The Box Trap

A Horror Short Story

By Clark Canepa

We left later than we meant to. The sun had already dipped behind the trees by the time we packed the last of our bags into the car, and now we were winding through some rural stretch of forest, headlights slicing through mist and trees. Carmine was asleep in the passenger seat, her head tilted against the window, earbuds in, lips parted. One of the cats was curled in her lap. The other had burrowed under the blanket in the backseat, its occasional sighs sounding almost human in the silence between podcasts.

Google Maps said we were twenty-eight minutes out. We were headed to Jake and Kelly’s bachelor-bachelorette joint weekend destination party, and we had booked the Airbnb because it was super close to where the party was planned. It looked futuristic, clean. It was part of one of those all-inclusive “smart neighborhoods,” built in the middle of nowhere for city people who wanted to play suburban for a weekend. You could tell from the listing photos: grayscale furniture, voice-controlled lights, pristine mirror countertops. Carmine called it dystopian chic. I said I didn’t mind, as long as it was quiet. Neither of us had mentioned the fight from earlier that day. Or the one from last week. I think we both hoped this trip would fix something.

We pulled in a little after midnight. The trees gave way suddenly to manicured emptiness. A freshly paved cul-de-sac lit by low, bluish streetlights, each rectangular house squatting on its perfect detailless lawn like a simulation that hadn’t finished rendering. There were no visible cars, no people. Just rows of cube-shaped homes with dark windows and soft uplighting, like they were being presented for sale in some uncanny dream.

Ours was the fourth on the left. The app had already unlocked the door by the time I stepped out of the car. No key, no host, no welcome note. just a quiet chirp from my phone and the soft click of the smart lock disengaging. “Looks like they vacuumed the soul out,” I muttered. Carmine didn’t laugh. She was trying to rouse one of the cats, her voice sweet but tired. “Come on, mi amor. We’re here.” Inside, the place looked exactly like the pictures: grayscale everything. Charcoal couch, pale oak floors, white walls that somehow felt thinner than normal walls, like they’d gone for “vibe” over “structure.” A sleek kitchen that had probably never been cooked in. Diffused ceiling lights. It wasn’t cold, but it wasn’t warm either. The thermostat was probably set to “optimal human comfort” or whatever default the HOA preferred.

The cats began exploring, cautious at first. One jumped on the windowsill and stared out into the street. The other sniffed the corners of the room, tail low. Carmine dropped her bag by the couch and exhaled, long and slow. “Okay,” she said. “We’re here. Finally.” She looked around. “It’s... nice?”

“It’s haunted by graphic designers,” I offered.

That one got a laugh. A small one, but real. We didn’t unpack. Just took off our shoes and sat on the edge of the couch, quietly watching our cats investigate their new, sterilized territory. I think we were both too tired to talk much. Outside, the neighborhood was silent. No wind. No insects. The kind of silence that feels artificial.

As we were about to go to the bedroom, a “meow” sounded from outside the front door.

Carmine jumped up, “a cat!” She cried. She opened the door and there was a black cat waiting. It quickly entered the house as soon as she opened the door.

Her face softened. “Oh. Hola, mi amor,” she said, like she knew it already. “Look at it. It’s so cute.”

“It’s creepy.”

She stood up, already smiling. “You think everything’s creepy.”

“Because everything is. This whole neighborhood feels like a server farm with curtains.”

ignoring me. “It’s cold out. We can’t just leave him.”

Inside, the house felt quieter now. Our two cats immediately backed off, one bolted under the couch, the other hissed before disappearing into the hallway. The black cat didn’t even glance at them. It walked in slow, methodical loops through the living room before sitting squarely in the center of the rug.

“We can’t just adopt a weird cat the night before Jake and Kelly’s thing.”

“We’re not adopting him,” she said, already crouched beside him, scratching behind its ears. “He’s just staying for the night.”

“Just for tonight,” she said.

I nodded. “Just tonight.”

I didn’t argue. Not because I agreed, but because I didn’t want to fight. Not tonight. We were supposed to be resetting.

this suburban ghost-town designed for people with too much money and too few ideas. We’d been close with Jake and Kelly back in the city. But most of the other people they’d invited were strangers to us, people from their jobs, gyms, yoga classes, the kind of people who referred to this as “getting away from the chaos” even though none of them had real chaos to begin with.

Carmine was excited for it. I was… trying. Mostly, I was hoping it would be good for us. Neutral ground. A weekend away to forget how tense things had been getting lately. But now we had a stray cat in the house, our cats were hiding, and the place already felt off. Too quiet. Too artificial.

That night, Carmine let the black cat climb onto the bed with us. It curled immediately into the crook of her legs, already asleep by the time she pulled the blanket up.

Our cats watched from across the room. I could see the reflection of their eyes just under the dresser, unmoving.

I lay in bed longer than I meant to, scrolling through messages from Jake about tomorrow’s schedule — something about meeting at the rec center around 9 p.m., then heading to “the club.” He didn’t specify which one. It was all vague, messy planning. I didn’t really feel like socializing with strangers. But Jake had been a good friend, and Kelly adored Carmine. So we’d show up. Smile. Drink. Pretend we belonged there.

I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling in the dim white glow of the room’s smart lighting, thinking about how quiet the neighborhood was. No wind. No cars. Not even insects. Just the faint, rhythmic purring at the foot of the bedRight before I fell asleep, I glanced down.

The cat was sitting upright now, no longer curled. Just sitting there on the comforter, eyes open, staring directly at me in the dark.

I don’t remember falling asleep again. Just the moment I realized I was dreaming — and couldn’t wake up.

I was in a house that looked almost like ours, but too clean, too still. The air had that quiet, dead quality of a place that’s never been lived in. Every surface gleamed. The corners were too sharp.

I could hear scratching.

Tiny, desperate scratching, behind the walls, under the floor. And then I saw them: mice. Dozens of them. Small and gray, fur patchy, their eyes bright with panic. They ran in circles across the tile, trying to find exits that weren’t there.

There were traps everywhere. Slick, chrome contraptions laid out in geometric rows, far too many for a real home. Not old-fashioned wood-and-spring traps either, these looked high-tech, silent, blinking faintly red like they were syncing to something. A few of the mice paused near them, trembling. You could tell they knew. But they still crept forward.

One stepped too close. The trap didn’t snap. It hissed, quick and surgical, and the mouse vanished. No noise. No blood. Just gone, like it had never been there.

The others didn’t even react. They just kept running.

I turned, looking for Carmine, but there were only more rooms, all empty. Living room. Dining room. Hallway. Each identical. Each lit by that same dim, artificial glow. I moved faster.

Then I saw the cat.

It was the black one, sitting at the far end of the hallway, right in front of the last door. Still as ever. Its eyes glinted, pale green and glassy. Behind it, the floor was moving, not carpet, but mice. Hundreds of them, packed tight, pulsing like one giant organism. All facing the cat. None of them moving.

The cat didn’t blink. It opened its mouth, slowly, and from deep in its throat came a strange clicking sound, like plastic gears turning.

Then the door behind it opened on its own.

Light poured out. Warm, golden light. And the mice surged forward.

I tried to shout. Tried to move. But I couldn’t.

They ran into the room.

One by one, in perfect order.

And then the door closed.

“That’s how the trap works,” a voice whispered behind me. I turned — but no one was there.

Just a row of mouse traps on the floor now. Neat. Unused.

Waiting.

I woke up with a sharp inhale, heart hammering, mouth dry.

The room was dark. Still. The blackout curtains let in no moonlight. Carmine was asleep beside me, breathing slow and steady.

I woke up with a tightness in my chest, like I’d been breathing dust all night. The sheets were damp with sweat. The air smelled strange, not bad, just... wrong. Slightly sweet, slightly chemical.

Carmine was already in the bathroom. I heard water running, followed by the sharp intake of breath that meant something was wrong.

I sat up.

The black cat was gone.

Our ginger cat was curled on the floor near the foot of the bed, unmoving. His breathing was shallow. His eyes were crusted half-shut.

I climbed out of bed, knees stiff, and crouched beside him. “Hey, buddy...” I reached out and gently touched his side. His skin twitched under the fur like it was too sensitive. He didn’t lift his head.

From the bathroom, Carmine called, “Babe?”

Her voice cracked halfway through the word.

I stood and followed it. She was standing at the mirror, shirt lifted, revealing a rash that sprawled up her side in raw, red patches. Tiny blisters along the edge of her ribs. Her wrists looked worse, the skin raised and inflamed, almost as if burned.

“I think I’m having an allergic reaction,” she said, her voice trembling now. “What the hell is this?”

I looked down. My own hands were red — faint bumps forming across the knuckles, itching deep under the skin.

We didn’t say it right away. But we were both thinking the same thing.

The cat.

We found it under the couch. Sitting, tail wrapped neatly around its body, calm as ever. It blinked slowly when I crouched down to look at it, as if this was still its house, not ours.

Our second cat was nearby, eyes dull, fur matted. A low wheeze came from her throat when I picked her up.

I felt sick.

It clicked into place all at once: the dreams, the rash, the cats dying, the smell — it wasn’t a coincidence. The black cat. It’s saliva. It’s dander. Something about it was toxic.

“We have to get it out,” I said.

Carmine didn’t argue. That scared me more than anything.

I grabbed an old towel and slowly, carefully, wrapped it around the black cat. It didn’t fight. Didn’t hiss or squirm. It just stared up at me, dead calm, like it knew this part too, like it expected it.

I opened the front door. The light outside looked wrong. The street was too clean. Not a single bird, not a single breeze.

I set the cat down gently on the front porch.

It sat for a moment.

Then walked back across the lawn.

“Do you think... It was already living here?” I asked quietly.

Carmine didn’t answer.

Inside, the orange cat let out a small sound. Not a meow. Just a weak, breathy gasp. Then it stopped breathing.

We buried it in the backyard.

The rest of the day felt like it didn’t know how to be a day.

We barely spoke after we buried the cat. Just went through the motions, showered, made tea we didn’t drink, opened windows that let in nothing but still air. The house felt... stale. Like the ventilation system wasn’t connected to anything real.

Our surviving cat, the black and white one, Claudio, stayed curled in the laundry basket, eyes open but unfocused. His breathing was shallow. His fur looked strange in the light, clumped, slightly oily, like it was reacting to something in the air.

But slowly, through the afternoon, things started to shift.

By mid-afternoon, he lifted his head. Drank a little water. Curled up tighter. His breathing calmed.

The rash on Carmine’s side had begun to fade too, still visible, but softer now, less inflamed. The red welts on my knuckles were shrinking. The itch was still there, but it had dulled to a manageable whisper, like whatever had gotten into us was finally letting go.

We said nothing, but we both noticed it. Felt it in our bones.

It was the cat.

It had done something to this house. Or this house had let it.

We kept the windows open, but the air inside never seemed to change.

I caught myself scratching out of habit, even though the skin no longer burned. Carmine put her phone face down and lay back on the couch, staring at the ceiling.

By the time the sun started going down, we both looked like we hadn’t slept in days, but we were better.

Jake had texted around 6:

“Meet at the clubhouse 9ish. BYOB. Club after. Vibes only.” With a party emoji at the end.

I stared at it for a long time. I didn’t want to go. But we had come for this weekend. For Jake and Kelly. For our friends. To get away from our problems.

Carmine changed in silence. A dress I’d seen her wear at least ten times before, but it didn’t look the same now. Maybe because she didn’t smile while she put it on.

She looked in the mirror and tugged the sleeve down to hide the faint rash on her wrist.

“Do I look okay?” she asked.

“You look beautiful,” I said.

It wasn’t a lie.

But something had shifted. In her face. In the air.

And just before we walked out the door, I turned to look behind me, and saw the black cat again, sitting at the far end of the street, just barely visible in the dark.

Watching us.

The Party Begins

The walk to the clubhouse took less than five minutes, but it felt longer. The night air was warm but windless, and dense. The houses we passed looked exactly the same, flat lawns, LED porch lights, tightly sealed windows, few were occupied, but most, no signs of life. Like they’d l been staged for a brochure, then abandoned.

“Do you think anyone actually lives here?” I asked.

Carmine didn’t answer. She was scanning for the clubhouse.

We found it at the end of the street, a wide, boxy building with frosted windows and a clean logo etched into the glass: Crestridge Community Pavilion. It looked more like a tech startup’s break room than a place to throw a party. The door opened automatically as we approached, and the sound hit us: laughter, music, and the low thrum of bass. Jake was the first to spot us.

“Hey! There they are!” he shouted, a little too loud for the size of the room. He crossed the polished floor in three big steps and pulled us both into a hug. He smelled like cologne and weed. “Glad you guys made it. You look good,” he added, mostly to Carmine.

Kelly came up behind him, champagne in one hand. “Carmine!” she squealed. The two hugged tightly, like they hadn’t just seen each other a month ago. “Oh my God, you have to meet everyone.”

I stood there while Carminer was swept into the blur of the crowd, new names, new hugs, new hands reaching out. These were their other friends. People from L.A., from her yoga studio, his crypto startup. People with expensive teeth and vague job descriptions.

The bar was just a table lined with mixers, a few bottles, and a guy in a blazer who was either a hired bartender or just someone named Chad taking charge. I poured myself something brown with something fizzy and stood off to the side, watching.

Carmine seemed to be having fun. Or pretending to. She laughed when Kelly laughed, leaned into the group like she belonged. Her smile wasn’t fake, just tired.

Jake came over with a red solo cup in hand and bumped my arm. “So how’s the place? Weird neighborhood, right?”

“Yeah. It’s... a lot of nothing,” I said.

He grinned. “Exactly. That’s what makes it perfect. No noise. No distractions. No neighbors complaining. Just vibes, man.”

I nodded, trying to smile. Jake didn’t seem to notice anything was off.

An hour passed. Then another. The group kept growing, friends of friends arriving in Ubers from other neighborhoods. By 10:30, the music was louder, the lights dimmed, and someone had brought out a tray of tequila shots with lime wedges already squeezed dry.

I felt a little drunk. Not too drunk. Just floaty. The way you get when you’re around people you don’t really know, and the alcohol fills the space where conversation would be.

At some point, Carmine came back to me, glowing from the inside. “They’re saying we should head to the club soon,” she said, brushing her hand against mine. “The bachelorette part starts there.”

I nodded. “You okay?”

“I feel way better,” she said. “It’s like that cat was giving me brain fog.”

I laughed a little, mostly from relief. “Same.”

We followed the crowd out of the clubhouse. Jake led the way, holding Kelly’s hand like he’d just won something. We moved as a loose pack, laughing, tipsy, half-lit by porch lights.

The club was only a few blocks away, part of the development, tucked between a fitness center and a fake pond. It didn’t look like a club from the outside. No signs. Just a sleek dark raw concrete facade.

As we got closer, I checked the time.

11:46.

We were just getting started.

The Club

The club didn’t look like it belonged in a suburban neighborhood.

Inside, it was all reflective black surfaces, low ceilings, and moody lighting that made everyone’s face look like it belonged in an ad for a tequila brand. A DJ played a set of deep house that never seemed to peak. The bass moved through the floor like heat.

We entered in a wave, our group loud, laughing, carrying the party in like a living thing. Kelly shouted something to the hostess, Jake held up two fingers like they had some kind of reservation, and within seconds we were being herded into a cordoned-off VIP area that didn’t feel all that different from the rest of the club, except that it had bottle service and a couch shaped like a question mark.

I didn’t plan to get drunk.

But the drinks kept coming, and I didn’t say no.

At first I was just sipping, nodding along to conversations I wasn’t part of. Then I was laughing too loud at a joke I didn’t understand, pouring myself another vodka soda like I had something to prove.

“Loosen up,” someone said. I think it was Jake.

So I did.

I stopped checking my phone. I stopped thinking about the cats. I stopped looking at Carmine every five seconds to see if she was okay. I stopped caring if I fit in.

And once I stopped caring, I felt amazing.

Invincible. Hollow. Weightless.

We danced, or at least moved like we were dancing. The club throbbed with that late-night energy, where no one knows what time it is and no one wants to. Someone passed me a little baggie in the bathroom. I didn’t ask questions. I did a line off the counter, next to some guy in a tech vest who was staring at his reflection like it owed him something.

It hit me fast. The lights got sharper. The music felt personal. I walked back to our section like I owned it.

I sat with Carmine, who was next to Kelly and two other girls, all of them in a clump, laughing too loud, drinks in hand. She looked good. Happy. Free, for once.

. Jake came over, wild-eyed, holding two glasses. “You good?”

“Yeah,” I said. “You?”

“Fuckin’ incredible, bro,” he said. “Upstairs is open. Gambling room. Guys wanna come?”

“Yeah. Fuck it lets go”

As we all went upstairs, the music got quieter. The lighting changed. Cooler tones, darker corners. There were only a few people left, most of the action was clearly winding down, but it didn’t click for me. The room had one blackjack table, one roulette wheel, a few lounge chairs. A dealer was packing up her chips when we walked in.

“Just opening up?” I asked, grinning.

She didn’t smile.

“No. Closing down.” She looked tired.

I checked my phone.

3:15 a.m.

“Blackjack closes at 3,” she said. “Other games might still be open downstairs.”

Jake had already wandered off toward the roulette wheel. I looked around. I shot down to the main floor.

Found a table. Sat. Waited.

Pulled out my phone and opened Tinder, then Bumble. Not because I was looking for anything. Just a guilty reflex. Something about swiping made me feel in control.

That’s when the game started.

Cards. Chips. Neon lights in peripheral vision. More drinks. More laughter. More nothing.

Time passed without shape.

At some point, I looked down at my phone and saw a text from Carmine.

Sent two hours ago.

“You just left me behind? And then you’re on Bumble again? I’m out. Good Bye.”

My stomach dropped through the floor.

Suddenly I was stone cold sober.

I stared at the screen.

First instinct: lie.

Say It wasn’t what she thought it was. But she knew, she saw the app.

I just wrote back:

“Okay.”

Sent it. Watched the screen like it might soften. Like something might come back.

Nothing did.

I sat there for another hour.

The club was almost empty now. Just staff and a few lost souls spinning out the night. I got up to leave. I stood outside the entrance alone, air cooling fast around me, staring at the last message I’d sent. Waiting for the little “typing…” bubble. Hoping for something that didn’t come.

Eventually, I texted again.

“Where are you?”

Still nothing.

So I went home.

Walked alone through that quiet, polished neighborhood.

When I got back to the house, it was empty.

Carmine wasn’t there.

Neither were her things.

I sat down.

Tried to think of something else to say. Something that would matter.

Finally I wrote:

“I’m really sorry. Please come back.”

No reply.

I sat in the silence and waited.

And at some point, I fell asleep on the couch, phone still in my hand.

The Next Morning

I woke up to the sun already in the sky and my mouth tasting like metal and glue.

My eyes burned. My head pulsed, slow and mean. My hands were shaking. My throat was dry. Every breath felt like it scraped something on the way in.

The couch fabric was damp under me. My shirt twisted around my torso like I’d been wrestling in my sleep. My phone was still in my hand.

I checked it immediately.

No texts.

No missed calls.

No unread messages.

Nothing from Carmine.

It hit like a blunt object to the chest, heavy and dull and immediate. Just pain. Raw and deep and dense, like a stone had settled between my lungs.

I sat up slowly, vision swimming, and read her message again.

“You just left me behind? And then you’re on Bumble again? I’m out. Good Bye.”

I whispered the words under my breath, like saying them again might make them mean something else.

She was gone.

And the worst part was that I couldn’t even defend myself.

I had left her behind.

I had opened Bumble.

I’d treated her like she didn’t matter, and now that she was gone, the gravity of it made my skin ache. Like it had been pulled too tight over something hollow and rotting underneath.

I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, and let my head fall into my hands.

My heart was pounding in that cold, panicked way that isn’t about danger but failure. Shame. The sick, trapped knowledge that I did this. There was no misunderstanding.

I had something good, and I pissed all over it because I was too drunk and too high and too desperate to feel okay.

I felt like I could throw up, but nothing came. Just acid in my throat.

The hangover from the alcohol was sharp and cruel. The crash from the coke was worse, not just exhaustion, but a deep despair. Like someone had scraped all the dopamine out of my skull and left me with nothing but echoes of last night’s music.

I wanted to sleep again, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t sit still. I couldn’t move. I just drifted around the house like a ghost, checking every room like she might suddenly be in one of them.

But there was no trace of where she’d gone, or if she was okay.

Time passed without moving. Hours collapsed in on themselves. The silence in the house was so thick it made my ears ring.

At one point I lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. My only consolation was Claudio who came to sit on my chest and pur in my face. Every minute without a text from her felt like it physically hurt. Like I was being punished on a cellular level. Every stupid dopamine receptor screaming into a void.

I knew I didn’t deserve her reply.

But I wanted one anyway.

I wanted her to scream at me. To say I was a coward. An asshole. A fake. I would’ve taken anything. anything other than this absence, this crushing, suffocating silence.

By the time nightfall came, I felt like I’d been in hell all day. My body was still wrecked, aching like someone had broken me apart and glued me back together wrong.

The gnawing, hollow feeling of knowing I’d screwed it all up. And that Carmine wasn’t coming back. Not because she was mad, but because I was a piece of shit and she’d had enough.

I couldn’t shake the thought that this was punishment.

That maybe this was some kind of divine reckoning.

The worst part? I couldn’t figure out if I believed in God anymore. I couldn’t tell if I was mad at Him for letting me screw up my life so badly, or if I was mad at myself for abandoning Him in the first place.

Somewhere deep inside, I still remembered the old prayers my grandmother used to whisper when things got hard. I remembered the way it felt to ask for forgiveness, to feel like someone was listening. But I had tossed it aside years ago. Buried beneath vanity.

As I walked through the house, locking doors and checking windows, I couldn’t help but feel like I was being suffocated..

I made sure the back door was locked, and then the sliding glass door leading out to the yard. It was dark outside. The backyard stretched until it arrived at the backyard of the neighboring house.

That’s when I saw it.

The black cat slinked through the yard and disappeared into the neighbor’s house. And then screams from inside. I barely had time to process the terror of it. The sounds were primal. raw. Like the people inside were dying. Awful silence followed the screams. The cat emerged without a single sign of distress. Its sleek black fur looked untouched, gleaming under the faint light of the moon.

I stepped back from the window, hoping it wouldn’t see me. My stomach twisting with a sickening realization.

But it wasn’t just the cat.

As I looked back out the window, my heart sank deeper into my chest. The houses around us they were all empty now.

I hadn’t noticed at first. I’d been so focused on the cat, the noise, my own stupid mistakes, but now I could see it clearly. The houses were vacant. All of them. Everyone was gone.

This was it. This was the moment I understood everything. I felt the worst dread imaginable.

I’d seen it earlier. There had been lights on in other houses. A couple of cars parked in driveways. But now, there was nothing.

It was like they had just vanished.

The cat had been here for a reason. It wasn’t just an animal. It wasn’t just a pet. It was part of something much darker, something I had been blind to the whole time. The neighborhood. This house. The whole fucking place.

The cat had led me here, to this point of total, unavoidable dread. It had infected my life, my home, and now it had killed some people.

There had been people here this morning, neighbors, ordinary people living ordinary lives. Now, there was nothing. No movement. No lights. No sounds. And I was the last of the traps to clear.

The whole fucking neighborhood was a ghost town. I was alone.

I felt the world narrow down, the air thickening as if the ground beneath me was giving way. The realization crushed into me like a weight, this whole place, this perfect little neighborhood with its pristine houses and manicured lawns, was a fucking trap.

I wasn’t supposed to be here. None of us were.

The more I looked out into the dark, the clearer it became. This was never meant to be a place for real people. And now, I was stuck in it.

I stumbled back, heart racing, panic clawing at my throat. I didn’t know what to do. The sound of the cat, pacing through the yard, stopped. For a moment, all I could hear was the quiet hum of the house, the sound of my own pulse in my ears.

Then, I heard it.

A soft thud from the other side of the house.

The basement door.

It was open.

I felt my skin tighten, a wave of cold fear running through me. The house was waiting. It knew I would be here.

I ran downstairs, not thinking, not even considering that it might be worse to go hide. But something inside me knew. The more I tried to run from it, the more it would pull me in.

The basement was colder than I expected. I could see nothing but darkness. I stumbled down the stairs, each step heavier than the last, the silence of the house pressing in like an invisible weight.

And in the stillness of that dark room, I understood.

I wasn’t just trapped in this house. I was trapped in this neighborhood, in this world. There was nowhere to go, and no one left to help me.

The Return

I must have fallen asleep down there, curled on the cold cement, because when the sound came, it cut through a dreamless black.

My phone buzzed once.

Carmine

The light from the screen hurt my eyes. I blinked until I could read the text.

“Hey.”

For a second my brain didn’t believe it. I read the word again. The basement around me felt suddenly alive — the hum of the water heater, the drip of a pipe — all of it sharper, louder.

I typed with hands that wouldn’t stay still.

“How are you, mi amor?”

“I’m good, I miss you mi amor 🧡”

I let out a noise that was half‑laughter, half‑cry.

She was okay.

She was coming back.

A little while later,

Footsteps upstairs.

I ran up the stairs, heart hammering, and threw the basement door open.

There she was, Carmine.

Her hair tangled from the road, mascara smudged from tears, but her eyes alive, warm, her.

“I couldn’t leave like that,” she said. “I just… couldn’t.”

I didn’t think; I just wrapped my arms around her and held on. She was shaking, whispering into my ear, “Let’s just go to bed. Please.”

So we did.

Claudio jumped onto the bed, tail puffed, eyes locked on the dark hallway.

Something in his posture made my stomach tighten.

That’s when I remembered.

The window.

I’d left it open earlier, before Carmine came back.

The thought hit like ice water: the black cat could’ve gotten back inside.

I didn’t want to say it. Not now. Not when things had finally stopped feeling like death.

So I swallowed it, forced a smile, and said, “Let’s just sleep here right now.”

I got up and went to close the bedroom door.

Claudio bolted - a streak of white and black - straight for the hallway. He was furious, wild, ears flat. He wasn’t running from something; he was going after something. The black cat, i was certain.

“Hey! No!” I shouted.

He darted halfway through the doorway as I slammed it, desperate to keep whatever was out there out.

The door caught him.

A terrible sound came out of him. half‑scream, half‑growl.

“Open the door!” Carmine cried.

I froze, and eased the door open again.

The cat stumbled out into the hall, yowling, and that’s when I saw her.

A woman.

Standing perfectly still in the flickering hallway light.

Her skin looked gray, like candle wax that had melted and hardened again. Her eyes were dark pits that reflected the light wrong. And behind her, just barely visible at her feet, was the black cat. Watching.

The air went dead quiet.

I didn’t think. I just moved.

I ran at her, pure instinct, the rush of adrenaline.

But before I reached her, another figure burst from the doorway to my left, a second woman, pale and twisted, hair hanging in ropes.

She hit me hard from the side, knocking me against the wall, and before I could react, she sank her teeth into my shoulder.

The pain was blinding. hot, electric. I screamed, and everything blurred.

I remember the taste of copper, the sound of Carmine screaming my name, the awful pressure of those teeth in my skin, and then I shouted the only thing that came to me.

“Jesus Christ, help me!”

Everything slowed.

The air turned orange, not fire, not light, but something between the two, thick and warm, like the inside of a sunrise.

The pain dissolved.

Time bent.

my body moving like it belonged to someone else, strong, precise, unstoppable.

The first woman came at me again, her face twisted, but I saw the movement before it happened. I caught her wrist mid‑strike, twisted, and felt her bones break clean. It was like everything was in slow motion.

The second rushed from the side, I turned, drove my elbow into her temple, felt the shock of impact echo down my arm.

They fell like shadows losing form, their eyes flashing white for a heartbeat before rolling back into black.

The orange haze started to fade.

Carmine was still there, eyes wide, shaking. The cat yowled from the corner, tail flared, ears flat.

“Go!” I shouted. “Now!”

We ran.

Down the stairs, through the living room, past the shattered picture frames and overturned chair. The front door hung open, wind finally moving through the house, carrying the scent of pine and something clean.

We bolted outside.

I scooped up the cat as we sprinted to the car. Started the car, and we peeled out.

The headlights cut through the dark, and gravel flew behind us as the tires caught and spun.

The neighborhood disappeared in the rearview mirror, rows of silent, cube houses shrinking into blackness. Claudio steady breathing in Carmine’s lap.

For the first time in what felt like forever, I breathed without pain.

The forest opened ahead, the road curving back toward the world we knew, toward home.

Carmine reached across the console and took my hand.

“Don’t ever let go,” she said.

“I won’t,” I whispered.

And we drove through the endless night.