It was a Tuesday, which felt appropriate somehow. Tuesdays have a way of being the least remarkable day of the week. Mondays carry their weight of dread and obligation, but at least they have a personality. Wednesdays bring the promise of a downhill slope, and Thursdays are tantalizingly close to Friday. But Tuesdays? They just exist. A placeholder between more interesting moments.

I was at my desk, which was more of a corner of the spare room, staring at my screen. Lines of code blinked back at me, waiting for their cue, but my mind wasn’t cooperating. I had that restless kind of focus where you keep clicking between the same three tabs, hoping one of them will suddenly reveal the meaning of life.

The photo on my desk caught my eye—a candid shot of my wife, Sarah, and our daughter, Eden, taken at the park last summer. Sarah looked effortlessly lovely, her smile the kind that could disarm an argument in an instant. Eden, five years old and full of opinions, had insisted on holding the ice cream cone upside down for reasons only she understood. That was Eden for you. Joyfully chaotic, like a tiny whirlwind in pink sneakers.

I adjusted the photo slightly. Not because it needed it, but because I did. It was something to do, a way to feel like I was accomplishing something when, in reality, I was avoiding the bug in the code that had been mocking me since mid-morning.

“Right,” I said to no one in particular. “Break time.”

The ritual was familiar by now: boil the kettle, make a cup of tea, and convince myself that the act of brewing it would somehow unlock a hidden reserve of productivity. The tea rarely lived up to its promise, but I liked the ritual. It felt… dependable.

The doorbell rang just as I was settling back into my chair. At first, I ignored it. Most deliveries these days involve someone leaving a parcel on the step and darting off like a particularly efficient Santa. But then it rang again, insistently this time.

I sighed and set the mug down. The suburbs are supposed to be a fortress of tranquility, but there’s always someone trying to sell you double glazing or a petition about traffic calming measures. Still, you can’t just leave the bell unanswered. That’s how you end up on the receiving end of a concerned neighbor’s lecture about community spirit.

I opened the door without much thought, expecting a clipboard-wielding volunteer or maybe a parcel I’d forgotten I ordered. Instead, I found… him.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

At first glance, he seemed like a man—tall, lean, and dressed in a suit so crisp it looked like it might have its own dry-cleaning sponsorship. But there was something about him that made my brain hesitate, like it wasn’t entirely convinced. His face was pale, all sharp lines and high cheekbones, but not quite right. It was as if someone had taken a checklist of human features and stopped halfway through filling it out.

His eyes, though—those were what gave me pause. Bright and unblinking, they held a strange intensity, like he was quietly cataloging everything about me in real-time. His grin, stretched just a little too wide, was the kind that might seem friendly at first but quickly slid into unsettling territory the longer you looked at it.

I blinked, my brain struggling to reconcile the polished, eerily precise figure on my doorstep with the ordinary world I’d been inhabiting moments ago. It was like staring at a picture that looks normal until you realize there’s one detail that throws the whole thing into question.

And then I saw his shirt. Bold letters over a plain black background: “I ❤️ Truck-kun.” It was such a strange, absurd detail that it momentarily overrode every other thought in my head. Here was this imposing, otherworldly man, exuding an energy that felt entirely out of place, and he was wearing a meme.

I let out a small laugh—nervous, involuntary, and probably ill-advised. It wasn’t that I found it funny exactly; it was more that my brain had decided this was the only way to cope with the mounting weirdness.

His grin faltered. Not entirely, but just enough for me to notice. The warmth—or what passed for warmth—drained from his expression, leaving behind something colder and sharper. His eyes narrowed slightly, and I had the distinct sense that I’d failed some kind of test.

Then, without warning, he raised his hand. It wasn’t until I saw the bright blue water gun—a cheap-looking, translucent thing that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Eden’s toy box—that I felt myself relax. For all the eerie vibes this man was giving off, a plastic water gun was hardly threatening.

That thought lasted about half a second.

He pulled the trigger, and there was no stream of water, no harmless splash. Instead, the air shimmered, a ripple of something I couldn’t quite explain, like the static hum of a television left on mute. My knees buckled as a sudden, overwhelming weightlessness overtook me.

I tried to speak, to ask what was happening, but my voice refused to cooperate. My limbs felt disconnected, like someone had cut the strings of a marionette. As my vision blurred at the edges, I thought of Sarah and Eden. Their faces came to me with perfect clarity, so vivid it felt like I could reach out and touch them.

The last thing I saw before everything went dark was the man turning away, his sharp grin returning as if nothing had happened. Whatever his to-do list had been for the day, it seemed I’d just been crossed off.