Disoriented and unsure of exact time or place, Callista found herself within the familiar confines of hospital walls —though she was lying in bed this time around rather than tending to patients like she was accustomed to. How long she had been awake wasn’t something she could readily answer, but similarly, she couldn’t fall asleep no matter how hard she tried.

  The air hung thick with the familiar scent of antiseptic she knew all too well, but it was also tainted by the distinct metallic stench of stale blood, potent enough to stir her senses. Not only did it make Callista feel sick to her stomach, but it also brought her intense unease and guilt —serving as a reminder of all the violent choices that now coiled around her heart like a vice.

  Echoes of that fateful confrontation haunted her thoughts, blending with the sterile environment of the hospital room, and still feeling the shadows of her stalker looming nearby. The lines between past and present blurred, leaving Callista grasping for a sense of stability amidst all the confusion.

  So she sought escape from the suffocating stench, getting up from the hospital bed for her bare feet to meet the sterile coldness of the tiled floor. As she did so, a strange sensation pervaded her body —she felt lighter, smaller, her gaze falling closer to her curling toes than she remembered from this new vantage point.

  Dismissing the disquieting feeling, Callista pushed open the door, and immersed herself in the vastness beyond. It was a labyrinth of endless corridors and rooms, filled with blank faces who paid her little mind, consumed by waves of uncertain chatter the young nurse could not decipher, isolating her even more from the surroundings.

  The figures of doctors and nurses around her felt larger and taller than normal, strides carrying them forward with indifferent purpose, never truly looking down in her direction; marching oblivious to her loneliness and discomfort.

  At least until that same voice, soft-spoken and yet so shudder-inducing, resounded in her head —calling her name in that dreaded, unasked-for intimate manner.

  “Callie…” No one, not her parents or her colleagues ever shortened her name in such a manner; so the realization that him was still around to prolong her torment sent Callista into a growing spiral of panic. She pushed aside the faceless creatures that cared not of her plight, and began running blindly without direction or thought.

  As she sprinted, her hand grew heavier with each step, and a glance revealed her fingers gripping a pair of scissors as if they were the anchor tethering her life... Those sharp edges she could never forget —the same ones she used to carve a wound in June's face a decade ago.

  Nothing had truly changed, had it? Once again Callista found herself fleeing from conflict after her hands had been stained with blood. Was this her inescapable fate, doomed to repeat itself time and time again? Was there truly nobody she could trust out there? Were they all just waiting to harm her when given the chance?

  Her flight felt endless, and it was only when her surroundings shifted entirely around her eyes that Callista forced herself to stop. Gone were the hospital corridors of her adulthood, replaced by a courtroom comprised of her beloved companions, mutilated and scattered across the floor —their plush stuffing torn and violated.

  In the far corner of the dimly lit room, a broken mirror reflected her distorted image, its shattered glass edges dripping fresh droplets of blood. There, in the mangled crystal, stood her own vulnerable and scared visage, trapped in the body of her fifteen-year-old self, clutching onto the scissors that had sliced apart her childhood happiness.

  It didn’t matter that she had finished nursing school. It didn’t matter that she had a job, or the means to fend for herself. It didn’t matter that she had her own home.

  She had never outgrown all those deep cutting scars that still haunted her from those days, preventing her from trusting others. Perhaps… She never would.

  The voice caught up to her then, disgustingly calling her name once more. It carried along a suffocating presence and a malevolent intent that thickened the very air around her. He was still lurking in the shadows, just beyond the edge of sight, but his twisted whispers continued to caress her ear, the darkness gaining mass as it left delicate, skin-crawling trails on her face —taunting her in a sickening reprisal of the moment she took his life.

  But Callista refused to let things remain as they were, and she wouldn’t wait for anyone to stand out for her sake either. No matter how many times it took, she would silence them. She would carve her own path, even if it meant doing so through the flesh of others.

  Steadying her resolve, she headed once more into the darkness, wielding the scissors firmly until finally witnessing ‘them’, turned into a grotesque chimera of past faces, mangled beyond recognition by her hand —owning traits of both June and Peter; their macabre countenance holding a monstrous grin while they clutched a tattered plush bear under blood-soaked hands, as if to mock her further.

  Callista’s mind recoiled with fear, but her feet refused to retreat. Instead, they pushed her forward, condemning her to repeat the same tragedy once more. The scissors transformed into the kitchen knife, as she plunged it deep into the demon’s chest.

  Instead of gushing blood from their wound, her attack was met with blinding rays of light assaulting her from every angle, searing her eyes as it eradicated the vast blackness —causing her personal tormentors to dissipate like smoke in the air.

  Now illuminated, her world unveiled an army of faceless figures, trampling over the cotton graveyard without regard while chanting her name in mindless, diffuse voices. They swarmed her, suffocating tides of flesh and warmth invading her space.

  She didn’t want them near —she wanted them as far away as possible; but they paid no heed to her pleas, relentlessly drowning Callista as if she were their unwilling salvation.

  Only the bloodied, torn mirror kept its place in the distance, reflecting her overwhelmed figure. But it was no longer Callista that saw themselves on the other side of the glass —neither girl nor woman. She had transformed into a monstrous creature, one just as horrid as June and Peter had become.

  Every hand that touched her melted and amalgamated her form further, forging an abomination that lacked even the eyes to cry with…

  … Or a mouth to scream.

  Upon finally waking, Callista was drenched in a cold sweat, her body shaking uncontrollably. The ghostly sensations of a thousand fingers trying to get inside her flesh lingered, but she desperately tried to push the disturbing feeling aside as she sat up in bed, covering her face under trembling palms.

  It wasn’t a hospital room that welcomed her this time, but simply her bedroom, the orange light filtering in from the outside world world telling her it was already well past noon.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  As much as she would have liked for the entire ordeal to have been just an ill-conceived nightmare, the sight of the broken glass shards and bloodstains splattered across her floor told her there would be no such respite —walking across the abandoned battlefield after rising from her restless slumber, devoid of any remaining willpower.

  Tears welled up once more at the borders of her swollen eyes, but Callista did her best to fight them back. Reality was so barren, so painfully hard that it invaded her heart with a profound sense of desolation, leaving her unsure of what to do next or how to even begin regaining some semblance of normality.

  Fortunately, a small ember of joy swiftly came to greet her, forming a weak smile on her lips as she confirmed that Choccy was still safe and sound, despite all odds —happily bouncing around her feet, wagging his tail in resounding obliviousness of Callista’s plight.

  Perhaps she needed him by her side more than she should admit, giving the dog a nudge filled with meaning before resuming her examination on the aftermath of that dreadful triple metre dance that transpired in her house the night before.

  Despite having committed murder just a handful of hours ago, there seemed to be no traces of activity of any sort in her home, every piece of evidence remaining virtually untouched, save for a message written on the back of a police report form.

  “I hope you had a proper rest, considering the circumstances.” It began —left behind by Officer Konradsson, she presumed. “Please, try not to worry too much, I’ll do my best keeping everything under wraps to the best of my abilities. There are too many questions left unresolved to burden you even further with police questioning or investigation procedures.”

  >> “And you’ve gone through far too much already.”

  >> “I care about you, Cal. We’ll make sense of it all, I promise.”

  Right… Last night had been so tumultuous that she hadn’t had the chance to properly ascertain the police officer’s claims of their shared past. That his name was Alain, and that the two of them had attended high school together? She was a little too embarrassed to confess out loud that she had no recollections of him. Sincerely, she wanted to keep him at an arm’s length too, if possible.

  But alongside the note’s passages there was a phone number also jotted down, an indication of his intent to maintain contact on her own terms. It appeared that Alain was trying to let her dictate the pace of their exchanges, just as he was giving her control over how the world would treat Kimball’s passing in her home —to the point of even giving her the chance to disregard consequences altogether.

  A bit out of line, and certainly diverting from police professionalism… Yet in her own hesitant manner, she found herself appreciating it.

  “I’m going to investigate everything I can on my own, but you’re the only one I can talk to about what happened without sounding crazy. So please, reach out when you feel ready.” Were the last words written by the police officer, leaving a bitter taste in Callista’s mouth as she set the paper aside.

  “I don’t doubt he’s a good person…” She muttered, eyes downcast and weary. “… But he’s demanding too much of me. How could I possibly be of aid in all this nightmare?”

  Just a few days ago, the most outlandish phenomena she had to deal with were the whispered urban legends that spread like haunts across hospital hallways; open secrets about a mad surgeon who spirited away corpses from the morgue before being discharged a long time ago —or other ridiculous tales she had no intentions of entertaining.

  Yet now, her reality was...

  “I wonder… Is he also being chased by one of you… Things?” Callista’s exhausted gaze drifted over her shoulder, settling upon the unnerving phantom lingering behind her.

  She had sensed the shift in the atmosphere before even laying eyes on the figure, making her think that prolonged exposure to them had granted her a faint perception over those previously unseen horrors.

  Likewise, Callista had already deduced that it had been one of those creatures that attacked her and Officer Konradsson in defense of Peter Kimball. But… were they also responsible for his descent into madness?

  Her mental preparation was one of the main reasons why she didn’t panic at the sight. Another one was that her heart was simply too drained to muster stark reactions any longer.

  Studying the creature’s countenance meticulously despite her shallow breaths, Callista attempted to compare its features to what she had perceived through touch alone during the previous night’s violent confrontation. While it possessed an unmistakably feminine form, its body lacked anything that resembled either plastic or fabric —leading the nurse to infer that this particular apparition was a different one from Kimball’s.

  It could only be described as a monstrous and mechanical mermaid-like figure, highly reminiscent of antique machinery left to rot beneath the sea. The twisting coils of metal that shaped her frame were corroded and discolored from water damage, giving off an illusory scent of wet iron. But on closer inspection, Callista realized that she lacked any true odor —instead, she heard a faint ticking emanating from within her husk, like a dormant bomb waiting to detonate.

  The spectral mermaid floated above her head with joined metal legs dissipating into the air before reaching the floor, her face obscured by a cracked and expressionless iron mask. White saltwater trails seeped from the fractures and darkened eye-holes, like teardrops rolling down hollow cheeks.

  Despite the hints of something more terrifying lurking beneath the iron containment, with its surface littered by haphazardly distributed steel plates and jagged metallic ridges struggling to hold the structure together, Callista felt a strong reluctance to approach and peek beneath the mask. Some secrets were better left undisturbed.

  “So I’m just… Stuck with you? Until the day I also die?” She spoke in a small voice to the towering, silent figure. Something about her exuded a very different and distinct presence from Kimball’s specter; the one and only comparable experience she had. “You won’t try to hurt me, will you?”

  No response from the phantom, her intentions kept unclear like murky waters.

  Yet… Beyond Callista’s understanding, the entity’s name seemed to coalesce within her mind of its own volition. She didn’t understand the true nature of the bond they now shared, but it felt as if a form of communication transcending mere words was taking root between them.

  “Your name is… Siren?” Her question came out hesitantly, unsettled by the notion that her thoughts may no longer be solely her own.

  Upon hearing her name uttered aloud, Siren lifted two of her six arms towards Callista, while the other four she had remaining shackled behind her back —bound by chains terminating in solid iron convict balls the size of her clenched fists.

  The hands continued their inexorable path until they enveloped Callista’s, the coarse and rusted texture of her fingers sliding across the still open wound marring the nurse’s right palm.

  A numb, vacuum-like pain surged through her cut until it reached the height of her wrist, as Siren’s fingers stopped on the laceration. It birthed an unsettling discomfort that was quickly usurped by a humid sensation that seemed to seep from within her own body, drawn magnetically toward the phantom’s metallic grip as it surrounded her injury.

  Callista watched in a trance as the ethereal moisture wicked across her wound, knitting and sculpting the torn skin as it was reshaped before her very eyes, new tissue blossoming in the wake of Siren’s unnatural healing.

  Coaxing the injury to slowly close itself, the humidity felt viscous on her fresh skin stretching taut as if newly formed. A faint hissing resonance accompanied the process, like the escape of pressurized steam.

  When at last the haunting regeneration completed its work, Callista’s hand bore no mark of the glass shard cut —flesh rendered unblemished and whole once more; albeit she still didn’t feel completely comforted by the morbid miracle.

  “All right, I get it. You’re not my enemy… Necessarily.”

  But what exactly was Siren, and for how long would she be forced to deal with this unasked-for companionship? Both of them questions that Callista doubted she’d be able to answer on her own.

  What options did she truly have, though? Reaching out to Alain, who was likely just as lost as she was? Track down the mysterious man with the baby, despite having no idea who he was or where he might be?

  Neither of those choices sounded remotely appealing to the utterly depleted young nurse. She couldn't shake the feeling that she was being pulled further and further into a never-ending rabbit hole, like a thin reed adrift on a dark ocean.