Blood spread across cracked pavement. Real blood. Mine.

  The shadow knelt. Its tongue—a wet blade—licked the gash clean across my knuckles. I watched from above my own skull, floating, detached. Pain hummed like a mosquito in amber.

  “Not yet,” it hissed, breath cold as a morgue drawer. “But soon.”

  It wore my face. Same jaw I’d clenched since I was seven, same eyes I’d practiced emptying in bathroom mirrors. We’d been rehearsing this my whole life.

  I tried to stand. My foot slipped on something wet—my blood, or someone else’s. The alley stank of dumpster rot and piss-steam, but underneath, something sweet. Old meat. A cat, maybe. Or a rat that crawled here to die alone.

  The shadow didn’t follow. It never did. It just waited where my reflection should’ve been.

  My name is Aariz. I was born into attention. Into love. Tiny clothes, soft shoes, objects meant to protect something fragile. But love divides like a finite resource.

  My brother came second. He got the new shoes. I got his old ones, soles flapping like dead tongues.

  Mom said, *“You understand.”*

  I understood. I was the cracked earth in a drought.

  The first cut was in Sadiqabad, fifth grade. A girl asked for markers. I gave them. She asked for help. I gave it. Then she laughed, markers snapped in her fist, and that laugh—high and sharp, breaking glass in a cathedral—cracked something behind my ribs.

  I didn’t cry.

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  I carved the rule instead: *If they look at you, make them blink first.*

  School taught me the next lesson. A friend confessed feelings. Simple words. Honest. Exposed. I panicked. I didn’t understand, so I destroyed them before they touched me.

  If you don’t understand something, break it.

  We moved again. Smaller rooms. Smaller lives. *“You know our financial situation,”* they said. No one asked what I wanted. I was twelve.

  She brushed my fingers once while taking notebooks. Static shock. She froze. I laughed—louder than I felt. Toughness became armor.

  Years later, I learned her past. Other boys. Polaroids. Formaldehyde breath. I laughed. Crying would’ve meant I still cared.

  January 2026. I made a promise to a ghost. If she came back, I’d accept her. If she rejected me, I’d leave quietly. I would not run.

  The shadow hated that promise. It wanted the chase. I was done running. I chased money instead. Failed. Lost my smile between a loan shark’s fist and a job interview where they asked for *passion.*

  I showed them the shadow. They hired someone else.

  I lost interest in living. The shadow didn’t. It grew hungrier.

  Now, in this alley, bleeding into pavement, I understand the mercy. The pause. The breath between blade and bone.

  It was never a dream.

  My phone buzzed again. The shadow smiled with my teeth. *Answer it.*

  Voicemail. Unknown number. I pressed play.

  Static. Then Mom—not Mom, younger, terrified.

  *“… hiding in the closet… the shadow has Dad’s eyes…”*

  A child screamed. *My* scream. From 2009.

  Datestamp: *Tomorrow.*

  The line died. My hands shook. Not from fear. From recognition. The shadow leaned in, its lips brushing my ear.

  “You begged me to stay,” it whispered. Its tongue flicked my eardrum, tasting wax and sweat. “Now wear me.”

  I let it.

  The voicemail played again. Same message. Same timestamp: *Tomorrow.*

  This time, a wet whisper under my child’s scream.

  *“…your turn in the closet…”*

  I don’t flinch. I’ve been in that closet my whole life. The shadow was born there. It wore Dad’s eyes, Mom’s fear, my brother’s shoes. It wore her laugh. It wore every no I swallowed.

  Tomorrow, it wears the world.

  I pull out my earbuds. No music. Just my breath, steady now. The shadow’s breath matches it, beat by beat.

  The child I locked away isn’t smiling. He’s screaming.

  For the first time, I scream back.

  The world ends with a voicemail.

  And I am the one who pressed play.