Episode 8: Rules
541 Words
Aria left Lena’s apartment in a fog.
The lipstick message on the mirror—SHE LET ME IN—had been wiped clean, but the words felt branded on her retinas. Lena had stared at her own reflection for a long minute after, pale and silent, before insisting Aria go home and rest.
Home.
The word felt meaningless now.
She took a rideshare back to her own apartment instead of her mother’s house. She needed her things—laptop charger, clothes, the flashlight she kept in the kitchen drawer. She told herself she’d grab them and leave again. Quick in and out.
The building hallway smelled of damp carpet and curry from someone’s dinner. Her door was still unlocked from when she’d fled days ago. She stepped inside cautiously.
Everything looked untouched.
She moved fast: bag from the closet, charger from the wall, clothes shoved in without folding. She avoided the bathroom. Avoided windows.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket.
Unknown number. No voicemail this time—just a text.
A photo.
Her, standing in Lena’s living room an hour ago, back to the camera, taken from inside Lena’s hallway closet.
Timestamp: exactly when she’d arrived.
She dropped the bag.
Another text arrived.
The three rules Elias had written, photographed from the paper in her coat pocket.
Then a new line below them, typed:
You’re already breaking one.
She looked at the apartment windows.
It was past midnight.
Every reflective surface—the dark TV screen, the microwave door, the blank laptop monitor—showed her standing in the living room.
But the reflections didn’t move with her.
They watched.
She grabbed the flashlight from the drawer—heavy Maglite, the kind her mom had insisted she keep for emergencies—and turned it on. Strong beam. Elias had mentioned light disrupts them.
She swept it across the room.
The reflections recoiled slightly, like smoke disturbed by wind.
But didn’t vanish.
She backed toward the door.
The phone buzzed again.
A voice message this time.
She played it on speaker, hand shaking.
Her own voice—whispering, close to the mic.
“I’m becoming you.”
Then a soft intake of breath.
A sharp pain bloomed in her left palm.
She looked down.
A thin cut had appeared across her skin, straight and clean. Blood welled up in a perfect line.
She hadn’t touched anything sharp.
Hadn’t felt it happen.
Across the room, in the dark TV screen, her reflection held up its hand.
The cut was on its throat.
Deep. Black blood—not red—oozing down the neck.
The reflection smiled wider.
On the kitchen counter, her blood dripped from her real palm onto the white tile.
Drop.
Drop.
The drops arranged themselves, sliding across the surface like mercury.
Letters formed.
SOON
Aria ran.
She didn’t stop until she was three blocks away, gasping under a streetlight, palm wrapped in her sleeve to stop the bleeding.
Her phone buzzed one more time.
A new contact had been added while she wasn’t looking.
Name: Me
Profile photo: her own face, but eyes solid black.
The message preview:
I’m closer than you think.
She turned the phone off completely.
But in the black screen, before it died, her reflection winked.
- Writer
