Haunt Me

The glass room

The grey light of a Newark morning filtered through the grime of the kitchen window, illuminating a scene of quiet, clinical horror. Ian was on his knees, his knuckles white as he scrubbed a stubborn, dark red smear off the linoleum. The rag, soaked in a mixture of cheap bleach and cold water, hissed against the floor. The smell of the chemicals was supposed to drown out the metallic tang of the venison, but it only created a nauseating, medicinal perfume that clung to the back of his throat.

He didn't remember the meal itself. Not really. Just the frantic tearing of plastic, the cold, slippery weight of the meat in his hands, and a sensation of absolute, predatory relief. Now, all that remained were the vacuum-sealed scraps in the trash and a terrifying lack of soreness in his limbs.

His body felt deceptively energized—a humming, electric vitality that pulsed through his veins, mocking his fractured mind. He stood up, his joints not creaking for the first time in weeks, and looked at his reflection in the darkened screen of the microwave. The "baby face" was there, but the eyes looked back with a predatory clarity that made him flinch.

He had to get out. The apartment felt like a tomb, the scent of Selene’s lilies still hovering in the corners like a physical weight.

An hour later, Ian stood before the glass-and-steel facade of *Aegis Recovery & Performance*. It sat like a polished diamond in the middle of a block dominated by boarded-up warehouses and industrial auto-shops. It was a cathedral of modern sports science—a place for million-dollar quarterbacks and Olympic sprinters. Not for a nineteen-year-old amateur from a basement gym that smelled like wet dogs and desperation.

The doors slid open with a whisper. The receptionist didn't ask for a credit card. She didn't even ask for his name. She just smiled—a perfect, sterile expression—and gestured toward the back.

"Mr. Gilmore. The chamber is ready for you."

Ian walked down the hall, his sneakers squeaking on the pristine white tile. He knew why he was here. He knew whose shadow moved the pieces on this board. The anonymous donor who had "sponsored" his recovery was a phantom draped in black silk. Each gift—the meat, the clinic, the sudden lack of debt—was another bar in a gilded cage.

"Pops told me this place was top-of-the-line," Ian murmured, his voice sounding thin in the vaulted hallway.

"The best," the technician replied, leading him to a room of frosted glass. In the center stood the cryotherapy chamber, a tall, metallic cylinder that looked like a futuristic sarcophagus. "Three minutes at minus two-hundred and twenty degrees. It’ll flush the inflammation right out of you."

Ian stripped down to his boxers, gloves, and thermal socks. As he stepped into the chamber, the technician adjusted the height so Ian’s head remained above the rim.

"Ready?"

"Do it," Ian said.

The nitrogen hissed, a violent, white fog erupting around his legs. The cold didn't just touch his skin; it bit. It was a dry, abrasive zero that seemed to vacuum the heat straight out of his marrow. Within thirty seconds, the hair on his chest began to frost. Within sixty, his breath was a frantic cloud of ice crystals.

But then, his physiology—the thing Selene had broken and rebuilt—reacted.

As his heart rate plummeted, trying to conserve heat, the "Stain" over his sternum began to throb. It wasn't the dull ache of a scar; it was a rhythmic, burning heat that defied the sub-zero air. The cold became a catalyst. The nitrogen fog seemed to thicken, turning from white to a deep, bruised violet.

The walls of the clinic dissolved.

He wasn't in Newark anymore. He was back on the Jersey Shore boardwalk three months ago. The air was thick with the smell of salt, fried dough, and rotting wood. The neon lights of the Tilt-A-Whirl smeared across his vision like wet paint.

He saw himself—the human Ian—stumbling out of the shadows of the pier, his side leaking blood from a mugger's knife. He saw the woman standing by the railing, overlooking the black Atlantic.

Selene.

She hadn't been wearing the blindfold then. In the memory, she turned, and the sheer weight of her gaze hit Ian like a physical blow. Her eyes weren't eyes; they were event horizons, swirling with an ancient, celestial hunger that threatened to turn his brain to ash.

*“Purity,”* she whispered, the sound vibrating in his skull.

Ian felt the phantom sensation of her fingers tracing his sternum. The memory shifted—he wasn't just watching anymore. He was *her*.

He felt the crushing, centuries-old boredom that made the world look like a monochrome sketch. He felt the sudden, violent spike of interest when he saw the boy—the purity of his struggle, the way his heart beat with a rhythm that was stubborn and brave.

He felt her hunger. It wasn't a stomach ache. It was a cosmic void, a screaming need to consume everything beautiful just to feel a spark of warmth. He felt her teeth—not hers, *his*—longing to sink into the heat of a living pulse. The cold of the cryo-chamber didn't matter, because he was burning with the fire of a thousand stolen lives.

*“Little bird,”* the collective voice of her memories hissed. *“See what I see.”*

"Ian! Ian, breathe!"

A hand grabbed his shoulder, yanking him upward. The violet fog snapped back into white nitrogen. The Jersey Shore vanished, replaced by the sterile glass of the recovery room.

Ian lunged over the rim of the chamber, gasping, his lungs screaming as the room-temperature air hit his frozen throat. He would have fallen if not for the leathery, calloused hands catching him.

"Easy, kid. Easy. You went under there. Your eyes... you were gone," Pops said, his gravelly voice tight with a rare, jagged edge of panic.

Ian leaned against the metal cylinder, his skin a mottled, icy blue. He looked at Pops. The old man looked smaller here, his faded Ironbound MMA hoodie out of place against the high-tech equipment. His skin was sallow, and his eyes were darting toward the security cameras in the corners of the room.

"I saw her, Pops," Ian wheezed, shivering violently as the blood rushed back to his extremities. "I saw what she sees."

Pops stiffened. He didn't ask who *she* was. He just grabbed a towel and threw it over Ian’s shoulders, rubbing his arms with a rough, clinical efficiency.

"Don't talk like that. You had a reaction, that’s all. The cold plays tricks on the head. Hallucinations. Hypoxia."

"You know it wasn't that," Ian said, his blue eyes locking onto the coach's. "You know how I got this sponsorship. You know why this place is free."

Pops looked away, his jaw working as if he were chewing on glass. He reached into the pocket of his hoodie and pulled out a thick manila envelope. The paper was crisp, expensive, and bore the embossed logo of *Apex Global Promotions*.

"We don't have time for ghost stories, Ian," Pops said, his voice regaining its gruff, no-nonsense armor. "This just came in. It’s what you’ve been killing yourself for. The big show. Atlantic City, next month. Main card debut."

He pulled out the contract, sliding it onto a small stainless-steel table.

Ian’s heart, still sluggish from the cold, gave a heavy, leaden thump. This was the goal. The title, the money, the way out. He looked at the contract, his eyes scanning the legalese. The purse was five times what he’d expected. Enough to pay off his mother’s medical lingering debts. Enough to maybe, just maybe, buy enough distance from the shadow in the black blindfold.

He picked up the pen the technician offered, but his hand stopped mid-air.

A scent drifted up from the paper. It wasn't the smell of ink or a sterile office. It was the scent of expensive, funeral-parlor lilies.

Ian’s eyes narrowed. He looked at Pops. The old man’s hand was trembling as he held the corner of the document steady. He wasn't looking at the contract; he was looking at Ian’s chest, at the spot where the star-shaped scar was still pulsing a faint, bruised purple through the translucent skin of his chilled torso.

"Pops," Ian whispered. "Were you there? That night on the boardwalk?"

"Just sign the damn paper, Ian," Pops snapped, though his voice lacked its usual bite. It sounded like a plea. "Get your life back. Win the fight, take the money, and we’re done. All of us. We’re done with it."

*We.*

The word hung in the air, heavy and damning.

Ian looked back at the contract. As he lowered the pen to the signature line, he noticed the ink in the fountain pen provided by the clinic. It wasn't the deep black of a standard ballpoint. It had a rusty, copper sheen that shimmered under the fluorescent lights.

He pressed the nib to the paper. The ink flowed, thick and dark.

For a split second, as the tip of the pen moved across the page, the paper didn't feel like dead wood pulp. It felt warm. It felt supple and yielding, like the fine-grained skin of a wrist. The copper-colored ink seemed to sink greedily into the fibers, and Ian could swear he felt a tiny, rhythmic throb beneath his fingertips—a heartbeat, answering his own.

He signed his name, but he didn't feel like a victor. He felt like he was hammering the last nail into a coffin.

"There," Ian said, his voice echoing in the glass room. "It's done."

Pops snatched the contract away, his movements hurried, almost desperate. He didn't look Ian in the eye. "Good. Get dressed. We’re hitting the mats in an hour. You’ve got a lot of work to do."

As Pops turned to leave, a single petal, dark as spilled ink and soft as velvet, fluttered from the folds of the manila envelope and landed on the white tile.

Neither of them reached to pick it up.