Instead, I stared at the photo, my stomach twisting. It wasn’t just the open eyes that unsettled me. It was the way my face looked in the image.
Like I was watching something.
Like I was aware.
My phone buzzed again. Another photo.
I hesitated before opening it.
This time, it was a video. Only a few seconds long. The camera was focused on me—on the version of me lying in bed.
Then, slowly, the mouth of my sleeping self moved.
No sound came through. Just the slight parting of lips, the faint motion of whispered words.
But I didn’t need to hear it.
Because the final frame of the video held the message for me.
A single sentence, written in the darkness behind my bed.
“You woke up too soon.”
I dropped my phone. My breath hitched in my throat.
Then—my closet door creaked open.
I wasn’t alone. I felt it before I saw it. The temperature dropped, and a strange pressure pressed against my chest, like the air itself was suffocating me.
Slowly, I turned my head toward the closet.
At first, there was nothing but darkness.
Then—movement.
A shape shifted in the shadows. A pale, too-familiar shape. My stomach lurched. My reflection wasn’t missing. It was here.
It stepped forward, half-hidden in the dark. My own face, staring back at me—but the eyes were wrong. Too bright. Too knowing.
It smiled.
A voice whispered, but this time, it wasn’t from my phone.
The Stranger Who Wore My Face 24