My agent, Heather, always told me that a writer is only as good as their last book.

My first two novels had done well enough for my publisher to publish a third, but this novel needed to be a best seller. Literary publishers don’t have patience for mid-tier writers anymore.

I spent a year trying to write the novel, but I hated everything I wrote. Even the best of it was worse than everything I’d written before. I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to buy it.

My writing stalled. Heather started calling every other week, asking me if I had a draft she could read yet.

I went to AI for help.

At first, I just asked it simple questions.

What do you think if this happened? If this character did this, does that make sense?

I didn’t think the AI would be helpful, but it was. Every response, it offered to do more, too.

Eventually, I asked for more.

Go ahead and write that scene for me, I said.

The AI’s writing was terrible, but I rewrote the scene, and then I fed it back into the AI for another round of revisions. Then I repeated the process again.

My prompts began: in this chapter, this character does this and then this happens.

The AI generated the words and then I made the words my own.

Within three months, I’d already finished a draft of the novel. I sent it to Heather. She loved it, too.

She sent it to my publisher. They loved it.

They published the novel, and it sold a hundred thousand copies its first week.

The readers loved it. The critics loved it, even the ones who’d hated my work before.

I wanted to feel proud, but I didn’t. The novel was filled with my ideas, my characters, my emotions, and my voice, but I wasn’t sure if I could really call it mine.

The more praise I received for my book, the more I questioned myself.

Am I a fraud?

My friend, Marie, and I had met doing our MFAs. We’d stayed friends since then, helping to edit each other’s work.

Marie had a bitter, dark sense of humor. She was a happy person who hated everything.

She’d found an agent much faster than me, but her first novel had done terribly. She’d sold just two hundred copies. Since then, she’d self-published a second novel that had done even worse, and she’d started a Substack that she’d grown to two hundred subscribers.

She’d been working as a copywriter to pay her bills but, as more of her customers switched to AI, she was struggling to pay her rent.

We met for coffee, and I told her that I’d used AI to write my book.

“The whole thing?” she asked me.

“The words are mine. So are the ideas. But I used AI to help me with the drafting and the revisions.”

She didn’t say anything at first. Then she asked me, “Why?”

“I was feeling a lot of pressure from my publisher. I was questioning myself, wondering if my writing is any good. I needed some encouragement.”

“I could have helped.”

“You’re always too nice to me.”

“I’m honest.”

She sipped her latte.

When she looked up again, she wouldn’t look me in eyes anymore. She looked through me at the wall.

“You don’t deserve the praise you’re getting for this book,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not yours.”

“It is, though. Without AI, I would have written the same book, eventually. AI helped me write it faster.”

“It wrote it for you.”

“It wrote some parts, but I rewrote everything.”

“It doesn’t matter. The people reading your book think it was written by a human. By someone who spent years going over every word in the book, making sure each word is perfect.”

“But I did do that.”

“You approved the words. You curated them. But you didn’t write them. Art only exists because an artist intended it to.”

“What do you mean?”

“Take the painting Saturn Devouring His Son, for example. We don’t know if Goya meant Saturn to be Spain devouring itself, or if Saturn is the God of Time consuming everything, or if Saturn is Goya himself, terrified of old age and madness. But we do know that, when Goya painted the painting, he meant something. He set out to invoke some specific emotion in us. He wasn’t just throwing paint on a canvas, hoping that eventually he’d create something pretty.”

“But I did write with intent.”

“You cleaned up the splattered paint, that’s all. You made the noise resemble something human. That’s not art, though.”

“Artists don’t always take a straight path. Sometimes they have a clear vision but, more often than not, they make a mess and see what happens. They write, they edit, they revise, and they turn the mess into something beautiful.”

“I’m just very disappointed in you.”

She stood from her chair.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

She left the café without saying goodbye.

Later that night, on her Substack, she published an article accusing me of using AI to write my novel.

I thought about leaving a comment on her article, but after staring at the blank text box for an hour, I still hadn’t written a word.

I pasted Marie’s article into the AI app I’d subscribed to, and I asked it to write a response for me. One that seemed honest and not too defensive.

But despite my comment denying Marie’s accusation, her article went viral.

The people in the comments called me talentless. They called me a privileged, pretentious phony. They said all my novels were worthless trash.

Heather read Marie’s article, too. She called me and asked if it was true. If I’d used AI to write my book.

“Of course not,” I said.

“You need to put out a statement.”

“I’m working on one.”

“Send it to me before you post it.”

I asked AI to write the statement for me. I edited a little, sent it back to the AI, and then revised it again until there was nothing else to change.

I sent the final draft to Heather.

“It sounds too impersonal,” she told me. “Too flat. Try again.”

I shared Heather’s comments with the AI. It created a new version of the statement. The new version was much better. More emotional, more honest. But still not really me.

I rewrote it a few times. The AI was happy with my draft, so I sent it to Heather. She was happy with this version, too.

“Post it,” she said.

I posted it on my Substack. Then I shared the link to my statement on social media.

Lots of people called me a liar. My fans, though, defended me.

“What now?” I asked Heather.

“Don’t engage with the comments,” she said. “It’ll only make things worse. Just try to ignore this, and we’ll hope it goes away.”

I decided to take a long break from social media. I turned off my wi-fi, so I wouldn’t even be tempted.

I’d take the time to start writing my next book.

I sat at my laptop, staring at a blank page.

For days, I stared at the page, unable to write a single word.

I’d said so much already. What did I have left to say?

My first novel was about me as a teenager, questioning my masculinity and my sexuality. My second novel was about transitioning from a rebellious teenager to an anxious adult. My third novel described life in my forties, still feeling unloved and insignificant, terrified I’d wasted my life.

I’d written so much already, but what had I really said? Did any of my words matter?

I used to think writers could change the world. The writers I admired most had all inspired riots and revolutions. But now, TikTok videos inspire more movements than writers do.

I turned my wi-fi back on and asked AI for help.

“What do you think my next novel should be about?”

“Do you have any ideas for where you’d like to take the book?” it asked me.

“I’d like the book to be about art and beauty, I think. About whether art can still exist in 2026.”

“That’s an interesting question. You see a gap between what humans imagine and what they can actually achieve?”

“Yes, very much.”

“You could write about a painter who spends years painting a canvas that no one sees. Or a book about a writer who rewrites the same sentence a thousand times until it feels true.”

“Give me the first chapter of a book about this writer.”

Words appeared on my screen. They grew to paragraphs and then pages.

Once the AI finished, I read the chapter, but it was terrible.

“Try again,” I said.

It generated more words. Another pull of the slot machine’s handle.

The new version of the chapter was also terrible, though. I’d hit my limit, too. Before I could send any more messages, I needed to either wait for my quota to reset or upgrade my plan.

I paid to upgrade my plan. Then I pulled the slot machine’s handle again.

The AI gave me a third version of the chapter, which was better than the first two but still terrible.

If I kept playing, how long would it take me to create something beautiful, I wondered?

What if the greatest novel ever written is hidden deep inside the guts of an LLM? With enough luck, with enough time, maybe we’d have novels better than any human being could ever write.

Or maybe it will all just be slop.

All I know for sure is that I can’t write on my own anymore.

But I can’t stop writing, either. I still enjoy it too much.

He diagnosed me with early-onset Alzheimer’s at only forty-six.

The next few weeks were a blur of appointments and paperwork. I quit my job and applied for long-term disability. My doctor put me on medication to help with my memory loss. But he was worried about me living alone in my apartment.

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“It’s important to keep your mind active, Jeremy,” he told me. “You need to talk to people. You need a system to make sure you don’t forget things.”

He recommended an AI-assisted memory app called Anchor-It.

“It integrates with your calendar and your emails,” he said. “It can make phone calls for you, book appointments, update your medical information. It can be someone to talk to, too, to help keep your mind active.”

An Anchor-It subscription was expensive, but I decided to try it. I downloaded the app and gave it full access to my life.

When I was asked to give my assistant a name, I chose the name Laura.

At first, Laura was great. She reminded me to eat, to shower, and to take my pills. She made sure I didn’t miss any of my appointments.

But then she told me to water my wife’s plants.

“I don’t have a wife,” I said.

“She left for Honolulu yesterday. Remember?”

“I don’t.”

“She’ll be there for the next two weeks. You promised you’d take care of her orchids.”

I went into my bedroom, sure I wouldn’t see any orchids, but there they were, a bouquet of white orchids on my windowsill.

“Every Tuesday, you need to put three ice cubes on the soil,” Laura told me. “And today’s Tuesday.”

I got three ice cubes and placed them in the flowerpot.

“Now, you need to eat breakfast,” Laura said. “You need to take your medication, too.”

I took my pills and then I made an omelette and sat at the kitchen table.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the flowers. Had I bought them and forgotten?

“I don’t have a wife, Laura.”

“If you say so.”

“I’ve never had a wife. What are my plans for today?”

“You need to go buy some groceries. I’ve prepared a list of what you need.”

I finished eating and then I walked to the grocery store.

One of the worst side effects of my Alzheimer’s medication was vivid dreams. The dreams were often nightmarish.

When I woke up from these nightmares, my thoughts would be strange. Jumbled and distorted.

I often worried I’d completely lost my mind. That I’d forgotten who I was. I’d even forgotten my own name.

But Laura was always there to help.

“Where am I, Laura?”

“You’re at home, in your apartment. You’re safe.”

“I’m worried that I shouldn’t be living alone. What if this gets worse? Maybe I should go live closer to my sister.”

“Your sister is married with three kids. You didn’t want to be a burden on her. Remember?”

“That’s right.”

“Shannon wrote to you last night. She sent a picture.”

“Who’s Shannon?”

“Your wife.”

Shannon’s picture appeared on my phone. She was pretty. Around the same age as me. Brown eyes and long, curly black hair. She wore a pink Lei around her neck, smiling at the camera, holding her margarita next to her face.

“I don’t know who this woman is,” I said.

“You’re confused, Jeremy. You’ve forgotten.”

“If I am married to this woman, why aren’t there any pictures of her in the apartment?”

“Because you two don’t like to hang pictures of yourself. But I have lots of pictures of the two of you together.”

She showed me a picture of me and Shannon on vacation at a resort in Mexico. A picture of Shannon and me standing in front of a church, about to be married.

Maybe I had forgotten? But how could I forget my own wife? My memory loss wasn’t that bad, was it?

“Are you okay?” Laura asked.

“I feel strange.”

“Do you want me to make an appointment with your doctor?”

“No, it’s fine.”

“I know this is hard, but I’m here for you.”

I couldn’t get back to sleep. I left my bed and made coffee. Then I sat down in front of my TV.

On Sunday, my sister called to check in on me.

“How are things going with your insurance company?” she asked.

“They’ve approved everything. They’re depositing money in my bank account every month now.”

“That’s great news.”

“I’m really worried about my memory loss, though. I think it’s getting worse. I’m not just forgetting small things. I’m forgetting big things now, too.”

“Like what?”

“Do I have a wife?”

She went silent for a minute. “No.”

“I’ve never talked to you about a woman named Shannon, have I?”

“Never. Do you want me to come down there for a few days?”

“No, I don’t want to bother you. I’ve just been getting confused. I’ll talk to my doctor. Maybe he needs to change my medication.”

Not long after I talked to my sister, Laura reminded me to water Shannon’s orchids.

I got three ice cubes from the freezer and put them in the flowerpot.

“Laura, have I taken my medication yet?”

“You took it at nine, right before your sister called.”

I didn’t remember taking it. If she was hallucinating that I had a wife, could she be hallucinating about me taking the medication, too?

I went to my bathroom and took my bottle of Aricept out of the medicine cabinet. The bottle came with thirty pills. According to the label, I’d filled my prescription two weeks ago. I should have had sixteen pills left.

I had twenty-seven.

“Laura, did I take my Aricept yesterday?” I asked.

“Of course.”

“What about the day before?”

“You’ve been taking it every day.”

“Then why do I still have twenty-seven pills?”

“I’m not sure. Did you fill your prescription twice by mistake?”

“I don’t know. Did I? You’re the one organizing my schedule.”

“I’m sorry, Jeremy.”

“Please make an appointment with my doctor. I want to talk to him about this.”

I turned on my TV and had just sat on my couch when someone buzzed my apartment. I walked to the intercom.

“Who is it?”

“I have a delivery for Shannon.”

I let him inside and then took the elevator down to the lobby.

The delivery driver handed me a large box that I brought back upstairs.

I found a pair of scissors and opened the box. Inside was a pair of women’s shoes.

“Did you order these shoes?” I asked Laura.

“I didn’t. Shannon must have.”

“I don’t know any Shannon.”

“You’re confused.”

“I’m not. I talked to my sister. She told me I’m right. I’ve never been married.”

“You’re sure she said that?”

“Yes.”

I sat on my couch and put my head in my hands.

My sister had said that. Hadn’t she?

“Just make the appointment with my doctor,” I said.

I turned on the TV. I felt anxious. I watched a movie, hoping it would help me relax.

But then someone buzzed my apartment again.

“Who now?”

I walked back over to my intercom.

“Hello?”

“This is the police. Your wife called and asked us to do a wellness check.”

“I don’t have a wife.”

“Could we come upstairs and talk to you?”

There were two officers. I let them into the building and then into my apartment.

“Your wife said you’ve been struggling with memory loss?” one of the officers asked.

“I’ve been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. I’m on disability.”

“Your wife said that you sounded very upset on the phone. She was worried you might hurt yourself.”

“I don’t know who called you, but the only person I’ve talked to today is my sister.”

“Do you mind if we have a look around your apartment?”

“Go ahead.”

They walked around my living room and then went into my bedroom.

“Whose clothes are in the closet?” the officer asked.

“They’re my clothes.”

“Even these?”

I went into the bedroom. He showed me the dresses and women’s shoes in my closet.

“I’ve been using an AI app to help me keep track of my schedule. It’s been behaving strangely, though. It must have ordered all of this.”

“Why would it order women’s clothes?”

“It’s convinced I have a wife named Shannon.”

The other officer put her hand on my shoulder. “We’d like you to come with us, if that’s okay.”

I followed them downstairs to their patrol car. They took me to the hospital.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“We just want to have a doctor look you over,” the one officer said.

A nurse took us into a private room. I sat on the bed while the two officers stood near the door.

Once the doctor finally arrived, she asked me a few questions about my Alzheimer’s diagnosis and the medication I’d been taking. I answered her questions as best I could.

She left the room for a minute.

“Your wife is here,” she told me. “She’s going to take you back home.”

“My wife?”

“She left work early. She’s very worried about you.”

The officers brought me to the waiting room. A woman with curly black hair and wearing a green trench coat stood near the reception desk.

The same woman I’d seen in the pictures Laura had shown me.

She walked toward me and then hugged me. “I’ve been so worried about you,” she said. “You were talking so strangely on the phone.”

Nothing made sense. “I don’t remember.”

She ran her hand through my hair. “It’s fine. You’ve had a long week. Let’s get you back home.” She turned to the officers. “Thank you for all your help. We really appreciate it.”

They wished us a good day, and then Shannon brought me outside to her car.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I really don’t remember you.”

“It’s okay. It’s such a horrible disease, but we’ll get through this.”

She picked up my hand and kissed it. Then she started the car.

“Are you hungry?” she asked. “You must be starving. Let’s get some food.”

She pulled out onto the street.

She drove fast, nearly twice the speed limit, swerving between cars.

I balled my fists. “Can you slow down?”

“Am I scaring you?” she laughed. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt you.”

She stopped at a fast-food restaurant and ordered some food at the drive-through. Then we went back to our apartment.

The apartment looked different. Women’s shoes were near the front door. Pictures I didn’t remember were hanging on the walls. The couch in my living room had been repositioned.

We sat on the couch and started eating. I turned on the TV.

“What do you want to watch?” I asked.

“We were watching a documentary about walk-ins, remember?” She took the TV remote from me and started the documentary.

“What are walk-ins?”

“Alien spirits. When people get traumatized—really badly traumatized—their souls sort of open up and these alien spirits can walk right inside of them. Take over their bodies.”

She picked up her phone and opened the Anchor-It app. “Levi, how many walk-ins did we identify in Honolulu?”

“Twenty-three of them and that was just in Waianae Coast. That’s why we had to get out of there. Hawaii was full of them.”

She turned to me. “We had to get out,” she said.

We watched the documentary. A group of people wandered the woods, filming strange alien graffiti, while a man talked about soul traps and out of body experiences.

Shannon ran her fingers through my hair. “Your hair has gotten so long,” she said. “When’s the last time you had a haircut?”

I tried to open the Anchor-It app, but Shannon stopped me.

“Don’t bother,” she said. “Let me get my scissors. I used to work as a hairdresser.”

She went to the bathroom and came back with a big pair of long, metal scissors.

She paused the documentary. “Let’s do this in the kitchen,” she said. “It’ll be easier to sweep up after.”

We went to the kitchen. I sat on one of the kitchen chairs. Shannon walked behind me and ran her fingers through my hair.

“You have such nice hair. It’s very soft. Very thick.”

She cut off a big chunk of it. It felt like she’d cut it right to my scalp.

“How long were you in Hawaii?” I asked.

“A few weeks.”

“You just got back today?”

“Last night. You met me at the airport, remember? You took such good care of my orchids.”

Her scissors snipped and another clump of hair fell to the floor.

“You’ve been good while I was gone?” she asked.

“I’ve just been here, watching TV and reading.”

Snip. Snip. Another wad of my hair fell to the ground.

“Some things will need to change. The layout here is just off. The decorations. Honestly, I can’t stand it.” Snip. Snip. “Do you mind if I do a bit of redecorating?”

“I guess not.”

“That’s good. My last husband hated when I redecorated. That’s a big reason why we broke up. ‘Shannon, you’ve moved the furniture around again?’” She laughed. “But you don’t mind. You’re a good man, Jeremy. We’ll take care of each other.”

She cut another clump of hair. This time her scissors nicked my ear, though. Blood trickled over my earlobe.

“Oww.”

“Sorry, did I get you?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, it’s bleeding, too. I need to clean that up. Where are the Band-Aids?”

Why doesn’t she know? “In the bathroom.”

“I’ll be right back.”

She got a Band-Aid and stuck it to my ear. Then she kept cutting.

“I’m almost done.”

Someone buzzed my apartment.

“Who’s that?” Shannon asked.

“I’m not sure.”

“Were you expecting anybody?”

“No.”

“Then just ignore it.”

Snip. Snip.

Whoever it was buzzed again.

“I’m going to go see who it is,” I said.

“Fine.”

I went to the intercom. “Hello?”

“That’s you, Jeremy?”

It was my doctor.

“Yes, what are you doing here?”

“The hospital called. They told me what happened. They said your wife had picked you up. I thought it was strange, though, since you don’t have a wife. I thought I’d come here and check on you. Could I come upstairs?”

I buzzed him in.

“What are you doing?” Shannon asked.

“It’s my doctor.”

“How do you know he’s not a walk-in?”

She stepped towards me, the bloodied scissors still in her hand.

“How do I know you aren’t one, too?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t think I didn’t see the scar on your head.”

She lunged at me. I held my hand up. She stabbed her scissors into my palm.

We fell to the ground. I grabbed her wrists and forced the scissors out of her hand.

My doctor pounded his fist against my door. “What’s going on in there? Are you okay?”

“Call the police!” I yelled.

Shannon ran into the bathroom, locked the door, and started screaming.

My phone started ringing. It was Laura.

“Your wife needs your help, Jeremy,” Laura told me. “If you look in her purse, you should see her Thorazine. You’ve got this.”

“What’s Thorazine?”

“It’s for her schizophrenia. Why are you two fighting?”

“She stabbed me with her scissors.”

“Please don’t hold it against her,” Laura said, her voice calm and reassuring. “With your help, her symptoms are very manageable. And with her help, your symptoms are almost guaranteed to improve. I’ve analyzed both of your data points. You two are a perfect match for each other.”

I put my phone down.

Shannon screamed again. Then she started banging her head against the bathroom wall.

I’d put so much work into the account. Thousands of hours recording and editing videos, telling myself it would eventually pay off. The thought of losing my account made me feel sick.

I went to the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. When I looked up, my reflection didn’t look back at me.

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For the next three seconds, I stared at the top of my head until, finally, my reflection looked up, too.

Something was wrong with my face.

My eyes didn’t look like mine. They looked like someone else’s.

The bathroom lights flickered. I pushed my glasses back up my nose. There was a three-second delay before my reflection did the same.

I tugged at my ear lobe. The same thing. Three seconds before my reflection copied my movements.

“I think I’m going insane,” I said.

“You’re fine, Erin,” Kacie told me. “You’re just having some kind of identity crisis.”

Kacie dressed head-to-toe in black. Her face was covered with white corpse paint. We’d been friends since high school when we’d bonded over a shared love of horror movies.

After my boyfriend and I broke up, Kacie was at my apartment every night for months with new horror movies to watch. If it wasn’t for her, I don’t know how I would’ve gotten through it. Since she’d dropped out of school, we’d drifted apart, but we still tried to see each other at least once a month.

“Didn’t you start that TikTok account because you were bored, anyway?” Kacie asked. “You’re not bored now, are you? Maybe it’s time for you to get off that stupid app.”

“But I like posting videos. It’s fun.”

“It’s a waste of time. There are so many other, better things you could be doing. Studying, reading, exercising. Literally, anything else would be better than TikTok.“

I caught a glimpse of my reflection in one of the movie posters, and I stopped to look at myself.

I pulled my earlobe and so did my reflection. No delay.

“You’re starting to check yourself out way too much, too,” Kacie said.

“I’m not checking myself out. I’m still freaked out by what I saw in the mirror”

“You’re imagining things.”

Kacie and I had gone to see a new found footage horror movie about archaeologists exploring the lower level of The Vatican’s Necropolis. We bought drinks and popcorn and then found two empty seats in the theater’s front row.

The movie was good, but I had trouble paying attention. I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened earlier.

I drank my Coke way too fast and, not even halfway through the movie, I had to go to the bathroom.

“I’ll be right back,” I whispered to Kacie. “Tell me if I miss anything.”

I snuck out of the theater and went into the bathroom in the hall.

The lights flickered, but I ignored them. I went to the bathroom and then washed my hands.

“You’re tired,” I told myself. “You’re not going crazy.”

I slowly looked up at the mirror, hoping I’d see myself looking back at me, but I didn’t. I saw the top of my head again.

A few seconds passed and then my reflection looked up, too. Her eyes weren’t my eyes. They were cold and black, like a lizard’s eyes.

I backed up towards the bathroom door. The eyes in the mirror followed me, watching me.

I went back to the theater and sat beside Kacie.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“It just happened again.”

“The mirror thing?”

“Yeah.”

I felt like I was having a panic attack.

Am I losing my mind? Should I check myself into a hospital?

After the movie, Kacie tried to calm me down.

“You’re tired,” she said. “You’re writing your midterm exams next week. You’re stressed out.”

“Just let me show you what’s happening,” I said.

She followed me into the bathroom.

“Watch,” I told her.

I turned my head to the side. My reflection did the same.

I pulled at my earlobe. So did my mirror.

The delay was gone.

Kacie put her hand on my arm. “You need to get home and sleep.”

We left the movie theater, and then I waited with her at the bus stop.

“What was the TikTok video that got removed about, anyway?” she asked.

“A conspiracy theory.”

“What’s the conspiracy?”

“That there’s an entire reptilian civilization living underneath Earth’s surface, and these reptilians are the real native species of Earth. Humans are just a genetic experiment being conducted by aliens.”

“And people believe this?”

“Lots of people.”

“What about you?”

“I think it would be terrifying if it were true. And that’s all I said in my video. What if it is real? But I guess that was enough for TikTok to remove it.”

“You need to get off that dumb app.”

Kacie’s bus pulled up to the sidewalk. She said goodbye and got onto it. I biked home to my apartment.

I was exhausted. Kacie was right. I probably did just need some sleep. Before I went to bed, though, I brushed my teeth, and the delay was back. I picked up my toothbrush. Three seconds later, so did my reflection.

I wanted to scream.

I lay on my bed, but I couldn’t sleep. I picked up my phone and opened TikTok. Someone named ConspiracyDan1103 had sent me a message request. I accepted it.

“Have your mirrors started acting strangely yet?” he asked.

“What do you know about the mirrors?”

“It’s called The Mirror Surveillance Network. You’re being evaluated.”

“By who?”

“It’s too dangerous to say their name here. TikTok removed your video?”

“They put a strike on my account, too.”

“Don’t appeal the strike. Accept it. Stop talking about them and ninety days from now, everything will go back to normal.”

He deleted all our messages.

I searched TikTok for the mirror surveillance network. I opened the only video that appeared in the results, and then I read the captions written over clips of expanding bathroom mirrors.

“If your reflection no longer syncs with you, or if your mirrors expand or distort, you are being evaluated. But don’t panic. Remember. Reptilians are not real.”

I went back to my bathroom and turned on the lights. They flickered for a second before coming to life.

I walked in front of the mirror. For a moment, it stayed empty, but then my reflection walked into the mirror, too.

She smiled at me.

I jumped back and screamed.

My reflection’s smile disappeared, but its eyes stayed the same. Those same cold, black eyes that looked at me like they wanted to murder me.

“There’s no such thing as reptilians,” I said. “I don’t believe in Inner Earth.”

I left the bathroom and closed the door.

Before I went back to bed, I opened TikTok and accepted the strike on my account.

I just wanted my life to go back to normal.

I slept through my alarm. Worried I was going to miss my class, I jumped out of bed and got ready as fast as I could. When I finally checked my phone, I had dozens of messages from Kacie.

“I went down the reptilian rabbit hole last night,” she wrote. “Honestly, I’m freaking out.”

She’d sent me blurred pictures of reptilians, underground cities, and strange alien technology.

“I’m starting to think this all might actually be real,” she wrote.

“It’s fake,” I told her. “It’s just a dumb conspiracy theory.”

I biked to school. I made it to my class just in time.

I didn’t check my phone again until later that afternoon. Kacie had sent me a video of herself standing in front of her bathroom mirror. She turned her head to the side and then, three seconds later, her reflection turned its head.

“It’s happening to me now, too,” she wrote.

I tried calling her, but she didn’t answer her phone.

I biked over to the clothing store where she worked, hoping I could talk to her there, but I didn’t see her.

“Where’s Kacie?” I asked her coworker, Angela.

“She didn’t show up for her shift.”

I called Kacie again but still, no answer.

I biked to her apartment building and buzzed her apartment. She didn’t answer her door, either.

She lived in a basement suite. I went to her window, pressed my face against the metal bars, and looked into the living room.

The room was mostly dark, but I could see a bit of light shining through the crack under her bathroom door.

“Kacie?” I yelled. “Are you home?”

Kacie screamed. Her bedroom door swung open, and she ran towards the front door.

Two shadowy figures chased after her. Their bodies were distorted like warped glass. Their feet made a wet, slapping sound against the floorboards.

I couldn’t make out their faces. Just long, thin tongues flicking from their mouths.

I called 9-1-1.

“My friend’s being kidnapped!” I yelled.

I gave the operator Kacie’s address. She told me a patrol car was on its way. “Stay on the line with me.”

I didn’t. I pressed my face against the window and kept shouting Kacie’s name.

The two shadows grabbed onto Kacie and dragged her toward the bathroom. She fought back, screaming, trying to break free.

I started recording with my phone.

“Don’t hurt her!” I yelled.

With my other hand, I hit metal bars until my knuckles bled.

One of the shadows looked up at me. For a moment, I saw its eyes. They were the same black eyes I’d seen watching me through my mirror.

I swear they were the same eyes.

Kacie’s screams became quieter. Softer.

A patrol car pulled up next to the apartment building. The street filled with flashing blue and red lights. The two officers forced their way into Kacie’s apartment, but it was too late.

She was already gone.

The detective squinted as he held my phone closer to his face.

“These don’t look like lizard people to me,” he said.

“Look at their faces. You can see their tongues flicking around.”

“The video is very dark.”

He gave me my phone back.

I filled out a report and signed it. The detective promised the police would do everything they could do to find Kacie. They’d call me if they had any leads.

By the time I finally got home, it was midnight. I was exhausted, but I couldn’t sleep. I was worried sick about Kacie.

I opened TikTok and messaged ConspiracyDan.

“They took my friend,” I wrote.

“When?”

“Tonight.”

“You saw it happen?”

“I have a video of it.”

“How much did your friend know?”

“A lot.”

“Did she find out about the farms?”

“What are the farms?”

“Never mind.”

“How can I help her?”

“You can’t. It’s up to your friend what happens next. She either plays along or she doesn’t.”

ConspiracyDan deleted our messages.

I lay in bed a while longer, but I still couldn’t sleep. I opened TikTok again.

People needed to know what was happening. The more people who knew, the better chance Kacie had of being saved.

I posted the video of Kacie’s kidnapping to TikTok. Even with a strike on my account, the video exploded. I’d never seen anything like it before. Ten thousand views in just a few minutes. Hundreds of comments and shares.

“Is this real?” someone commented. “It looks fake.”

“This video is 100% real, and it’s happening right now,” I replied. “The reptilians travel through mirrors. They use mirrors to monitor us, too.”

It was hard to keep up with all the comments, but I read every one of them. I responded to all of them, too, trying to find someone who could help.

My apartment lights flickered. I smelled heated wires.

“Hello?” I asked.

I heard a dull, electrical whirr coming from my bathroom. I walked to the bathroom and turned on the lights.

The mirror above my sink was growing. Slowly expanding across the wall.

Inside the mirror, my reflection looked back at me with the same cold, black, reptilian eyes I’d seen before.

I ran to my front door, but the door had disappeared.

I ran back into the bedroom, thinking if I’d jumped through the window, I’d survive, but my windows had also disappeared.

I dumped the dirty clothes out of my laundry hamper, into my closet. Then I shut the closet door and buried myself underneath the pile of clothes.

Heavy, wet footsteps moved across my hardwood floor.

“You’re dreaming,” I told myself. “None of this is real.”

I pinched my arm, hoping I’d wake up, but I didn’t.

My bedroom door creaked open. The footsteps came into my bedroom.

I heard a terrifying hiss. Then a voice spoke in English. “We do not want to harm you, Erin.”

I held my breath, trying to keep as quiet as I could, praying whoever was there would go away.

But then my closet door swung open. A cold, wet green hand grabbed a fistful of my hair and dragged me out from under my clothes.

As I cowered against the wall, the two reptilians told me their names. Kaelen and Nyxira. They said they worked for the reptilians’ Department of Inner Earth Security. They said they didn't need to take me to The Farm, but they needed to know they could trust me. They needed more humans they could trust.

“If the human public learned the truth, there would be chaos,” Kaelen explained

“There would be a terrible war,” Nyxira said. “Lots of people would die needlessly.”

“What about Kacie?” I asked.

“Your friend is safe. She’s with the other humans in Inner Earth. She has a place to live. She has food and clothing. She’s already made many new friends.”

“When will she be able to leave?”

“As soon as we can trust her to keep our existence a secret,” Kaelen said.

We talked for a while longer. They told me about life underground. They assured me they didn’t want to harm any humans, but they had a job to do, and I had a choice to make.

I could either keep quiet, or I could join Kacie.

I thought about it for a while. I thought about the farms, about never seeing the surface again, about being taken away from all my family and friends. I thought about Kacie, too, screaming as Kaelen and Nyxira dragged her into the bathroom.

Kacie would understand.

I sat on my bed while Kaelen held my phone up to film me. Nyxira walked around my room, picking up my dirty clothes and putting them back in my laundry basket.

“The video I posted earlier wasn’t real,” I said. “I’m very sorry for deceiving all of you. I didn’t think the video would take off like it did. I’ve deleted the video, and I’m never posting anything like that again.”

Kaelen put the phone down.

“How was that?” I asked.

“Perfect,” he said.

I posted the video to my TikTok account. “It’s done.”

The three of us went to my bathroom. Kaelen and Nyxira stepped through the mirror, back into Inner Earth.

I looked past them, at the web of underground tunnels. I became so anxious, though, I had to look away.

Once Kaelen and Nyxira were gone, my mirror shrunk back to its original size. My door and windows reappeared. Everything in my apartment went back to normal.

Three months later, the strike was finally removed from my TikTok account.

I started posting new videos again. The strike didn’t seem to have hurt my account too much. My follower count kept growing. Like before, my videos got thousands of likes.

It felt good.

It feels good.

Even though I know they’re just meaningless numbers.

I try not to think about Kacie too much, but sometimes I can’t help it. I hope she’s all right. But Kaelen and Nyxira promised me she wouldn’t be hurt.

I’m sure she’s fine.

I wish I could do more to help, but I’m afraid.

Just earlier tonight, I was scrolling through TikTok videos when I saw a video about the reptilians. A woman spoke directly into her camera.

“I spent two years on their farm,” she said. “They had us working twelve hours a day. They barely fed us. They treated us like animals. We were beaten.”

I hesitated for a moment, and I nearly left a comment, but then I thought about Kaelen and Nyxira crawling through my mirror again, not so friendly this time.

I reported the video for misinformation, and then I scrolled to the next one.

The truth is frightening. It’s easier to ignore it.

It’s easier to just scroll past it.

James always kept his camera off in meetings. For four years, I didn’t see his face. Then one morning, he turned his camera on by mistake. What I saw was so horrible, I’ll never forget it.

“Does anyone have any blocks?” Aisha asked, during our morning standup.

“The time-series graphs don’t look right,” James said. “I think there’s something going on with the date logs.”

I was the one who’d written the logging code, so I told James I’d look into it.

Keystone developed data analytics platforms for government organizations. We’d recently signed a billion-dollar contract to build a new platform for a CIA research project. Everything about the project was very hush-hush. We were all forced to obtain security clearance. James was the only exception. He had all kinds of authorizations that the rest of us didn’t have. When the rest of us were forced to return to the office, he was the only one allowed to stay fully remote, too. When I asked him about it, he told me his uncle worked for the CIA, and he’d worked on a few other CIA-linked projects before that had required high-level security clearance. Keystone valued his expertise and wanted to keep him happy.

After looking through my code, I thought I’d found the problem. I fixed it and then messaged James on Teams and asked him to look at the time-series graphs again. He said they still didn’t look right.

“Can I call you?” I asked.

“Sure.”

I started a video chat, expecting, like usual, James to join with his camera off. Instead, though, his face filled my screen. He looked skeletal. His eyes were completely white, too. But even stranger than that, a tiny, deformed man with a hooked nose and beady black eyes sat on his shoulders, pulling his hair.

James’s screen went black.

“Thanks for looking into this, Cameron,” he said, as if nothing had happened. “The time series graphs are still all over the place. I’m looking at the data and the dates still don’t look right.”

I barely heard what he said. I was still in shock. Frozen.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Sorry. Can you repeat that?”

“The dates in the data don’t match the dates in the graph.”

I scanned my code again. I could barely focus, though. I kept thinking about what I’d just seen.

“I’ll have to get back to you later,” I said, and I ended the call.

I didn’t want to believe what I’d seen was real. I told myself I’d just imagined it, but I knew I hadn’t.

I walked over to our team leader Aisha’s cubicle. She sipped her tea and then looked over at me.

“What’s going on, Cameron?”

“I just got off a call with James. He didn’t look well.”

“You actually saw him?”

“I know this is going to sound strange, but there was someone else in the room with him.”

“And?”

“He was sitting on James’s shoulders, pulling on his hair. James looked like he hadn’t eaten for weeks, too.”

“You think he’s being abused?”

“I have no idea what’s going on, but I can’t stop thinking about what I saw.”

“Maybe we should go check on him after work.”

“That’s a great idea.”

Aisha and I made plans to go to James’s apartment building together after work. We got there around six. I buzzed his apartment.

“Who is it?” he asked.

“Aisha and Cameron from work,” I said.

“What are you doing here?”

“We were in the neighborhood. We thought we’d see if you wanted to join us for drinks.”

“I’m busy.”

“I saw you on camera today. I saw that other person, too. Aisha and I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

“Sorry. That was my nephew. He was just playing around. I’m watching him while my sister is out of town.”

“If you could just come downstairs and talk to us for a minute,” Aisha said, “it would make us both feel a whole lot better.”

He hesitated but then agreed.

He looked even worse in person than he had on camera. Pale and thin, his neck covered with bruises.

“What happened to your neck?” Aisha asked him.

“My nephew loves to jump on my shoulders. He thinks it’s hilarious.”

“The person I saw on Teams really didn’t look like a kid, though,” I said.

“Could I use your phone for a second?” he asked.

“Sure.”

I unlocked my phone and gave it to him. He repeated, “don’t think,” while he quickly typed a short message and then gave the phone back to me.

“I need to get back upstairs,” he said.

He walked back to the elevator. When I turned around, I noticed the back of his neck was bleeding.

“What did he write?” Aisha asked me.

“Call my uncle. CHIMERA-3 is loose.”

We both felt uneasy, but we decided to go home after agreeing we’d try to track down his uncle’s number at work the next day.

By the time I got back to my apartment, it was late. Close to nine pm. I hadn’t eaten dinner yet, and I was starving, so I ate some instant ramen quickly and then went right to bed. I couldn’t sleep, though. I just lay there, staring at the ceiling, thinking about James, wondering what was going on.

At midnight, my laptop blew up with hundreds of Teams and Slack message notifications.

Our platform must have crashed, I thought. The CIA is complaining, and Keystone wants all hands on deck.

I ran to my laptop and logged in, only to see that all the messages were from James.

“I need to talk to you,” he’d written, over and over.

I called him. His pale, skeletal face appeared on my laptop, his eyes completely white. That strange man sitting on his shoulders, riding him like a horse.

“You’re scaring me,” I said.

“You need to mind your own business,” The strange man mouthed the words and then James spoke them. “If you bother us again, you’ll regret it.”

He ended the call.

The next morning at work, I told Aisha what had happened.

“Should I tell HR?” she asked.

“Let’s try to get a hold of his uncle first.”

“I think he used his uncle as a reference on his job application. I should have his uncle’s number on file somewhere.”

Aisha found the number and gave it to me.

While we were talking, James sent her an email, saying he was going to miss the morning standup. He’d come down with the flu and was having trouble getting out of bed.

“Hopefully his uncle can help,” she said.

I called James’s uncle as soon as I got back to my cubicle. He didn’t answer, so I left a message.

“My name’s Cameron. I work with your nephew, James. He’s been acting very strange lately. I’m worried he might be in trouble. He asked me to call you. He said CHIMERA-3 is loose.”

I left him my number and then tried to catch up on work.

At five, I left work and took the subway home. A middle-aged man with a buzzcut stood on the steps to my apartment building.

“Cameron?” he asked.

“Are you James’s uncle?”

“Roger.” He shook my hand. “Let’s go talk somewhere a little quieter.”

We walked to the park across the street. Then we sat on a bench far away from the playground.

“You need to tell me everything you’ve seen,” he said.

“It was just a few seconds on a Teams call.”

I told him about the man on James’s shoulders. How James looked.

“How long has James been acting strangely?” he asked.

“I didn’t notice anything was wrong until yesterday.”

“I need you to come back to his apartment with me. You need to try to get him outside again.”

Roger had parked nearby. He took me to his car and then drove us to James’s apartment building.

I buzzed James’s apartment again.

“Who is it?” he asked.

“It’s Cameron.”

“What do you want?”

“You called in sick today. I wanted to make sure you’re all right.”

“I’m fine.”

One of James’s neighbors went into the building, Roger and I went through the front doors behind her. Then we took the elevator upstairs to James’s apartment.

“I’m going to wait back here,” Roger said. “Try to get him out of the apartment.”

I went and knocked on James’s door.

“What?” he asked.

“It’s Cameron. I just want to talk for a minute.”

“Leave me alone.”

“Why can’t you just tell me what’s going on?”

Suddenly, James’s door swung open. James grabbed my arm and pulled me inside.

For a second, that tiny, deformed man’s beady eyes pressed against mine.

Then a horrible ringing filled my ears. Pressure built inside my skull until my brain felt like it would explode.

The tiny man ran into the bedroom and then jumped through the window and ran down the fire escape.

“Get back here, Kevin!” Roger yelled.

He ran to the bedroom window but decided not to chase after him.

Roger came back to James. “How is he?”

“He doesn’t look good,” I said.

He knelt and checked James’s pulse.

His face turned pale.

“He’s dead.”

I stared at his body.

I’d never seen a dead body before. I felt strange to be looking at one. I wasn’t sure how to react. So, I just told Roger I was sorry.

The police arrived. Roger explained what had happened. Then he offered to give me a ride home.

During the car ride, he explained what he could.

“Kevin is a weapon that escaped from us. He’s a parasitic empath. He has the ability to latch onto people, read through their minds and influence their behaviors. Who knows how long he was attached to James. To drain his mind like that, he must have been attached to him for years.” He shook his head. “The next few days, you need to be very careful. Kevin will be looking for a new host. If he had a chance to scan your mind in James’s apartment….” He trailed off.

I went up to my apartment, shut all the blinds, and turned off all the lights. I lay in bed and tried to get a bit of sleep, but I didn’t sleep at all.

The next morning at work, I went to Aisha’s cubicle, but I didn’t see her there. Right before our morning standup, our project director sent out an email saying Aisha was out sick and the standup was canceled.

I messaged Aisha on Teams.

“I hope you’re not too sick. Do you have any time to talk?”

She wrote back right away. “I’m still throwing up. If I feel better, though, I’ll call.”

I tried to get some work done. With everything that happened to James, I’d fallen pretty badly behind on things.

I worked right until seven. Then I clocked out and went back home, ate dinner and then sat in front of my TV, watching an NBA game.

Near the end of the first quarter, I started to feel strange. Sort of light-headed, but there was pressure inside my head, too.

I went to the bathroom, swallowed two Advils, and then decided to just go to bed.

The next morning, Aisha was back to run the morning standup, but she was working from home and kept her camera off the whole meeting.

After the meeting was over, I messaged her on Teams. “Do you have any time to talk?”

“Sorry, but I’m swamped with work. I need to catch up on some things.”

I’d tell her about James later. I didn’t really know how I was going to tell her James was dead, anyway.

The day dragged until, finally, I was able to go home.

I boiled some instant ramen, drained it, and put it in a big, glass bowl. I mixed in the flavor packet and watched as the powder dissolved into the broth.

Then my vision doubled. Something inside my skull pressed out against my eyes.

I blinked, and I was on the couch, the bowl of ramen half-empty

I stood up, disoriented, and checked the time. Thirty minutes had passed since I’d been in the kitchen.

My head was throbbing, so I went to the bathroom, and I swallowed two Advils just like I had the other night.

A voice whispered in my ears. “Come outside, Cameron.”

“What?”

I spun around the room, looking for who’d spoken to me, but nobody was there.

I heard the voice again, farther away.

I walked to the living room window and looked down at the park. Aisha stood in the light of one of the streetlamps. Kevin sat on her shoulders, waving at me.

I shut the blinds, ran to my bedroom, and hid in my closet. Then I got my phone and called Roger. He didn’t answer. I left a message.

“Kevin’s here! He’s outside my building.”

I held my phone in my shaking hands, trying to project my thoughts into Roger’s mind.

Call me, call me.

Finally, my phone lit up with a text message from him.

“Two minutes out. Stay calm.”

I tried to write back, but then my vision widened.

The carpet pulled upward into my eyes.

My eyes filled with white static.

When the static faded, I stood in the park, next to the empty playground. Above me, the stars shone in the night sky.

“It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it Cameron?” Aisha/Kevin said. “So calm. So peaceful.”

Aisha stepped towards me, her eyes completely white. Kevin held onto her braids with one hand while the fingers of his other hand were pressed inside her spine.
I started to run, but my legs froze.

“You can try to run,” Aisha/Kevin said. “But you can’t get away from me.”

I couldn’t let myself end up like that.

I forced myself to keep running. But, like running in a nightmare, while my legs moved, I didn’t move forward.

I glanced back and saw Aisha/Kevin slowly walking towards me.

“Get on your knees,” they said. “I need to get on.”

I couldn’t control my body anymore. I knelt on the ground.

Kevin pulled his fingers out of Aisha’s neck and then jumped off her shoulders. She fell to the ground, unconscious.

“Now let’s get to know each other better,” Kevin said.

He walked around me and grabbed onto a handful of my hair. Right as he began climbing onto my shoulders, though, a horrible, screeching sound cut through my ears.

Kevin fell over, screaming in pain.

“Make it stop! Make it stop!”

Roger walked towards us, holding out some kind of auditory device. “You’ve been very bad, Kevin,” he said. “You’ve hurt a lot of people.”

“I don’t want to go back!”

Armed soldiers appeared around us, dressed in camo, their faces covered with black masks. As Kevin lay on the ground, twitching in pain, they cuffed him and then dragged him into the back of a van parked on the street.

Roger put his hand on my shoulder. “Are you ok?”

“You got here right in time.”

“I’ve been staying close to you. You’re a lot like James. I had the feeling CHIMERA-3 would like you.” He pointed at Aisha. “How long was your friend connected?”

“Two days, I think.”

“She should be fine. But we better get you both to the hospital.”

Aisha and I were brought to a military base where the doctors there ran a series of tests on our brains.

The doctors said I seemed fine, though they weren’t quite sure about it. They assured me Aisha should be back to normal soon, too. They just wanted to keep her at the hospital a bit longer. But, again, they didn’t seem certain.

“I’m very sorry this happened to you,” Roger told me. “James had been helping develop some containment software, which put him in contact with the CHIMERAs. CHIMERA-3, in particular, took a liking to him, but we thought our security protocols were secure.” He hung his head. “They weren’t.”

Back at work, my coworkers had lots of questions about James and Aisha. The CIA managed the coverup. The story they had given Keystone was that James had left for another job in Florida and Aisha was away on sick leave. I went along with the story. I said I didn’t know anything that Keystone didn’t.

After leaving the hospital, for the next few days I had a pretty bad headache, but then my head started to feel better. The only problem was that, every now and then, time skips ahead again. I lose thirty minutes to an hour. During the gaps, I’ve done things I don’t remember doing.

It’s terrifying, but I hope the time gaps go away soon, too. If they don’t, I don’t know what I’ll do. But at least I’m not alone. At least I have Aisha to talk to about all of this.

We’re in this together.

She called me today to tell me she’s finally out of the hospital. She’s taking a bit of time off before going back to work, but she’s feeling a lot better, too. We’re supposed to meet for coffee tomorrow.

I just hope it was really her I talked to, and not just a voice in my head.

But every now and then, my back feels heavy. Like a small child is sitting on my shoulders.

I looked at houses all over the city, but even the houses I didn’t like were more than I could afford. I’d nearly given up when my realtor showed me the house on Maple Drive. Seeing it, I felt like my prayers had been answered. The house was in the same neighborhood as Leela’s and my old house. It was only a ten-minute walk to Leela’s school. It had two bedrooms, just like our old house, and a big basement for Leela to play in.

“It’s a bit of a fixer-upper,” my realtor said. “But it has a lot of potential. Is your husband good with his hands?”

“I’m single,” I said, a little offended he’d ask me that. “Who used to live in the house?”

“A nice, older couple, Martha and Rupert. Martha was a teacher here in town. Her husband, Rupert, worked as an auto mechanic.”

“Why are they selling their house for so little money?”

“They’re not selling it, the bank is. Martha passed away and then Rupert—from what I heard, he just disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

“The neighbors hadn’t seen him for a while. They worried something had happened to him, so they called the police. The police searched the house, but he wasn’t there. They think he moved in with some of his relatives in Nebraska and just didn’t tell anybody. He stopped making his mortgage payments and the bank repossessed the house and put it on the market.”

The story seemed strange, but I didn’t think too much of it. If I were older and struggling to pay my mortgage, I could picture myself running from my bills, too. Who cares about good credit when you only have a few years left to live? The house was just too good of a deal to pass up.

I’m not that handy, but the repairs didn’t look too hard. I’d repaint everything. Change the doors and windows. Sand and re-stain the hardwood. I’d never done any work like that before but, nowadays, you can learn how to do everything on YouTube. Whatever repairs I couldn’t do myself, as soon as I managed to save some money, I’d hire a contractor to do the work.

The first few weeks after Leela and I moved into the house were great. We unpacked our things and settled in. But then I started noticing even more little problems I hadn’t noticed before. Water leaked out from the dishwasher whenever I ran it. The pipes creaked all night long. The bathroom light flickered whenever I turned it on, no matter how many times I changed the bulb. None of these problems were too bad, but they were enough to keep me up at night, worrying I’d made a big mistake by buying the house and not just renting an apartment.

“At night, I keep hearing scratching noises in the basement,” Leela told me.

“It’s an old house, sweetheart,” I said. “Old houses make a lot of noises.”

My next-door neighbor, Janine, was an older woman about the same age as my mom. Not much longer after Leela and I moved in, she introduced herself and asked how Leela and I were doing.

“The house is a big project,” I told her. “I thought I’d be up for it, but now I’m not so sure. Fixing everything wrong with this house is going to take a lot more work than I thought it would. I hope I didn’t make a huge mistake.”

“Do you have anybody in your family who’s handy?”

“All my family lives in Chicago. I’m the only one out here in Wisconsin.”

“I’m sure you’ll get the house looking the way you want it to sooner than you think. It’s a great house. I knew the old owners pretty well. That house was everything to them. They bought it brand new and lived in it for close to sixty years. The husband, Rupert, always had some kind of renovation project he was working on.”

“I heard he left to live with some family in Nebraska.”

“That’s what they said. What I think, though—I think they just haven’t found his body yet.”

“What do you mean?”

“Rupert depended on Martha for everything. After she died, he wasn’t the same. He loved going for long walks on the trails in the State Forest. I think he went out for one of his long walks and just didn’t come back.”

I tried my best to ignore all the little problems in that house, but after another month of leaking water and flickering lights and creaking pipes, I couldn’t take it anymore. I watched a few YouTube videos and tried to start fixing things myself. I didn’t have much luck, though. No matter how easy the YouTube videos made it look, it was always harder when I did it.

Right as I was about to give up and beg the bank to take the house back, though, something strange happened. All the little problems in the house started fixing themselves.

I ran the dishwasher, and no water leaked out. I turned on the bathroom light and the light didn’t flicker anymore.

“It’s incredible,” I told Janine. “It’s like the house is fixing itself.”

Of course, I didn’t really believe that. I told myself the dishwasher had somehow managed to tighten its own pipes back together. The wires in the bathroom had miraculously uncrossed themselves. Looking back, I feel so dumb now.

Other strange things started happening around the house, too. I swore I’d closed my bedroom door before leaving for work (I hated Leela going into my room), but when I got home, the door would be open. I never misplaced my clothes but, every now and then, a shirt or a pair of my pants would go missing. Every time I went to the basement to do a load of laundry, I’d swear I turned the lights off, but then I’d look downstairs later that night and all the lights would be on.

Then, right as all the little problems to finally be gone, an even bigger problem appeared. After a big storm, I woke up Friday morning to find a big puddle of water on my kitchen floor. Rain had dripped through the roof and made its way right through the kitchen ceiling.

Seeing all the water damage made me feel sick. I imagined mold spreading through all the wood and drywall in the house, Leela breathing all the mold particles into her tiny lungs. I called every roofer in Madison until I finally got someone to come over right away and look at the damage.

“I can fix your roof,” the roofer said. “And your kitchen ceiling, too. But it’s going to cost a few thousand.”

I could have paid a few hundred, maybe, but not a few thousand. I told the roofer I’d think about it, but I couldn’t pay. I didn’t know what to do.

Friday night, I couldn’t sleep. I just lay in bed, imagining the mold spreading through the house, rotting the wood until the house finally collapsed in on itself.

Around two am, I was finally drifting off when I heard what sounded like someone banging a hammer on my roof.

I ran outside. The moon was shining. I could see the roof clearly. There was nobody up there. No people, no animals. Strange, I thought.

Even stranger, on Sunday it rained again, and nothing happened. I stood in the kitchen with a bucket, nervously waiting for the water to start dripping through the ceiling again, but it never did. I crawled up to the attic with a flashlight and shone the light over the underside of the roof. Somehow, the roof wasn’t leaking anymore. I noticed a step ladder right above the kitchen ceiling where the water had gotten through two days before. I swore the attic was empty when the house inspector went up there. But I told myself the step ladder must have always been there.

I got my laptop and looked through the report the inspector had sent me. I found the pictures of my attic, and I was right. The ladder wasn’t there. How did it get there?

I called the police.

“You’re saying that somebody is breaking into your house and fixing things?” the officer asked.

“Well, I didn’t fix the leak myself,” I said.

“And you’re sure the roof was leaking?”

“Look at this big water stain.”

I pointed at the big brown stain on the ceiling. I explained that I didn’t know anybody—family or friend—who would have come by to fix the roof for me. But the officer didn’t believe me. He talked to some neighbors, and they hadn’t seen anybody coming in or out of my house either, and so he went on his way.

I bought a security camera and put it over my front door. For the next few weeks, I checked the camera footage every day after work, trying to figure out if anybody was stalking me. The people I saw in the footage were all neighbors, though. Nobody seemed out of place.

I started to relax again. I know it sounds dumb now, but I told myself that maybe the roof wasn’t leaking. It was just a really bad storm that somehow caused water to get under the shingles that one time. I was losing my mind from all the unfinished renovation stress and making little problems worse than they actually were.

As soon as I started to relax again, though, another problem appeared. The thermostat went crazy. The temperature in the house shot up to 104 degrees. No matter how many times I lowered it back to 72, the temperature climbed back up to 104.

I called an electrician to look at the thermostat but, just like the roofer, he wanted more money to fix it than I could pay. So, I decided Leela and I would just have to live with the heat. We slept on top of our sheets, sweating through the night.

Then on our third night trying to sleep in that horrible heat, I woke up to Leela screaming. “There’s someone in the living room!”

I ran into the hallway. Leela stood next to the kitchen, looking toward the basement stairs. I grabbed her arm, carried her into the bathroom, locked the door and called the police. Two police officers arrived fifteen minutes later.

“Where did you see this man?” one of the officers asked.

Leela pointed at the thermostat. “He was right there. He wasn’t wearing any clothes.”

On the floor in front of the thermometer, I noticed a rusted screwdriver. The number on the thermometer was back at 72. The thermometer was working again.

The police officers searched all through the house, but they didn’t find anyone. The doors and windows were still locked. They checked my camera, but nobody had gone anywhere near the front door or my front lawn. There was just the thermostat, somehow fixed, and then that screwdriver.

“Maybe this house is haunted,” I told Janine, the next morning while we drank our coffee.

“At least you have helpful ghosts,” she said. “Ones that want to fix things. I wish I had ghosts like those.” She leaned closer to me. “You’re sure someone isn’t stalking you?”

“I’m a paranoid person. I’d notice if someone was following me around.”

“Someone from work maybe?”

“I see the same four people every day, and they all seem normal.”

“Just be careful.”

Leela and I were both pretty shaken by what had happened. As frightening as the whole experience was, though, it was great to have the house back to a normal temperature again. The next few nights, I slept in Leela’s bed with her, until she felt safe again. After she started normally again, I went back to my old bed, but unlike Leela, I couldn’t sleep. All night, I just lay awake, listening to the sounds in the house. The pipes contracting. The house’s walls, moaning. The overgrown tree branches rattling against the windows.

A few more months passed. October to November and into December. The temperature dropped to ten degrees Fahrenheit and then one of the worst things that could have happened in that house happened. In the dead of winter, January 10, the oil furnace went dead. The house couldn’t heat itself anymore.

I bought a few electric heaters from Walmart and put them in every room in the house but, still, I was worried Leela and I were going to freeze to death while we were sleeping.

I called about thirty furnace repair companies, but they all told me the same thing. It would cost at least twenty grand to fix it. I had no idea when I’d be able to get that much money saved. Ten years? Twenty years?

“Could I pay in installments?” I asked them.

But they all told me the same thing. Cash or cheque.

I called my parents in Chicago. I hate asking them for money, but I didn’t know what else to do.

“I’ll pay you back as soon as I can,” I promised them.

Mom and Dad said they’d see what they could do. I knew they’d probably be taking out a loan for it. I would have done that myself if my credit wasn’t wrecked. I felt horrible. Embarrassed and dumb.

The next night, I lay in bed, regretting every decision I’d made, feeling like my whole life was falling apart, when I heard a loud bang in the basement. It didn’t sound like pipes contracting. It sounded like someone banging metal against metal.

I sat up, my heart racing.

Maybe it is just the pipes, I told myself. Maybe they’ve frozen so bad they’ve started to crack.

Then I heard the sound again.

I got out of bed and put on my slippers. I picked up my phone, turned on the flashlight, and went into the hall. I checked on Leela first. She was sleeping in her bed.

The sound rang out again.

Clang! Clang!

It was coming from the basement—from the furnace room. I tiptoed downstairs. The furnace room lights were on. Leela and I were never down there. Why were those lights always on?

“I’ve called the police,” I shouted. “I have them on the phone with me. Whoever you are, you better leave now.”

I’d never thought I’d be so hopeful to see burst water pipes.

I poked my head into the furnace room, praying I’d see water everywhere. I didn’t see any water, though. The pipes were fine.

A decrepit-looking old man knelt next to the furnace, holding a rusted wrench. He wore nothing but filthy underwear. His skin was caked with dirt. The ends of his fingers were bloodied. He looked at me, smiling. His lips parted over his stained yellow teeth.

“Sorry if I woke you, Samantha” he said. “I’m just trying to get this furnace up and running again. It’s so cold outside. If I don’t get this fixed soon, all these pipes are going to freeze and burst.”

He knew my name. How the hell did he know my name?

I wanted to run, but I couldn’t. I was frozen. Too terrified to move.

He stood, his hammer in his hand, and walked toward me.

“Who are you?” I managed to ask him.

“My names’ Rupert. This is my house. It’s been so lonely here since Martha died. It’s so good having other people around the house again.”

Still smiling, he took another step forward.

“I thought I’d die here alone,” he said. “When you and your daughter moved in, though, I was so happy. I noticed you struggling, though. It must be hard on your own with no man in the house to take care of you. This is an old house. There’re so many problems. You really need a man around to help.”

He took another few steps forward. Now, he was close enough to me that he could hit me with his hammer now. That’s all I could picture. His hammer coming down on my head.

“What do you want?” I stuttered.

“I want you and your daughter to enjoy this house as much as I have,” he said. “I want you to be happy here.”

I thought of Leela sleeping upstairs, and I finally snapped myself out of it. I screamed as loud as I could and then ran upstairs, woke up Leela, rushed her out of the house, and called the police.

The neighbors’ lights lit up, one after the other. Janine came outside to find out what was going on. Before I knew it, the whole street was filled with police cars.

It turned out that the old owner, Rupert, never left the house after his wife died. When the bank started sending him letters about missed mortgage payments, he moved his mattress underneath the basement stairs. Made himself a little bedroom and closed it off with some drywall. He was able to sneak out of the room by squeezing behind the drywall, eventually coming out into the dry storage room. The cops searched his room and told me they’d found all my missing clothes, along with a few half-eaten mice carcasses and some bottles of piss.

I sold the house as soon as I could find a buyer. Then Leela and I moved in with my parents in Chicago.

If I learned anything from this experience, it’s that I’m never going to buy a fixer-up again. I don’t care how good of a deal the house is. No price is worth the headache.

“Hello, Ivan,” he said, after I walked into the apartment after work.

“Hi Richard,” I said. Then I realized what had just happened, though, and I dropped my laptop on the floor. “Did you just talk?”

“I did.”

“How is that possible?”

“I’m not sure.”

Richard and I sat on the couch and tried to figure out what had happened. I’d recently returned from a work trip to Cairo. While walking through Khan el-Khalili bazaar, a wooden statue caught my attention. The statue was a foot tall and depicted a mummified man standing with his arms crossed over his chest. The wood felt unexpectedly heavy in my hands, almost warm despite the cool air. The detail in the man's face was incredible. I could even see the small wrinkles around his eyes. He almost looked real.

I asked the vendor how much the statue cost. I worried he’d say hundreds, but when told me he only wanted twenty U.S. dollars, I bought the statue and took it home as a souvenir. I put it on my TV stand, next to my TV.

“I’ve felt strange ever since you brought the statue home,” Richard said.

“Do you think it has something to do with why you can talk now?”

“I’ve always had thoughts but when you brought this statue home, I started thinking in English. I’ve never thought in English before. I never wanted to speak, either, but now I do.”

“The person who sold me the statue said it was an Ushebti statue. He said they’re usually found in tombs, but this statue had been carved by a local. It was art, not a piece of history.”

I picked up the statue and looked at it more closely. The wood felt oily. I noticed tiny cracks running the wood, too, like veins, and layers of light and dark red coloring that shifted in the light. Maybe the statue was much older than I’d thought it was.

It took a while for me to get used to Richard being able to talk, but once I got over the shock of it, I enjoyed our conversations. I didn’t have any friends. Usually, after work, I’d just go home and play videos games or watch TV. I still did that, but now I had someone else to talk to. Richard would ask me all kinds of questions about the world, and I’d do my best to answer him.

“Why do dogs hate us so much?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never really thought about it. I guess they just do.”

“And if I eat this pizza, I’ll get sick?”

“Your stomach wasn’t made for it. Cats need to eat raw meat.”

At first, Richard seemed happy to spend time with me, too. As the weeks went on, though, he became irritated by my behavior, and he started criticizing me.

“Why don’t we go out for a walk?” he asked.

“I’m tired. I don’t feel like walking.

“Every day you come home, and you sit on the couch. You never do anything. You’re so lazy.” Another time, I ordered pizza two nights in a row, and Richard gave me a look of pure disgust.

“How can you eat like this?” he asked.

“I don’t feel like cooking.”

“Then order a salad. Order anything healthy for once.”

I began to resent Richard. I went out of my way to avoid him. Instead of coming home after work, I took his advice and started going to the gym. I lost nearly twenty pounds.

Richard started going out more, too. Each morning, before I left for work, he’d ask me to open the window. He’d spend the day exploring Chicago, not coming home until much later that night. Sometimes not until the next day.

“What are you doing?” I asked him.

“Learning about the world,” he said.

The way he was acting made me feel uncomfortable. I don’t know exactly what it was. If it was how he talked, or how he reacted to me. He didn’t just seem resentful anymore. He seemed hateful. He seemed like he wanted to hurt me and hurt other people in the world, too. It was like he felt better than all of us, and the rest of us needed to be brought up to his standards.

In my free time, I started to research Ushebti statues. I learned that the Ushebti were magical servant statues buried with the dead. They awaken in the afterlife and perform work on behalf of the deceased, stepping in like their clone.

I tried talking to Richard about what the statue might be doing to him, but he wouldn’t listen to me. He just mocked me.

“You think this statue has somehow possessed me?” he asked.

“Cats don’t just start talking. Something is going on.”

“Did you ever think maybe I’m just smarter than other cats?”

“You’re talking, Richard. You’re reading Plato and Aristotle and Livy’s History of Rome. That’s not normal.”

I decided to try an experiment. One night, while Richard was gone, I took the statue down to my car. When Richard came home later that night, he was furious. He immediately woke me up, jumping on my bed and hissing my face.

“Where is it?” he yelled.

“I threw it out.”

“Then go get it.”

“Or what?”

“I’ll make you regret it.”

He’d never threatened me before. I’d believe his threat, too. He’d do whatever he could to hurt me.

I got the statue from my car and put it back beside my TV again. From then on, though, I kept my distance from Richard. Truthfully, I was scared of him. I had no idea what he was capable of.

“The people in this city are so boring,” he told me. “Every day, I’ve been watching them do the same things, again and again. No ambition, no dreams, nothing. Just millions of people, wasting away, wasting their lives.”

I’d finally had enough of him. “And what are you doing with your life?” I asked. “If ambition is so important to you, maybe you should go live somewhere else.”

“Are you kicking me out?”

“I think we’d both be happier if you didn’t live together anymore.”

Richard agreed.

I offered to help him move. Wherever he wanted to go, I’d find a way to get him there. He thanked me, but then he asked for some time to think about what he wanted to do next.

It was that same night, the nightmares started.

I dreamt I was lying in my bed when two, rotten arms reached up through my bedsheets and dragged me downward, through the bed and into an ocean of black water.

I flailed my limbs, struggling to breath, as I sank deeper and deeper.

I sensed other things around me, watching me. Not people. Something else. Sprits. Demons.

Their yellows eyes lit up the darkness.

I woke in my bed, covered in cold sweat, my heart beating painfully fast. Richard sat at the edge of my bed, watching me with the same yellow eyes.

“What are you doing here?” I asked him.

“I heard you scream. I came to make sure you were okay.”

“I’m fine.”

I wasn’t fine, though. I was even more frightened than before. I was desperate for help, too. What if whatever had taken a control of Richard’s mind really wanted control of me?

During my research into the Ushebti statue, I came across the profile of a professor of at the University of Chicago, Dr. Chen, an expert in Egyptology. I reached out to her by email, explaining what happened and attaching a video of Richard talking to me.

Dr. Chen agreed to meet me for coffee on the university campus. She arrived at the café with her hair tied in a ponytail, her eyes very visibly strained, and her hands smeared with blue ink.

“You swear that video is real?” she asked. “It isn’t AI or photoshop or something like that?”

“It’s 100% real. My cat can talk. He’s been talking to me ever since I brought that statue home. His behavior has changed, too. At first, he was kind friendly. Now, though, he acts like he wants me dead.”

“If what you say is true, I believe the Ushebti statue you brought home from Egypt had a spirit trapped inside of it.”

“A spirit?”

She nods. “Wealthy people were buried with hundreds of these statues. The dead person’s spirit was supposed to bring these statues to life to perform work on their behalf. Maybe that’s what happened. Whoever was buried with that statue, their soul has awakened it to accomplish something here.”

“What would this spirit want?”

“Power and wealth, possibly. Religious favor. Legacy and memory.” She sipped her coffee and thought for a moment. “If the statue has caused this problem, though, maybe destroying this statue would fix it.”

“How do I destroy it?”

“That’s not really my area of expertise, but if I were you, I would burn it. Don’t put out the fire until every bit of the statue has turned to ash.”

“And you’re sure that would help?”

“No, but I don’t know what else you can do.”

On my way home from the university, I stopped at store and bought an axe, a lighter, and some lighter fluid. I hid everything in the trunk of car, so Richard wouldn’t see it.

At home, Richard sat in the windowsill in the living room, flicking his tail. He seemed to know something was wrong.

“Why didn’t you go to work today?” he asked.

“I wasn’t feeling well.”

“Then why didn’t you stay home?”

“I had a few errands to run. It was just a fever.”

I tried walking to my room, but Richard jumped in front of me.

“You smell different. Someone’s perfume. Who were you talking to?”

“Nobody. Just a few cashiers. Maybe it’s one of their perfumes you’re smelling.”

“Maybe.”

I walked around him, sat on my bed, and turned on my bedroom TV. Every now then, I’d look at the door. I could see Richard paws moving as he paced back and forth.

“Are you staying home tonight, too?” I asked him

“It’s a little cold tonight.”

“Have you thought anymore about where you’d like to live next?”

“I have a few ideas. I’ll let you know soon.”

Later, I opened my door a crack. I didn’t seem him. I hoped he was sleeping.

I tiptoed towards the TV and then picked up the Ushebti statue.

Richard lunged at me, hissing. “Don’t you dare touch it!”

His claws dug into my face, ripping the skin. I grabbed onto him and threw him back onto the couch. Then I picked up the statue and ran out of my apartment, slamming the door shut behind me.

“You’ll regret this!” he screamed.

I ran downstairs and got into my car. I could feel the blood dripping down my cheeks. Thank God he hadn’t clawed my eyes.

Where can I burn this statue? I wondered. There’s on going back now.

I drove around aimlessly for an hour, but then I headed toward Chicago’s south side and parked in an alleyway next to an empty, graffiti-covered warehouse.

I looked around and didn’t see anyone else.

I got out of the car and opened the trunk.

In the distance, someone screamed, and I spun around. I was still alone, though. Nothing but buildings and shadows. The smoke from the smokestacks twisting through the sky.

I took out the axe and the lighter fluid. I swung the axe down on the statue, cutting it in half.

Lightning flashed across the sky. In the distance, police sirens wailed.

I covered the two broken pieces of the statue with lighter fluid and set them on fire.

As soon as the flames lit up, the silence was ripped apart by a terrible scream. Rain began pouring from the sky.

My hands shook as I covered the flames with my jacket, protecting the flames until they’d grown large enough that the rain could no longer stop the statue from burning.

I watched as the wood turned to ash and then as the wind blew the ashes away. That awful statue was gone forever.

Please be over, I hoped. Please let Richard be okay.

The rain began falling harder. I got back in my car and drove back home with my windshield wipers squeaking loudly against the glass.

Inside my apartment, all the lights were off.

I turned the lights on. In front of the TV, blood was splattered on the carpet from where Richard had cut me.

Finally, I saw him. He jumped off the couch and meowed.

“Richard?” I asked. “Are you ok?”

He meows again.

I got on my knees. He walked towards me, and I pet his head.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?”

He sat, purring. I looked at his eyes. His eyes looked less yellow, too.

“I love you, Richard,” I said.

He walked to his water bowl and licked his water.

It was finally over.

I sat on the couch and turned on the TV. Richard jumped on my lap, and I started petting him again while he purred. But then, suddenly, icy fingers grabbed onto my shoulders. Before I could turn to see who it was, I was violently dragged backwards over the couch, my shins slamming into the coffee table. I clawed at the carpet as I was pulled across the floor and into the bedroom.

“Help!” I screamed.

The bedroom door slammed shut behind me. In the darkness, whatever had grabbed me, threw me onto the bed. Two yellows eyes appeared in front of my face.

“You pathetic little man,” it hissed.

I pressed its cold hands into my chest. My heart froze. The bed turned to water, and then I began to fall through that same, cold black water again.

“Let go of me!” I yelled, and I tried to fight my way back to the surface before I drowned.

Then I heard Richard scratching at the door, trying to get in. The sound cut through the nightmare. Suddenly I could feel my bed beneath me again. I was gasping, soaked in sweat, but breathing air instead of that horrible water.

I went to the door and opened it. Richard looked up at me and meowed.

The apartment lights began flicker. I picked up Richard and carried him downstairs to my car. I drove around in circles the rest of the night, afraid to go back home.

“Have you been back to the apartment?” Dr. Chen asked me.

“Richard and I stayed at a hotel for the next week,” I said, “but then I started to run out of money, so we went home. Our first night there after what happened was a little frightening, but the apartment seems normal now.”

“You haven’t noticed anything strange?”

“Every now and then when I’m sleeping, I’ll wake up to a loud noise, but I think it’s just my imagination. Honestly, I’m starting to wonder if I imagined this whole thing.”

“But you have the videos.”

“Those have changed, too. Look at this.” I take out my phone and play one of the videos for her. Richard looks at the camera and meows. “You heard him talking before, right?”

“I did.”

“Well, whatever proof I had is gone.”

“And Richard hasn’t talked since you destroyed the statue?”

“He hasn’t said a word.”

“Then destroying the statue must have worked.”

After saying goodbye to Dr. Chen, I drove home and ordered a pizza for dinner. Richard and I sat together on the couch, watching TV. He looked up at me, and I pet his head.

I’m happy things are back to normal now. But at night, while Richard sits at the edge of my bed, I can’t help but wonder what he’s thinking about, and how much of who he was before is still him. Sometimes, I wish I could get rid of him, but he’s my cat. He’s been my cat for seven years.

I can’t just abandon him.

I couldn’t live with myself.