyes. She watched her hand reach for the final doorframe, fingers elongating in the warped perspective, nails darkening as though dipped in liquid shadow.

Three things happened at once:

The armchair in the final room creaked, its cushion compressing further under unseen weight.

The hallway mirror cracked diagonally, bisecting the reflection’s grinning face—but no shards fell. The cracks deepened inward instead, fracturing the air itself like fissures in ice.

And the phone receiver on the floor twitched, its severed cord slithering toward her like a blind snake, leaving wet trails on the wooden floorboards.

Mrs. Alrez’s breath came in ragged gasps now, each exhale colder than the last, frosting the air in thick, swirling patterns that didn’t dissipate. They lingered instead, forming shapes—letters—words she couldn’t quite parse. The pressure behind her eyes intensified, liquid heat tracking down her cheeks. She lifted trembling fingers to her face.

Not tears.

The same nameless liquid from the walls, warm and thick, welling from her tear ducts in slow, syrupy drops. The VHS screen flickered, superimposing two images now—the empty armchair in the final room, and her own face, twisted in silent horror, the liquid streaming down her chin like black oil.

The reflection in the shattered mirror reached through the cracks.

Her body stepped forward to meet it.

The moment their hands connected—hers flesh, the reflection’s something else—the hallway inverted. Doors became ceilings, walls folded into floors, and the liquid streaming from her eyes floated upward in gelatinous orbs. The armchair in the final room was no longer empty. It held a silhouette so dense it warped the air around it, its edges vibrating like a heat mirage. The cushions sighed as it leaned forward, fabric groaning under unseen mass.

From the VHS player downstairs, her own voice crackled through the speakers—not screaming, but singing. A nursery rhyme she hadn’t heard since childhood, each note slightly off-key, the melody stretched like taffy. The sound didn’t travel through the air. It vibrated directly inside her skull, syncing with her pulse until her heartbeat became the drumbeat of the tune.

The reflection’s fingers merged with hers, not blending, but replacing—her skin pixelating at the contact point, dissolving into abstract shapes that rearranged into something smoother, darker. The pressure behind her eyes burst. Liquid flooded her vision, not blinding her, but changing what she saw: the hallway now stretched infinitely in all directions, each door a slightly different shade of her own front door, each knob turning in unison with a chorus of clicks.

The phone receiver coiled around her ankle, its cord studded with tiny, pulsing nodes that stuck to her skin like leeches. Static poured from the earpiece, forming words in puffs of freezing vapor: You left me waiting. The voice wasn’t hers. It wasn’t the reflection’s. It came from the armchair, from the silhouette now standing—no, unfolding—its limbs extending in impossible segments like a puzzle reassembling itself wrong.

The VHS tape glitched. On screen, her face fragmented into a mosaic of eyes—all hers, all weeping the same inky liquid, all blinking out of sync. The silhouette from the armchair stepped into the frame. Not through the door. Through the screen itself, its form bleeding into the hallway’s reality like watercolor on wet paper.

Mrs. Alrez tried to scream again. This time, the reflection complied. Its mouth unhinged, jaw dislocating with a wet pop, and the sound that tore out wasn’t human. It was the dial tone. The tearing wallpaper. The VHS whirr. All at once. All inside her.

The armchair was empty again.

But she wasn’t.

Mrs. Alrez stood in the chair’s indentation now, her limbs stiff, her joints clicking with movements that didn’t feel like hers. The liquid from her eyes had stopped falling upward—it clung to her skin instead, forming a second, glistening layer that reflected the hallway’s infinite doors in warped miniature. The silhouette from the screen stood beside her, its edges bleeding into her periphery like smoke.

The VHS player downstairs spat out the tape with a sound like grinding teeth. It landed in a pool of the same nameless liquid, the label now changed. Where it had read PLAY ME, it now bore a single word in jagged, hurried script: YOU. The screen flickered one last time, showing only the armchair—this time from inside the hallway’s final room, the camera positioned where the silhouette had stood. The cushion rose slowly, as though someone invisible had just sat down.

The reflection’s hand—her hand, but not—closed around her wrist. The contact sent a jolt through her nerves, not pain, but displacement, like a bone slipping out of joint and finding a new socket. Her fingers melted into the reflection’s, the pixels rearranging into a shape that was neither hers nor the silhouette’s, but something in between. The hallway’s doors began to vibrate, their surfaces rippling like disturbed water. Behind each one, something shifted in unison, a synchronized rustling that built to a crescendo of whispers.

The phone cord around her ankle tightened. The nodes pulsed faster, their rhythm matching the nursery rhyme still throbbing inside her skull. The words had degraded now, syllables stretching into nonsense, the melody collapsing into a drone. The silhouette tilted its head—her head?—toward the final door. It was open again. Inside, the armchair sat empty. Waiting.

Mrs. Alrez tried to speak. Her tongue brushed her teeth and came away coated in static. The reflection’s grin widened, its mouth a void where the liquid pooled and swirled, forming shapes—letters—another message. The same one from before, but inverted:

The whisper wasn't external. It vibrated behind Mrs. Alrez's sternum, resonating through ribs that felt suddenly hollow. The liquid coating her skin began migrating upward in thin, deliberate rivulets, tracing the contours of her collarbones before pooling in the hollow of her throat. It pulsed there—warm, alive—forming a crude pendant that reflected not her face, but the hallway's infinite regression of doors.

The VHS screen downstairs flickered to life again, displaying the nursery rhyme's lyrics in jagged script, except the words were wrong. Ring around the static, pockets full of fractures... The silhouette beside her lifted a hand—her hand?—and pressed palm-first against the nearest door. The wood groaned inward as if pressed against an unseen force, its grain splitting into fractal patterns that mirrored the cracks in the mirror. From the fissures seeped that same impossible liquid, but this time it carried whispers—hundreds of them, layered over each other like a chorus of drowned voices all repeating one phrase: She's rewriting the tape.

The armchair in the final room creaked again. Not from weight shifting, but from movement. The fabric itself was undulating, threads rearranging into new patterns that formed a crude face—wide eyes, an open mouth—before dissolving again. The phone cord around her ankle contracted sharply, the nodes embedding deeper, their pulsing synchronizing with the VHS player's whirr now emanating from inside her skull.

Mrs. Alrez realized the reflection wasn't mimicking her anymore. They were moving in reverse. When she inhaled, it exhaled black vapor. When she blinked, its eyelids slid open to reveal twin voids where her own irises swam in a sea of static. The liquid pendant at her throat grew heavier, its surface rippling to display a new image: the hallway's far end, where the original silhouette now stood facing away, its head tilted up at a grotesque angle as it studied something above the doorframe.

Something slithered through the walls—not a sound, but a presence, like a current through wires. The ceiling above the armchair darkened, plaster dissolving into that endless liquid, which now dripped upward in defiance of gravity, each droplet containing a flicker of movement—a hand? A face? The silhouettes in the hallway mirrors began stepping backward in perfect unison, retreating into the glass until only their outstretched palms remained pressed against the surface.

Then the first doorhandle turned.

Not the one to the final room with the sighing armchair. Not even the third door where the severed phone cord now thrashed like a passing eel. The one directly to Mrs. Alrez's left—the one that shouldn't have existed, with its brass knob tarnished green in a pattern that exactly matched her grandmother's old pantry door. It rotated with a sound like grinding teeth, the mechanism resonating up her bones until her fillings vibrated.

The liquid pendant at her throat inverted. Where it had reflected the hallway's endless doors, it now showed only the VHS screen downstairs—but the image wasn't static. It displayed her own trembling fingers reaching for the doorhandle in slow motion, the playback stuttering over one frame where her skin visibly pixelated. The reflection's grip on her wrist tightened, its fingers now fused with hers up to the second knuckle, the fusion point emitting a low-frequency hum that made her saliva taste like copper.

Behind the turning doorknob, something breathed. Not air, but what air becomes when trapped in a sealed attic for decades—thick with mold spores and the weight of abandoned things. The nursery rhyme in her skull skipped back to the beginning, this time sung by a choir of voices that couldn't possibly share the same throat. Their harmony frayed at the edges, notes dissolving into guttural clicks that synchronized with the dripping from the ceiling, each droplet hitting the floor with the cadence of a word: Re. Wind. Re. Wind.

The armchair in the final room emitted a sound like crinkling cellophane. Its fabric had begun peeling away in strips, revealing not stuffing, but layers of what looked like corrupted film frames—hundreds of them, each showing a different angle of Mrs. Alrez's living room, all timestamped 3:47 AM but dated years apart. The earliest frame fluttered to the floor. In it, the silhouette wasn't in the corner. It sat in the armchair. And the figure trembling in the doorway wasn't the silhouette.

It was her.

The phone cord around her ankle went taut. The hallway inverted again—this time vertically—and Mrs. Alrez realized with dawning horror that the liquid dripping upward wasn't mimicking gravity's reversal. It was following the true down. The realization coincided with the door swinging open to reveal not a room, but the VHS player's tape slot, gaping wide and rimmed with what looked like broken teeth. The reflection finally spoke—not through sound, but by rearranging the static in her mouth into letters her tongue could shape:

Eject.

And the armchair screamed. Not the silhouette. The furniture itself, its wooden joints splitting as the cushions distended around an unseen shape that was—impossibly—both sitting down and standing up at once.

Metal groaned as the hallway’s door hinges stretched like taffy, the opening widening far beyond the frame’s original dimensions. Inside, the VHS tape slot pulsed with a wet, rhythmic clicking. The screen downstairs mirrored the movement—gaping wider, swallowing its own edges—as the static-smile reflection tightened its grip on Mrs. Alrez’s wrist. Their fused fingers throbbed with a heatless burn, veins beneath the skin rearranging into spirals that matched the hallway’s infinite regression.

The liquid pendant at her throat inverted again. Now it showed only the timestamp from the corrupted film frames—3:47 AM—but the numbers bled downward like melting wax, reforming into letters: PLAY. The nursery rhyme in her skull stuttered between verses, the choir’s voices fraying into white noise that smelled of ozone and wet earth.

Doors down the hallway began to peel away from their frames, not opening, but dissolving at the edges—wood grain unraveling into filmstrip tangles that pooled on the floor before slithering toward the gaping VHS slot. The phone cord around her ankle vibrated, its leech-nodes detaching one by one, each leaving behind a perfect circle of numbness that spread like spilled ink.

One of the silhouettes stepped out of the hallway mirror—not through the glass, but by sliding sideways between the molecules of its own reflection. It moved with the shuddering precision of a paused tape played frame-by-frame, each motion leaving afterimages that didn’t fade. The VHS player downstairs began to rewind—not the tape, but the room itself—walls bending like magnetic strips under an unseen head’s relentless pull.

Mrs. Alrez’s mouth filled with the taste of copper and celluloid. The reflection leaned in, its static-teeth grazing her earlobe as the whisper vibrated through her jaw:

Final warning.

The armchair split down the middle with a sound like tearing paper. Inside—nestled in the stuffing—lay the original VHS tape, its label now a perfect mirror of Mrs. Alrez’s own handwriting:

YOU ARE HERE.

And the screen downstairs went black.

Not empty.

Waiting.

Mrs. Alrez realized two things at once:

1. The liquid dripping upward wasn’t following reversed gravity.

2. The hallway had no ceiling.

Only an endless stretch of doors—all open now—each revealing the same armchair from a different angle, its cushions indented by something that was, unmistakably, her own shape.

The reflection’s grip loosened.

The invitation was clear.

The tape clicked inside the player.

And the first frame flickered to life—showing Mrs. Alrez, ten years younger, standing in the hallway’s first door.

Smiling.

Eyes full of static.

Arm outstretched.

Not in fear.

In welcome.

The whisper came from everywhere at once now, vibrating through the liquid pendant, the dissolving doors, the fraying edges of the nursery rhyme still looping in her skull:

Press play.

And the second frame rolled—an empty chair.

A deepening indent.

And a silhouette that was, unmistakably, hers.

Mrs. Alrez’s breath hitched—but the sound came from the VHS player downstairs, not her lungs. The liquid pendant at her throat inverted again, its surface now reflecting the timestamp from the tape: 3:47 AM, but the second hand wasn’t moving forward. It twitched backward with each pulse, the numbers bleeding into letters that spelled REWIND in jagged script. The hallway doors began to peel themselves inside out, hinges groaning as wood grain unraveled into filmstrip strands that slithered toward the gaping VHS slot.

The reflection beside her exhaled static—a sound like a thousand whispered nursery rhymes played backward—and the pressure behind Mrs. Alrez’s eyes erupted. Liquid spilled down her cheeks, but this time it carried images: frames from the corrupted tape, each droplet a flickering glimpse of her own face contorted in silent screams from angles that shouldn’t exist. The phone cord around her ankle thrashed, its severed end now fused to the floorboards, pulsing like an umbilical cord.

The armchair in the final room groaned. Not from weight—from movement. Its fabric split along the seams, threads rearranging into crude letters that spelled PLAY ME in her own handwriting. The silhouettes in the mirrors stepped forward in unison, their edges bleeding into the glass like ink dispersing in water. One reached for her—palm up, fingers splayed—and Mrs. Alrez realized with dawning horror that its wrist bore the same mole as hers, in the same exact spot.

The VHS player downstairs emitted a wet, grinding whirr. On screen, the younger Mrs. Alrez tilted her head—the same slight angle as the original silhouette—and beckoned. Not to her. To something behind her. The liquid pendant at her throat turned ice-cold, its surface now reflecting the hallway’s ceiling—or where the ceiling should’ve been. Instead, it showed an endless void punctuated by floating doors, each one slightly ajar, each revealing the same armchair from a different timestamp. In the earliest frame, the cushion was pristine. In the next, barely indented. Then deeper. Then unmistakably molded to her shape.

The reflection’s fingers melted fully into hers now, the fusion point emitting a frequency that made her fillings hum. The whisper came again—not from the mirrors or the tape, but from the hollow space behind her ribs:

Last chance to press stop.

The armchair in the final room split open with a sound like tearing flesh. Inside: not stuffing, but a VHS tape labeled in jagged, hurried letters: YOUR TURN. The silhouettes in the mirrors froze mid-step. The liquid dripping from Mrs. Alrez’s eyes suspended in midair. The nursery rhyme in her skull skipped back to the first verse—but the lyrics had changed:

Ring around the static, pockets full of you…

The screen downstairs flickered one last time. The younger Mrs. Alrez smiled. And the tape began to play.

Mrs. Alrez's limbs moved without her. One step toward the gaping VHS slot. Then another. The hallway's walls peeled back like old wallpaper, revealing not plaster, but layers of corrupted tape—grainy footage of her living room looping endlessly, each frame slightly more warped than the last. The air smelled of burnt plastic and something sweetly rotten, like fruit left too long in a sealed drawer.

The reflection's grip slackened. Not releasing her. Melding. Its skin pixelated where it touched hers, dissolving into abstract shapes that rearranged into something smoother—darker. The liquid pendant at her throat inverted yet again, now showing only the timestamp from the tape: 3:47 AM frozen forever, the second hand twitching backward like a passing insect's leg. The nursery rhyme in her skull collapsed into a single, sustained note that vibrated her teeth.

From the final room, the armchair sighed—not fabric, but the sound of magnetic tape unwinding. Its cushion rose slowly, the indent deepening into a perfect mold of her silhouette. The phone cord around her ankle pulsed once, violently, before snapping taut. Not pulling her down. Pulling her in.

The VHS slot gaped wider, edges rimmed with static that crackled like distant applause. Inside, the tape reels turned—not spinning, but unraveling, celluloid strips spooling outward in glistening ribbons that pooled at her feet. The reflection—her?—leaned close, its breath not warm, but vacuum-cold, as it shaped one last word directly into her ear canal:

Applause.

The hallway inverted. Not spatially. Temporally. The doors didn't slam—they unwound, wood grain dissolving into individual frames that flickered past too fast to parse. The liquid from her eyes suspended midair, each droplet containing a frozen moment: her hand reaching for the slot. The silhouette in the armchair standing—no, unspooling—its edges fraying into magnetic tape. The younger Mrs. Alrez on screen mouthing words that matched the reflection's perfectly:

Final take.

The phone receiver on the floor twitched. Not ringing. Rewinding. Its cord slithered backward into the wall, leaving wet trails that spelled one word in jagged, hurried script:

CUT.

And the screen went black.

Not empty.

Silent.

The armchair in the final room was empty again.

But the cushion remained indented.

Perfectly molded.

Waiting.

The reflection's fingers slipped through hers like smoke. The liquid pendant dissolved into static. The timestamp on the VHS player downstairs blinked once—3:47 AM—before the numbers inverted, rearranging into a single word that pulsed in time with the nursery rhyme's body-still beat:

And the tape hissed to life once more.

Mrs. Alrez's body spasmed—not hers anymore, not entirely—as the VHS player downstairs began to chew through the celluloid. The sound wasn't mechanical. It was wet. Hungry. The hallway's walls peeled back further, strips of wallpaper curling like gone skin to reveal pulsating film reels beneath, each frame a distorted close-up of her own widening pupils. The liquid pendant at her throat had crystallized into a tiny CRT screen, its surface flickering between static and a familiar timestamp: 3:47 AM, but the numbers bled downward now, forming a single word that dripped onto her collarbone:

REWIND.

The armchair in the final room creaked—not from weight, but from the fabric itself remembering. Threads rearranged into the rough approximation of fingers, clutching at armrests that weren't there. The phone cord around her ankle pulsed, its severed end now fused to her skin, nodes throbbing in time with the VHS player's erratic whirr. A pressure built behind her eyes—not liquid this time, but frames. Hundreds of them. Each one showed her own hands reaching for the same doorknob, over and over, the grain worsening with each repetition until her fingers dissolved into pixelated blobs.

The reflection stepped back. Not away. Into her. Their merged fingers elongated, nails darkening into the same tarnished brass as the doorknobs. When she inhaled, the hallway inhaled with her—doors flexing inward like ribs, the ceiling (where was the ceiling?) exhaling a gust of freezer-burn cold that smelled of magnetized tape. The nursery rhyme in her skull had degraded into a single syllable, looping endlessly:

Re. Re. Re.

The VHS screen downstairs flickered. The younger Mrs. Alrez was gone. In her place, the armchair sat centered in an empty room—except now the cushion wasn't indented. It was pregnant. Distended. Fabric straining around something that moved in slow, gelatinous waves. The silhouette from the tape stood beside it, head cocked at that unnatural angle, one hand resting on the armrest in a parody of comfort.

The reflection—her?—leaned close. Its breath didn't fog the air. It fogged her thoughts, words forming directly in her synapses:

Final frame.

And the armchair split open with a sound like a thousand hissing tapes.

Inside: a perfect replica of the VHS player. Its slot gaped wetly. Labeled in her handwriting. Waiting.

The phone cord around her ankle yanked—not pulling her down, but inward—as the timestamp on her throat-screen stuttered:

3:47 AM. 3:47 AM. 3:47—

The reflection smiled.

And pressed play.

The armchair's jaw unhinged—not wood, but celluloid stretched too thin—vomiting forth a wave of corrupted tape that splattered against Mrs. Alrez's shins. The liquid wasn't liquid anymore. It was frames. Thousands of them. Each one showed her own face mid-scream, pupils dilated into perfect black circles that swallowed the image whole. The phone cord around her ankle pulsed, its nodes embedding deeper, fusing with bone as the hallway's doors began to vomit too—spitting out tangles of magnetic strip that slithered toward the gaping VHS slot in her throat.

The reflection didn't mirror her terror. It documented it—fingers elongating into reel spindles, wrist clicking as it rotated to capture her shuddering gasp in 24 frames per second. The timestamp on her neck-screen glitched: 3:47 AM bled into ME bled into YOU before dissolving into static that tasted like burnt hair.

From the final room, the armchair emitted a wet whirring—not fabric, but tape heads dragging across raw footage—as its distended cushion split further. Inside: not a VHS player. A mirror. And inside that, another armchair. And another. And another. Each nesting deeper, each cushion molded to her exact silhouette, each reflection slightly more pixelated than the last.

The nursery rhyme in her skull flatlined—replaced by the sound of a projector's gate clattering shut. The reflection's spindle-fingers clicked. Rotated. Clicked. Each movement advanced the scene: Mrs. Alrez's hand lifting toward her own throat. Her nails darkening into brass. The timestamp on her neck-screen rewinding—3:47 to 3:46 to 3:45—as the liquid pendant inverted one final time, showing only the label from the ejected tape:

YOUR FINAL CUT.

The hallway doors slammed in unison. Not with sound. With absence. The impact didn't vibrate the air—it vacuumed it, leaving behind a silence so complete it hummed. The phone cord around her ankle dissolved into film leader, its nodes detaching with wet pops that left craters in her skin—each one a tiny, flickering screen playing the same moment from a different angle: her fingers brushing the VHS slot in her throat.

The reflection leaned in. Not to whisper. To dub. Its mouth unspooled into magnetic tape that slithered between her lips, filling her throat with graveyard static that arranged itself into a single, shuddering sentence:

Action.

And the armchair screamed. Not the fabric. The footage. A thousand Mrs. Alrezes howling in perfect sync as the reflection's spindle-hand clicked forward—one final frame—and the hallway rewound itself into the tape. 

Leaving only the chair.

The slot.

And the echo of a whisper:

Cut.