The world didn’t go dark when he pulled me through. It went wrong.
I wasn’t in my room anymore — but I wasn’t anywhere else, either. It felt like falling without moving. Like my body was still standing there, but my mind had been yanked somewhere colder, quieter, and too still.
I couldn’t feel my face.
But I could feel him.
His voice didn’t sound like a voice anymore. It was under my skin, rattling through my teeth, vibrating in my skull.
“You wore me first.”
I didn’t understand what he meant. My head was spinning, my vision flickering between places — my room, the mirror, the endless black void around me now.
Then I saw it.
I wasn’t falling. I was sinking.
Faces drifted past me, pale and stretched, mouths open too wide. Some looked familiar. Too familiar. People I barely remembered. A cashier from the grocery store. A boy I went to school with. The old neighbor who used to wave at me from his porch.
They all wore my face.
“You wore me first,” he repeated, louder now. “Now I wear you.”
I tried to scream, but I didn’t have a mouth anymore.
The faces twisted as they sank deeper, smiles still locked in place. Their eyes rolled toward me as they disappeared into the blackness below.
And then I saw the last one.
It wasn’t him. It wasn’t me.
It was the woman. The one who tried to help me.
Her face wasn’t twisted in rage or fear this time. It was worse. It was empty.
She didn’t scream. She didn’t move. She just stared at me as she sank past, her eyes hollow, mouth barely moving.
But I still heard the words.
“Don’t let him finish.”
The darkness dragged her down, her face vanishing with the others.
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move.
And then the void spoke again — his voice, sharp and slow.
The Stranger Who Wore My Face 20