The Man Who Came Back Wrong

I don’t remember losing control of the car.

I just remember waking up in metal and glass, hearing my own breathing like it belonged to someone else.

The doctors said I was lucky.

They said I should not have walked out of that wreck.

The Return Home

My wife hugged me when I got back.

She said I felt colder than I should have.

I laughed it off.

But that night, she locked the bedroom door from the inside.

The Mirror

The first time I noticed something wrong was in the bathroom mirror.

My reflection blinked half a second late.

Then it smiled when I wasn’t smiling.

I told myself it was exhaustion.

I told myself a lot of things.

The Truth

Last night, I woke up standing in the hallway.

I did not remember getting out of bed.

The house was quiet except for the sound of someone else moving inside my room.

When I opened the door, I saw my wife sitting up in bed, staring at me like she had seen a ghost.

She whispered only one sentence.

"You didn’t come back alone."

And behind me, something copied my breathing exactly.