Kyle Daniels juggled the paper bags as he fumbled with the key to Room 212 at the Starlight Inn. The night was cold, the kind of cold that seeps into your joints and stays there, but he felt oddly good—optimistic even. That was rare these days. He’d managed to scrape together enough cash for a real meal for himself and Rosie, and for once, he’d resisted the urge to blow it all on booze. Well, not all of it. A small bottle of liquor nestled in one of the bags, a compromise he was willing to make.

The room smelled the way it always did, like mildew and the faint sourness of spilled beer, but tonight Kyle barely noticed. He stepped in with a smile, already imagining how Rosie’s face would light up when she saw the food. "Rosie," he called, his voice breaking the stillness. "Got us something good tonight. Wait till you see—"

He stopped. She didn’t respond.

Rosie was on the bed, huddled into herself like a scared child. Her knees were drawn up to her chest, her arms wrapped around them so tight her knuckles turned white. Her stringy hair hung over her face, a curtain that swayed as she rocked back and forth.

"Rosie?" Kyle said again, softer this time. He set the bags down on the dresser and moved closer.

She was muttering something, over and over, the words blending into a low, frantic hum.

"Rosie, what the hell’s going on?" he asked, his voice trembling now.

Then he heard it. Clear and sharp as a razor.

"Who are you? You’re not an orisha," she whispered, her voice shaking with fear. Her eyes darted around the room, wide and bloodshot. "Leave me alone. I don’t know you. I didn’t invite you here." Her rocking grew more violent, the bedframe squeaking under her.

"Rosie, stop," Kyle said, panic rising in his chest. He reached out a hand to touch her shoulder, to snap her out of whatever this was.

She jerked away like he’d burned her.

"Leave me alone!" she screamed suddenly, her voice breaking in a way that made Kyle’s stomach twist. She wasn’t screaming at him. She was looking at the ceiling, her head tilted back, her eyes wild and glistening with tears. "I didn’t invite you here!"

Kyle’s heart hammered in his chest. He took a step back, glancing around the room, half-expecting to see someone—or something—lurking in the shadows. But it was just the two of them. Just him and Rosie and... what? The empty air?

She stopped rocking and froze, her whole body going rigid. Her breath came in shallow gasps, her lips trembling as if she were holding back a scream. Slowly, her head turned to look at him, her eyes locking onto his.

"They’re here, Kyle," she said, her voice barely above a whisper, but there was something in it that made his skin crawl. "They’re watching us."

"Who?" Kyle demanded, his voice cracking. "There’s no one here, Rosie. It’s just you and me. You’re scaring me, okay?"

Rosie didn’t blink. Didn’t move. Her eyes stayed fixed on his, but they looked like they weren’t seeing him at all.

"You shouldn’t have brought the bottle," she said flatly, her voice hollow. "They don’t like that."

Kyle’s blood turned to ice. His eyes darted to the bags on the dresser, to the little bottle of liquor peeking out from the edge of the paper. "Rosie, what the hell are you talking about?"

The air in the room felt heavier now like it was pressing down on him, squeezing the breath out of his lungs. He glanced at the ceiling where she’d been screaming, half-expecting to see cracks spreading, and shadows writhing. But there was nothing. Just the old, stained plaster.

Rosie’s lips curled into a humorless, twitching smile. "They’re not going to leave, Kyle. Not now. You brought them in."

And then the lightbulb above them flickered. Once. Twice.

And went out.

Kyle Daniels prided himself on keeping it together, but Rosie always knew how to push him to the edge. He had tried. He really had. He brought food. Decent food for once, not just the gas station junk they usually lived on. And yet here she was, rocking back and forth, spouting nonsense about orishas and voices, ignoring everything he’d done for her.

"Ungrateful," he muttered under his breath. "You should be thanking me, Rosie. You should be on your damn knees." His hands flexed involuntarily at his sides. "This is just another one of your stunts, isn’t it?"

The darkness of the room wrapped around him like a second skin. The single bulb in the ceiling had given up the ghost after that strange flicker, and now the only light came from the occasional crack of lightning outside. He could hear the rain beginning to slap against the window, heavy and insistent.

"Rosie," he growled, stepping toward the bed, his hands outstretched. "Enough of this crap. You hear me? Enough."

He groped blindly, his fingers brushing against her arm. She was cold. Too cold. Like she hadn’t been sitting there but lying in a snowbank all night. That stopped him for half a second, but then her voice came, soft and strange, sliding under his skin like a needle.

"They know," she whispered in her Cuban accent.

The way she said it sent a shiver crawling up his spine, but he shook it off. Rosie was good at this—at getting in his head, twisting him up until he didn’t know which way was up. Well, not this time.

He tightened his grip on her arm and moved closer, his breath coming faster. "They know what? Huh? Stop screwing around, Rosie."

She didn’t pull away. Didn’t flinch. Just sat there, perfectly still, like she’d been carved from stone. He could barely make out the shape of her in the dark, but her stillness felt wrong, unnatural. He reached for her neck, his fingers flexing around it, feeling the thin column of bone and sinew beneath her clammy skin.

"I’ll shake some sense into you," he muttered, his voice low and hoarse. "I’ve had enough, Rosie. Enough."

But just as he shifted his weight to get a good grip, thunder roared outside like an ancient beast, rattling the thin windows of the Starlight Inn. A jagged bolt of lightning split the sky, and for one brief, horrifying moment, the room lit up.

Rosie was staring at him. Not like she normally stared when she was pissed or scared, but with a vacant, glassy intensity that froze him to the spot. Her pupils were so wide they swallowed the color of her irises, her lips slightly parted as if she were about to speak but had forgotten how.

"Kyle, don’t," she said, her voice quiet and eerily calm. “Estoy cagado de miedo. They’re really angry this time."

The lightning faded, plunging them back into the oppressive dark.

Kyle’s hands slackened for a moment, but he couldn’t bring himself to let go. "What are you talking about?" he hissed, his voice rising. "Stop talking like that!"

Rosie didn’t move. Didn’t even blink. "I can’t stop them," she whispered, the words barely audible over the rising wind outside.

It hit Kyle like a punch to the gut. Rosie must’ve gotten into the junk while he was out. That was the only explanation. She was tripping, riding some bad wave that she couldn’t get off. It had to be that, because what else made sense? The way she was sitting there, still as a statue, muttering to herself like a lunatic? He felt the heat rise in his chest, the anger blooming into something hot and uncontrollable.

"What did you do?" he bellowed, his voice cracking with rage. He grabbed her shoulders, his face inches from hers, and screamed again louder this time, the words spraying from his mouth in a mist of spit. "What the hell did you take?"

Rosie didn’t move. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t do anything except grin. A slow, wide grin that stretched across her face unnaturally, like a bad rubber mask. Her teeth gleamed in the dim light, too white, too perfect, and all of it wrong. So, so wrong.

"You stupid bitch!" Kyle roared, shaking her now, his fingers digging into her shoulders. "I told you I was done with that shit! I told you I sold it! You just had to go and—"

He stopped mid-sentence, suddenly gasping for air. He’d meant to stop anyway, to give her a second to snap out of it. Usually, this was all it took—a little yelling, maybe a shove or two, and then he’d throw out the same tired lie about quitting. That he’d sold the stash. That he was turning things around. And like clockwork, Rosie would cry and shut up and everything would go back to their shitty little version of normal.

But not this time.

Rosie wasn’t crying. She wasn’t yelling back. She wasn’t doing anything except staring at him with that goddamn grin, her face frozen in that grotesque rictus. And her eyes—God, her eyes. They were vacant, empty like someone had flipped a switch inside her and shut the lights off.

Something clicked in Kyle’s head, something small but sharp and deadly, like a razor blade sliding under the skin. Her eyes. They were green.

Not hazel. Not a trick of the shitty light. Not bloodshot from crying or high from the junk. Green. Vibrant, unnatural, staring into him like they could see all the way down to the bottom of his soul.

Rosie’s eyes were brown. He knew that. He’d spent a year staring into them, even when they were glassy from booze or red-rimmed from their endless arguments. Brown. Always brown.

"What the...?" Kyle muttered, his voice suddenly small, the anger draining out of him like air from a punctured balloon. He sat back, his hands slipping off her shoulders.

Rosie didn’t move. Her grin widened. Her lips cracked at the corners, but she didn’t seem to notice. Or care.

"Kyle," she said, her voice low and calm, almost playful. "You didn’t sell it."

The room seemed to tilt around him, the walls bending inward, suffocating. His throat felt tight, like something was squeezing it from the inside. He stumbled off the bed, his legs hitting the edge of the dresser, and he gripped it hard, trying to steady himself.

The thunder and lightning hit in the same instant, a deafening crack that seemed to split the air in two. For a moment, the room lit up like a camera flash, and what Kyle saw stopped his heart cold. It wasn’t Rosie sitting on the bed anymore.

An old woman sat there, her spine hunched but radiating power, her skin glowing as though the lightning itself had been poured into her veins. Her hair, jet black streaked with shocking white, crackled with static, and her green eyes—those same impossible green eyes—burned with a furious light. She didn’t move, but the air around her seemed alive, vibrating with barely contained energy.

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Then the light was gone, and darkness reclaimed the room.

Kyle had just enough time to register the rush of air before the slap came, a whip-crack across his face that knocked him clean off his feet. He hit the corner of the room hard, his shoulder slamming into the cheap paneling, and crumpled to the floor like a broken toy. The taste of copper filled his mouth as blood dripped from his split lip.

"What the fuck!" he roared, staggering to his feet, his hand clutching his jaw. His head was ringing, his vision swimming as he tried to make sense of what just happened. "Rosie!" he bellowed, shaking his head like it might clear the confusion. "What the hell is—"

A voice, cool and cutting, slid out of the darkness like oil on water. "Doesn’t feel very good, does it?"

Kyle froze, his breath coming in shallow gasps. The voice wasn’t Rosie’s. It was deeper, older, and carried a weight that pressed down on him like the threat of a storm.

"Rosie?" he croaked, though he knew even before he asked that she wasn’t there anymore.

"She’s gone, my dear boy," the voice replied, the words oozing like syrup but with a sharp tang of venom underneath. "It’s just you and me now."

The room seemed to shrink around him, the air heavy and oppressive, the shadows in the corners deepening into something almost alive. Before Kyle could even process what he’d just heard, the second slap came. Harder this time and on the same side. His head snapped to the left, and he stumbled backward, crashing into the bedside table. The lamp toppled off and shattered, leaving him sprawled on the floor in a sea of broken glass.

"Rosie?" he whispered, his voice shaking, his fingers fumbling against the carpet as he tried to push himself up. His cheek burned like it had been scorched, and his lip throbbed with fresh pain. "What’s going on?"

"You never listen, Kyle," the voice said, now coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. It was in the walls, the ceiling, the very air he breathed. "You never paid attention. Not to her. Not to me. And now…" The voice trailed off into a low, guttural laugh that made Kyle’s stomach churn.

He managed to get to his knees, his body trembling, his heart hammering against his ribs. "Who—who are you?" he stammered, his voice barely above a whisper.

The laugh stopped abruptly, leaving only silence that stretched on far too long. When the voice spoke again, it was a whisper, soft and cold, brushing against the back of his neck like a spider’s web.

"I am what comes next.”

The lights flickered back on, humming to life with a faint buzz that felt louder than it should have. Kyle blinked against the sudden brightness, his breath heaving, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. The room was empty—no glowing old woman, no crackling green eyes. Just Rosie, who bolted off the bed and ran toward him, her face a mask of panic.

“Kyle, I’m so sorry,” she gasped, her voice trembling as she reached out, trying to dab at his bloody lip with the cuff of her sleeve. “I didn’t mean—oh, God, I didn’t mean for this—”

Kyle smacked her hands away, his blood boiling now, confusion twisting into rage. “What the actual FUCK?” he bellowed, his voice echoing off the thin walls of the Starlight Inn. He jabbed a finger at her, his face twisted in disbelief and fury. “Who the fuck was that, huh? You brought someone here? You trying to pull some kinda shit on me?”

“No, no! I didn’t, mi vida, I swear—” Rosie’s voice broke, and she slipped into Spanish, her words tumbling over each other in a frantic string of apologies and something he couldn’t quite understand. She backed up a step, her hands raised in a feeble attempt to calm him.

But Kyle wasn’t calming. He shoved her hard, and she stumbled backward, hitting the bedframe with a dull thud. She cried out as her ankle twisted awkwardly, and she crumpled onto the mattress, clutching her leg.

“You brought someone here, didn’t you?” he spat, his voice trembling with barely contained rage. “You thought you could scare me, huh? Thought you could get back at me for God knows what? You stupid bitch!”

“Kyle, please—” Rosie’s voice cracked, tears welling in her eyes. She scrambled back farther on the bed, her hands gripping the edge of the mattress like it was the only thing keeping her tethered to the room.

But Kyle couldn’t see her anymore, not really. All he could see was red, the edges of his vision dotted with pulsing, angry spots that grew larger with every breath. His hands balled into fists, his nails biting into his palms.

“You thought this was funny?” he hissed, advancing on her again, his shadow falling over her like a storm cloud. “Bringing someone here to freak me out? You think I don’t know what you’re trying to do?”

“Kyle—no—” Rosie’s voice rose to a shriek, but he barely heard it over the pounding of blood in his ears.

She’d done something. She’d brought someone. And now they were gone, just vanished like smoke, leaving him with this ache in his jaw, the sting of humiliation, and her pathetic, weepy apologies. It was always the same with Rosie. Always. She couldn’t just leave things alone.

"You bitch," Kyle muttered, stepping closer, his hand twitching at his side.

The lights flickered again, just once, and the hum grew louder, deeper, like something was stirring behind the walls. Rosie froze, her eyes darting to the corners of the room, her tears drying instantly.

“Kyle,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. “It wasn’t me.”

The lights flickered violently, casting jagged shadows across the dingy walls. Rosie’s trembling hands clutched the bedframe, her tear-streaked face a mask of pure terror. She was still staring at him, but something had changed. Her expression froze, her wide eyes locked onto his like she was trying to warn him - but then her lips began to curl upward.

That grin wasn’t Rosie’s.

Kyle stepped back instinctively, the red haze in his vision fading as confusion and fear took its place. “Rosie? What the hell are you doing?” he grunted, his voice barely calm.

Her body jerked, spasming like a marionette on tangled strings, and she let out a deep guttural laugh that didn’t belong in the body of a human. It was too low, too knowing, and it vibrated through the room like a seismic wave. Her head tilted unnaturally to the side her neck cracking and her grin stretched wider - impossibly wide.

“Kyle,” she tempted, her voice layered now, a strange double echo that reverberated off the walls. “You wanted to shake some sense into us, didn’t you?’

He stumbled back farther, his heel catching on the shattered lamp, sending him sprawling onto the carpet. “Rosie. Stop it now! Stop playing games!” He shouted, but his voice had lost its strength. His chest tightened as the air in the room seemed to thicken.

Her body stood unnaturally still for a moment, then began to move. No, it didn’t move - it was pulled upright, her limbs jerking as though invisible hands were yanking her into position. When she took a step towards him, her bare feet, one ankle twisted and beginning to bruise, didn’t seem to touch the floor.

Kyle scrambled backward, his hands clawing at the carpet as he tried to put distance between them. “What the fuck is this?!” He screamed, his voice breaking.

Rosie - or whatever was inside her - didn’t answer. Instead, she raised a hand and tilted her head, her green eyes glowing faintly, the grin splitting her face like a cracked mask. “I think it’s time we even the score, Kyle,” she said, her voice a syrupy mockery of Rosie’s.

Then she lunged.

Kyle screamed as her hand latched onto his shoulder with inhuman strength, her fingers digging into the flesh of his trapezius muscle and curling beneath his collarbone. He grabbed at her fingers and wrist, but it was like pulling at steel cables. She slammed him against the wall with a force that made his teeth clack audibly together and snapped his clavicle in half. Before he could draw another breath, her other hand shot out and tore into the flesh of his face, peeling a strip of skin from his hairline down toward his eye.

Blood sprayed across the room, a fine mist of red painting the cracked and peeling walls. Kyle shrieked, his voice raw and animalistic as the flap of dangling skin covered his right eye. He was sure she had gouged out his eye, and he was suddenly horrified, even through the pain, at the thought of being blind. He began to cry in terror. Rosie only laughed. The sound was unholy, a symphony of malice and joy, as the vision in his other eye blurred with tears and blood.

“You’ve been so bad, Kyle,” Rosie cooed, dragging him across the wall by the broken joint and handful of his neck like a ragdoll. Blood smeared in a wide arc, and his head bounced as she pushed him back into the corner, where she let him go, extracting her fingers stickily from his shoulder. He slumped to the floor with an arm that refused to cooperate and a split trapezius muscle as she examined her fingers closely. Kyle tried to crawl away into the bathroom, but his movement on one side was gone, and he was blind on the other side. His fingers scrabbled on linoleum with no purchase. Still crying and jibbering, he continued to stretch and push with his legs, on his belly like a worm, toward the safety of the bathroom.

The thing wearing Rosie’s broken, grinning face crouched down beside him, her green eyes glowing brighter now, illuminating the bathroom’s tiled walls. She pushed an index finger into the wound on his forehead, digging in. The pain was something electric in his brain, but the flap of skin moved to the side, and he realized he hadn’t been blinded, yet. A new trickle of blood began to flow down his cheek, making a small puddle on the bathroom floor.

“This is beautiful, you know,” she crooned. “Your rage, and fear, and pain…it’s like music…or a painting.” She began to smear his blood on the tiles in a circular pattern. She hummed while she worked.

The door to the bathroom suddenly slammed shut on its own, making Kyle jump and yell for help in case someone had pushed it closed from the other side. But in his heart, he knew that no one was there and that no one was going to save him. He began to shake on the floor at her feet while using his good arm to painfully inch his way into a sitting position against the tile as the Rosie-thing admired its work on the wall. He felt dizzy and nauseous from the pain of his broken bone, and his shaking continued, wracking his whole body with spasms as if he were freezing. He didn’t know he was in shock. All that his mind kept screaming was, “THAT ISN’T ROSIE!” in disbelief and panic.

Rosie turned suddenly and, bracing his head in one hand, tore at another section of his flesh, coming away with part of his scalp, fresh and twitching slightly with some bit of muscle attached, dangling from her fingers. She flung it at the wall of the shower, where it clung like a parasitic plant for a moment before falling with a wet thump to the tub floor.

Kyle lost consciousness.

- time -

The room was quiet, save for the faint hum of the overhead fluorescent lights and the distant murmur of voices down the hall. Dr. Evelyn Strauss sat across from Rosie, her clipboard resting on her lap, pen poised in her hand. Rosie looked calmer today, though her eyes were still dull, her posture slouched. The sedatives seemed to be working.

“How are you feeling today, Rosie?” Dr. Strauss asked, her tone deliberately neutral.

Rosie blinked slowly, her gaze drifting toward the blank wall behind the doctor. “Tired,” she said, her Cuban accent thick, her voice low and heavy. She shifted slightly in her chair, the fabric of her hospital-issued sweatpants brushing against the vinyl seat.

Dr. Strauss nodded, jotting something down on her clipboard. “That’s understandable. Do you remember anything more about the motel? About the blood?”

For a moment, Rosie didn’t answer. Her fingers twitched in her lap, betraying the lie she was about to tell. “No,” she said finally, her voice barely above a whisper. “I don’t… remember anything.”

The doctor studied her carefully, her pen hovering over the paper. “Not even a feeling? A sound? Anything at all?”

Rosie shook her head. “Nothing,” she murmured. “I’m sorry.”

Inside her mind, a storm was brewing.

“What the hell are you doing?”

The voice came suddenly, sharp and furious, like the crack of a whip. Rosie flinched, her nails digging into the fabric of her sweatpants. She’d been dreading this—its arrival, its judgment.

“You’re talking to her? Answering her questions? Are you out of your mind?”

“No,” Rosie whispered under her breath, so softly it was almost inaudible.

Dr. Strauss’s head tilted slightly. “What was that?”

Rosie’s breath hitched. “Nothing,” she said quickly, forcing her lips to still.

“Don’t lie to me!” the voice snapped. It was everywhere now, filling her head, echoing against the walls of her mind. “You’re letting her dig. You’re letting her ask questions that aren’t hers to ask. After all I’ve done to help you, you betrayed me.”

The air in the room felt thicker, and heavier. Rosie’s pulse quickened, her chest tightening as if the very act of breathing had become her betrayal. The voice wasn’t just angry—it was livid, and the weight of its fury pressed down on her like a crushing hand.

“You think this is a game?” it hissed. “You think you can just sit here, spilling secrets to that woman like they’re yours to give? They’re not. They’re mine.”

Pain shot through Rosie’s skull, sudden and blinding, like a knife stabbing through her temples. She clenched her jaw, fighting the urge to cry out, but a single tear escaped, trailing down her cheek.

Dr. Strauss leaned forward, her brow furrowed. “Are you feeling all right, Rosie?” she asked, her voice calm but tinged with concern.

Rosie didn’t answer. She couldn’t. The voice had taken hold, its rage searing through her like fire.

“You’ll regret this,” it snarled. “You’ll regret every word you said to her. You think you’re scared now? Just wait.”

The pain intensified, radiating from her skull to the base of her neck, a relentless, throbbing agony that blurred the edges of her vision. The room seemed to tilt, the fluorescent lights above flickering faintly. Dr. Strauss’s voice sounded distant now, muffled like it was coming from underwater.

“Rosie?” the doctor said again, her tone more urgent. “Do you need me to call someone?”

Rosie forced herself to lift her head, meeting Dr. Strauss’s gaze. Her brown eyes were dark now, almost black, and as the doctor watched, they began to shift, the color bleeding into a deep, unnatural green.

Dr. Strauss froze, her pen slipping from her fingers and clattering onto the floor. Her throat tightened, and for a moment, she forgot to breathe. The change was impossible, inexplicable—and yet, it was happening right before her eyes.

Rosie blinked, and the green deepened, shimmering faintly under the harsh light. Her face was blank, her expression unreadable, but that single tear lingered on her cheek, a testament to the silent war raging inside her.

“I’m going to… adjust your medication,” Dr. Strauss said, her voice shaky despite her best efforts to remain composed. She gathered her clipboard, her hands trembling slightly as she jotted down a note. “We’ll talk again tomorrow.”

Rosie didn’t respond. She sat perfectly still, her hands folded neatly in her lap, her gaze fixed on the floor. The voice had quieted now, retreating into the shadows of her mind, but its presence lingered, coiled and waiting, like a predator biding its time.

Dr. Strauss hesitated at the door, casting one last glance at Rosie before stepping out. She closed the door softly behind her, leaning against it for a moment to steady herself. Her heart was racing, her palms damp with sweat.

Inside the room, Rosie remained seated, her eyes glowing faintly green in the dim light. She stared at the tear from her cheek as it fell, a single drop vanishing into the fabric of her sweatpants. The voice whispered softly now, a low, mocking murmur.

“You are useless,” it seethed. “I don’t need you to end this. I’ll handle this myself.”

And Rosie defeated and exhausted, closed her eyes, the sound of the voice echoing in the darkness of her mind.