It isn’t your friend who joins you and the others at the diner, but for some reason everyone else in your group treats it exactly the same as if it were her.
Do they notice? Or are they all going along with it the same as you because everyone else is doing so?
The thing that greets you at work the next day is not your coworker either. Just like at the diner, its performance is perfect. It draws no comment.
When you ask another coworker about it, they give you a quizzical look. You drop the subject.
You take the next day off.
You spend the day alone in your apartment. When your girlfriend texts you, she asks if you are feeling alright. She comments that you seem distant.
There is something just a bit off about her words. When she sends you a selfie, you see it right away. That is not her.
That night, something that isn’t you stands at the foot of your bed, watching you. Neither of you speak, even when it climbs onto your bed and crawls over to you, its face hovering over yours and its eyes staring, unblinking, into you.
You feel something stir within.
You see it in its eyes. The thing that isn’t you wants terribly for you to become just like it.
For some reason, when its lips touch yours, you do not struggle. It isn’t a tongue that it pushes into your mouth, but you take it in as though you were eager for it.
Your body reacts to its caress in the way it should if this thing were your partner. It isn’t, of course—it isn’t even really you—but it seems to know just how you want to be touched.
You give in to desire.
When you close your eyes, it is the wrong number of mouths and tongues and hands—and everything else—that you feel all over you. You stop counting. You stop looking for familiarity.
It pumps its poison down your throat, and you drink it, knowing it will destroy you.
It does.
It empties you until you are full, then it fills you with even deeper emptiness. It severs you from sense and self and life. It hurts with something like joy.
The next morning you are not quite yourself.
You will have to reintroduce yourself to your friends.