His coworker had been replaced by another, and only he noticed.
He knew it when he grew a head taller from one day to the other, when his limbs became larger and nobody said anything. When his eyes changed its color and his voice its tone, he started to avoid even looking at him. To see him walk in the lab as if it was a day like any other, while his stretched body advanced barely moving its joints gave him goosebumps.
His suspicions only grew when he started asking him obvious things. When he had the bad luck of being in the changing room at the same time as him, the last one asked the first one about the scars under his chest, even though he had been there as moral support for his surgery. When he approached without making a sound from behind while the other used his phone, he asked him about the girl that showed his phone’s wallpaper, even though he had met his daughter many times before. And in several occasions he didn’t react when his name was called, as if he’d forgotten his own name until, when remembering it, he laughed with a smile so big it hurt to just watch.
As the days passed, the changes started to become more repulsive. The bulging eyes without eyelids, the ribs and the spine started to show of how much he was slimming down, the hair became thinner and the skin paler… And the height. The heigh that didn’t stop augmenting was unbearable to the sight.
When had it started? He tried to remember, in vain. Where did that good man, that had helped him in so many ways, had gone? He didn’t see anywhere the gentle smile, replaced now by a grin that tried to look like one, with falling yellow teeth. The wasn’t either sign of the hands that once made his heart beat faster with just a touch, now there were only some bony things left that cracked every time he moved them.
He couldn’t go to work with eased mind anymore. The sight of that being was too much, and he wanted to skip work many times. HE though of quitting, but he couldn’t; he was legally tied to that lab and that organization. IF he was alone, maybe he could bare the consequences, but his daughter? He couldn’t leave her alone, not force her to a life of persecution. He had no choice but to hold in the cold sweat that overcame him whenever that thing, once a loved man, appeared in front of his eyes.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
He endured a month like this… Two… Three…
By the fourth one, he felt he was going insane. How come no one else saw it? Why? The creature had such a height that it’d started to bend to fit inside the building. Day after day he asked himself: where did it came from? What’d happened to his coworker? Where was he now, while that beast tricked everyone posing as him?
In a fit of despair, he sneaked towards the guard’s office to see the security recordings. He saw with horror that the creature was also reflected there and went back in time trying to figure out when the change had happened. One month ago, then two…three…four…
He found it. An accident in which their test subject had gone out of control and during which his coworker ended up in the floor, hit in the face by it. That was the only proof he had of something out of the ordinary happening to him. After it, they’d done tests, but didn’t find anything wrong with him. Had they missed it? Had he been affected by the test subject somehow? Or something worse had happened, something that ate at him from the inside and changed him inside out? Whatever it was, he needed to show that to his superiors, so they’d do something about it, thus he saved the record in an USB and turned around to leave.
The creature was by the door. He screamed. Then, with a voice like a grave out of tune note, it spoke:
“You can see me, right?”
Before he could run away, it extended its long arms and took him by the neck with its claws. A kiss he’d only dreamed about in another time, now seemed so repulsive that he stopped breathing. A tongue too rough and slimy extended through his throat, and tears fell from his eyes as he fought back to free himself. When it let him go, he fell to the ground, coughing and vomiting. He shook from head to toe, with the blood cold and the heart thumping.
He felt dizzy. There was a numbing sensation going through his body that made him lose his senses slowly. Where was he again? What was he doing? Uncertainty made him pale. Had that beast infected him too?
Little by little he stood up, but he wasn’t the one controlling his body. Neither was he who left the lab, got inside the car, and drove home. He wanted to scream, cry, ask for help, tear off the skin that didn’t belong to him anymore, all useless. He took out his keys and opened the main door. His daughter played with her dolls sitting in the living room’s rug.
When he hugged the child, the penumbra overcame him.