It started as an itch.
Not just any itch, but a maddening, relentless tickle on the arch of Tom’s foot. It wasn’t the kind of discomfort you scratch and forget it burrowed into his consciousness, pulling at the edges of his sanity. He knew he was dreaming. The edges of reality shimmered and shifted like heatwaves. Yet the itch felt real, sharper than the lines of the distorted world around him.
He sat on the edge of a couch in a house he didn’t know, though it felt vaguely familiar. Dust clung to every surface, the air thick and stale, carrying a smell that was both ancient and suffocating. It hit him suddenly: this was his ex-girlfriend’s house, or it was trying to be.
The details didn’t add up. The layout was wrong, the walls painted a shade too pale, and the furniture was wrong, all wrong. Piled in the middle of the room like an offering to some unseen force, the furniture was draped in yellowing sheets, bound with twine, as if the house itself had plans to leave.
And then he saw her.
She moved through the room with the slow, measured steps of someone in a trance. Her form was larger than he remembered, fuller. Her belly swelled, unmistakably pregnant, her frame heavier, weighed down by time or something more sinister. Her face was almost hers, but not quite. There was something off about her eyes: their hollowness. The light that once drew him in had been snuffed out, leaving only a dull glow that flickered like a failing bulb.
“Why am I here?” he wanted to ask, but the words stuck in his throat. The itch on his foot grew unbearable, demanding his attention.
When he bent to scratch, his fingers brushed against something that didn’t belong. His breath hitched.
A single, thick hair jutted out from the arch of his foot. It was wrong, longer, darker, and thicker than any human hair could be.
He grabbed it and pulled.
At first, it resisted, clinging to his skin with an unnatural grip. But then, with a sickening ease, it began to slide out. More and more spilled free, an endless strand that coiled around his ankles, slick and glistening like it had been steeped in oil.
Tom’s stomach churned. He wanted to stop, but the itch had turned into a compulsion. With every pull, the hair gave way, as if it had been waiting for this moment.
“What are you doing?”
Her voice sliced through the silence, sharp and venomous.
Tom looked up, and his blood ran cold. She stood in the doorway, her gaze fixed on him like a predator sizing up its prey. Her swollen belly shifted, the skin rippling unnaturally, as if something alive clawed to escape.
“You’re ruining everything,” she hissed, stepping closer.
Her words barely registered. The hair had become a rope, and with one final yank, it came free.
Something followed.
From the wound on his foot, a grotesque, alien creature tumbled out, landing with a wet thud. It pulsed faintly, translucent and gelatinous, its tendrils writhing like snakes. It glowed with a faint, sickly light that seemed to pulse in time with his heartbeat.
“What… what is this?” Tom whispered.
She smirked, her hollow eyes gleaming with malice. “It’s me. It’s always been me.”
The creature quivered, and a wave of emotion hit him like a tidal wave: despair, anger, longing, and something darker, a sense of ownership. This thing, this parasite, had been feeding off him for years, leeching his energy, twisting his thoughts, and weighing him down. It was the embodiment of their toxic relationship, a physical manifestation of everything he had endured.
“No more,” Tom growled.
A strength he didn’t know he possessed surged through him. He stomped down on the creature, his foot colliding with its writhing mass. It screeched not with sound, but with pure emotion, flooding his mind with its death throes. It writhed and shrank, its glow fading as it collapsed into a puddle of dark, viscous liquid.
“Stop!” she screamed, but her voice was already fading.
When Tom looked up, she was gone.
The house dissolved around him, the distorted walls and dust-laden air melting into nothingness. He stood alone, barefoot, in an empty void that buzzed with an electric hum of peace. The itch was gone, and with it, the weight he hadn’t realized he’d been carrying.
For the first time in nine months, perhaps even longer, Tom felt free for the first time in his life.
The creature was gone. The tether was broken.
And as he woke, gasping for air in the darkness of his bedroom, he knew this was no ordinary dream. It was a reckoning, a release, and a promise of the life that awaited him if he chose to reclaim it.