Gabe realized he was not in the best shape of his life. He managed to run a distance of just a few meters before the thing with three bodies caught up. It could have reached him sooner had it chosen to pursue at once but it must have decided to give him a sporting chance or just simply wanted to play with its prey.

Gabe felt hands grip both his shoulders right before overwhelming force brought him down, chin slamming to the ground.

He must have blacked out for a moment after the impact against the floor’s cracked tiles. When he regained his bearings, he felt a sharp stab of pain in his right shoulder. He tried to roll over, see what exactly had happened but he found he had the weight of something like a grown man sitting on his back. What was it? Oh yeah, the nightmare thing. It had him pinned now and—

The pain intensified. And intensified. Something sharp and wriggling was trying to push through the flesh of his shoulder to make its way inside. He imagined the succeeding sensations as bone crunching against bone. Still pinned down, he gritted his teeth and turned his head towards the affected shoulder. One of the heads-- the middle one— gripped him with its mouth. Like a lamprey. The head’s jaw was firmly clamped but it was doing something to cause that same pain to shoot through his nerves again and again. Jab. Jab. Jab. Each one more excruciating than the last.

With a grunt, he summoned all the strength in his body to try for a pushup. Jerk himself up. Anything to get the thing to fall over. If only he could create enough of an opening, he may be able to crawl forward, then get on his feet.

Didn’t work. The effort barely lifted himself and the thing any higher. He was simply too weak to fight against against the creature. This wasn’t fair. The pain continued. This was how he was going to die.

That was how he died.

What did the creature represent? Some sort of amalgam of past and present fears, most likely. The monster itself was a combination of bodies so that part about it being an amalgam was probably a bit on the nose. Something to do with having kids? His folks always hinted about how they wanted to have grandchildren but something about the prospect just didn’t seem doable at all back then. Even now, with all the crap happening, the idea of bringing more life into the world couldn’t possibly be considered moral, right? He’d hate to be born now and have 50 to 75 years of life of viruses and economic downturns and wars and all that to contend with. Also, he was sure he’d make a terrible parent.

He yawned. What else happened? Oh, of course. Again with the old unresolved issues about Dad. The setting of the old house wasn’t anything new. First time to see it in that sort of post-apocalyptic, grimdark, rundown state though.

Stranger than how it ended with the man-eating conjoined triplets burrowing a hole in him was how, before it turned horror, he was so very sure it wasn’t a dream at all. Wait. That wasn’t quite it. He was sure it was a dream, but not just any dream.

He glanced out the window and estimated it to be a little before 6. Just a little bit of light now to turn the sky a dark shade of blue. With the sun just barely out, he could still go back to sleep but there was also a backlog of student submissions to read and that additional hour spent on work could be crucial. He reached underneath his pillow for his cellphone. 6:07. Four new messages.

The first was from a student asking for an extension on a deadline. Can’t help you there, pal. The rest were all from Charlie. Of course.

Charlie 3:04 a.m.: you up? check out this link asymptotal***.com/thread/3425...

Charlie 3:05 a.m.: Did you hear about Night Out? something uber weirrrddd’s just happened, dude. There’s the official news and there’s the not-so-official bits.

Charlie 3:09 a.m.: Occult-ey shit! iLluMiNatiiii! LOL. Don’t mind me, just getting sucked into message board conspiracy threads here. Again. but seriously, check out the link I sent once you’re up.

Gabe thanked the third-party extension that allowed him to designate when his app tells the other party the messages have been read. He’d get to checking out the link Charlie sent him eventually sometime during the day and reply to the guy later. Much later. Or maybe tonight once he got home again. This was probably just Charlie sending him some weird conspiracy theory links again. Charlie had enough awareness to preface everything with a veil of ironic, semi-detached, “this is what the tinfoil guys are up to now” context. But Gabe felt the detachment was more pretend than anything. Which was fine, he told himself. He just didn’t have the same energy to indulge in those things now the way he himself used to.

Gabe dragged himself out of bed and headed for the kitchen. Teddy was still asleep on his usual spot atop the fridge. The cat didn’t even notice when he pulled the door open to check on what could possibly serve as breakfast. Three-quarters full can of beer, leftover sandwich, mango juice carton, fried spring rolls from two nights ago and some also-old lasagna. He picked the mango juice and spring rolls for himself and the lasagna for Teddy.

Right after shutting the fridge door closed, he heard a loud hiss from above followed by Teddy jumping straight for his head, claws out.

“Hey, what?” the cat collided with him, fell on an arm nearly making him drop what he was carrying, jumped again towards his face getting some scratches in. Jerking around, he managed to get the cat off him. It then gave another hiss before running toward the bedroom as if its life depended on it.

“Yeah, run away, I’m not gonna forget this you know.” he shouted at the fleeing animal. From inside the bedroom he heard it hiss at him.

“Yeah, well here’s a hissssss!!! to you too, Teddy. Make that a double hiss. Hissssss!!”

He quickly placed the food and juice on the countertop then felt his forehead to check if the cat managed to draw blood. Didn’t seem like it. He felt around for any other scratches. A couple others on his neck. At least the damn cat didn’t manage to scratch his eyes out. What had suddenly gotten into it? He couldn’t be entirely sure but it didn’t seem like he’d accidentally slammed the fridge door with Teddy’s tail inside. Or had he? Nah. He’d have noticed it. Maybe he’d woken up the damn cat while it was having a dream?

He let out a sigh, then headed for the bathroom. The shock froze him in place for a second before he fell on his ass. Did he just see what he thought he saw? Kneeling, he slowly lifted himself up, staring at the mirror, waiting for his reflection to once again be visible.

There he was, forehead very slightly bleeding from a scratch. Beside him, sprouting on the space in between his neck and right shoulder was the head of the girl from the nightmare. The one that bit him.

She had a face now. She was smiling.