The man on the video was wearing my clothes. He had my posture, my dark messy hair, the small tear on the right elbow of my hoodie. He looked around the empty foyer, turned to look directly at the camera, and then walked down the hallway toward the kitchen.
It was me. Five minutes before I had actually walked through that door.
“What the hell…” I muttered, my thumbs trembling as I scrubbed forward on the video playback.
On the screen at 6:14 PM, the video showed me—or whatever was wearing my skin—walking past the kitchen, skipping the dog food entirely, and heading straight up the stairs to the second floor.
I forced myself to look up from the screen toward the stairwell at the end of the hall. The shadow of the upper landing hung over the steps like an open mouth.
My phone vibrated in my palm. A text from Marcus.
Did you find Buster? He’s usually pretty loud.
I couldn’t bring myself to type. My mind was racing, trying to stitch together a logical explanation. A delayed camera loop? A glitched timestamp? A deepfake? None of it accounted for the sound of footsteps I had heard upstairs just moments ago.
Thud.
A single step sounded from the top of the stairs.
I froze. The iPad screen on the wall flickered, automatically switching to the second-floor hallway camera.
The timestamp on the screen read 6:18 PM—real time.
The live feed showed the bedroom door creaking open. A figure stepped into the hallway. It was wearing my blue hoodie, my black jeans. It walked to the edge of the banister, stopped, and leaned over to look down toward the kitchen.
I didn’t move. I couldn’t look away from the iPad. On the screen, the copy of me lowered its head, looking straight into the camera lens with an expressionless, hollow face.
Then, on the video feed, the thing slowly reached up, grabbed its own throat, and peeled its face upward—like a rubber mask being ripped away—revealing dark, glistening, featureless muscle beneath.
In the quiet of the real kitchen, a wet slither echoed from the top of the stairs.
I dropped the iPad. It shattered against the tile. Panic took over, and I bolted for the front door, slamming my weight against the lock, twisting it wildly, and yanking the handle.
The door didn’t open. It felt like it had been welded to the frame.
I whirled around, my back pressed hard against the solid wood.
standing at the end of the dark hallway, right by the stairs, was the Golden Retriever. Buster was sitting perfectly still, staring at me with wide, terrified eyes, shivering violently.
And right beside the dog, stepping out of the shadows, was another man. He was wearing my blue hoodie, holding a spare key in his trembling hand.
He stared at me in total, paralyzing horror, pulled out his phone with a shaking grip, and whispered into the quiet house:
“Who… who are you?”
