The café was warm; morning light dripped gold across polished tables and quiet conversations. Ava sat at a corner booth, her hands wrapped around a ceramic cup of coffee.

The music was soft, jazzy, drifting lazily through the air, and she could hear the clink of cutlery and the hum of conversation far away. For a moment, Ava found herself lost in the everyday rhythms of an everyday day.

She lifted the cup to her lips-and froze. Her hands were smaller, thinner. Delicate. And they quivered ever so slightly, as if trying to convey something.

Ava looked down at her reflection in the polished silver spoon on the table. She saw-not herself. Some other face stared back.

Dark eyes, softer jawline, lips parted in a small, startled breath. A stranger. The spoon shook in her grasp and, as she leaned in closer, the stranger's lips began to move, mouthing a two-word:

"Help. Me."

The world contorted around her. The warm sun turned cold, red, and something sinister, and the comforting buzz of life became something like a scratched record stuck in a groove.

People's faces blurred and melted, a twisted, maniacal smile bleeding into a form indescribably abominable. The café walls began to close in, shrinking; the corners folded like origami. The scent of coffee turned to that of rotting corpses.

Ava stood abruptly, heart hammering in her chest, but her legs felt heavy. The furniture around her began to shift—chairs sprouted grotesque limbs that crawled across the floor, and shadows twisted into indescribable shapes, slithering toward her. She tried to run, but her steps faltered. Her body felt alien, unresponsive, not willing to obey her commands.

The café dissolved into a nightmare of fragmented sights and sounds— maniacal laughter looped into harrowing screams from hell, objects crumbled and reassembled like glitching files, and suddenly, something was chasing her. A dark figure in the distance—its shape unclear, but the fear it carried was sharp and overwhelming.

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She stumbled, fell to her knees. In the reflection of a nearby puddle, she saw the woman's face again. This time, her eyes were wide with terror, lips split open as if to scream—but no sound came.

And then, everything went black.

Ava woke with a violent gasp, her chest heaving as if she'd been drowning. Her pulse roared in her ears. She scrambled upright, her breath ragged and frantic. She reached instinctively for the gun she kept beneath the the bed, fingers grasping for cold metal—but her hand stopped midair.

The voice in her head—her own inner voice—.

"Where am I?" she whispered, but the words felt detached, as though spoken by someone else, foreign and unfamiliar in her own mouth.

Whose voice is that?

Her reflection caught her eye—she glanced at the small mirror across the room, only to recoil in horror. Blood—her blood—trickled from her nose, her eyes, her mouth, tears, snot streaking down her pale skin. Her silver nightgown was soaked in red, the silk clinging wetly to her body

She looked at the mirror—toward her own reflection. But the woman in the mirror didn't follow her movements. She stared back, unblinking, her eyes wide and wild, a stranger's face barely veiled beneath Ava's.

Ava jerked backward, crawling frantically across the floor, dragging herself away from the reflection as though it might reach out and grab her. She gasped, each breath a sharp knife in her lungs, her mind spiraling into chaos.

She had to move.

Scrambling to her feet, she staggered toward the bathroom, her bloodied nightgown trailing behind her like a ghost. Her legs felt weak beneath her, her body teetering as if about to collapse. She stumbled into the shower, nearly tearing the faucet off in her frantic attempt to turn it on.

The water roared down on her, cold at first, then hot, but she didn't care. She collapsed onto the tile floor, her arms wrapped tightly around herself, her whole body shaking violently as the water poured over her.

And in that moment, as the world around her blurred and dissolved beneath the rushing water, she felt it again—the overwhelming sensation that she didn't belong in her own skin. That she wasn't alone in her mind.

Somewhere, deep within the tangled labyrinth of memories and fractured identities, something was unravelling. And she didn't know what it was.

Her head pressed against the cold tile, her breath coming in shallow gasps, her blood mixing with the water.

Then, a voice—soft, distant, but unmistakable—whispered from the back of her mind.

"You don't belong here."

Her eyes flew open.

And the water kept pouring down.